Twitter Accessibility Settings - iOS - VoiceOver

Configuring Accessibility Settings in the Twitter App with VoiceOver

The official Twitter app for iOS works pretty well when using the built-in screenreader VoiceOver. Partly, this is down to the lack of complexity around this particular flavour of social media itself, but it is also a result of the designers and developers at Twitter being a bit more switched on when it comes to making their app as inclusive as possible.

In this post I am going to walk through the specific options that you can find in the Accessibility area. While the app itself is generally okay by default, understanding some of the specific accessibility settings can further enhance the overall Twitter and VoiceOver experience. Let's get started!

Navigating to the Accessibility Settings

1. Launch the Twitter app from your home screen with a DOUBLE TAP.
2. Assuming the app is open and you are logged in correctly, locate the ME tab. On your iPhone, use the FINGER DRAG technique to explore the bottom, right hand part of the screen where the ME tab is located. If you are using an iPad then use the FINGER DRAG technique to locate the Me Tab along the left edge of the screen.
3. With focus on the Me tab use a DOUBLE TAP gesture to confirm and move focus there.
4. Ground your focus on the page by using a FINGER DRAG to locate the Me heading at the top middle of the screen.
5. Now SWIPE RIGHT to begin moving through the focusable objects in the Me tab page. You will pass the Search button, New Tweet button and so on, keep swiping until you have focus on the Settings button.
6. DOUBLE TAP the Settings button and focus will move to a list - the first item of which is the Edit Profile button. SWIPE RIGHT to focus on the Settings button then DOUBLE TAP.
7. Focus will now be on the heading in the Settings area, SWIPE RIGHT to move through all the other options until you have focus on Accessibility. DOUBLE TAP this option. You will now have focus on the Back button in the list of specific accessibility configuration options.

Toggling the Twitter Accessibility Options On and Off

Now that you have focus in the accessibility options, let's go through each one in the order they appear:

Pronounce # as "Hashtag"

If you are a Twitter convert already then you will know all about hashtags. However, for anyone else, a word or two of explanation might be in order.

What is a hashtag? A hashtag is a user-defined "keyword" of sorts that can be searched for by Twitter users (commonly known as "Twitterers" by the way) so they can show all of the tweets containing a particular keyword. Essentially, hashtags act as a kind of thematic glue across related tweets posted by different users. For example, the recent UK general election resulted in many hashtags. One of these was "#GE2015" and Twitter users could follow the chain of the tweet conversation by searching on that hashtag. As you can imagine, during the election, that was a lot of tweets and it meant that for quite a while the hashtag #GE2015 was "trending" - another term you may have heard being used!

The pronounce option determines whether VoiceOver reads each # symbol as "number" or "hashtag". So, using the earlier example of #GE2015, if you set the pronounce option to Off, VoiceOver will read Twitter hashtags like this: "number G E 2015." If you set the option to On, then VoiceOver states: "hashtag G E 2015." As the hashtag is such an important part of the Twitter culture, my advice to you is to activate this setting if it is currently off. You want VoiceOver reading the symbol as "hashtag" and not "number".

Toggle the option on and off using the standard DOUBLE TAP gesture.

Include Usernames in Timelines

This toggle on and off option determines whether VoiceOver reads the given name and the specific account or username when reading through tweets.

Okay, "what's the difference?" you might be thinking. Well, when you create your Twitter account you need to come up with a unique name for it. This unique name is your actual account name - what other users can refer to when they mention you in a tweet. Some example user names might be @RNIB or @actionforblind - notice the use of the @ symbol.

Alongside the user name, you also have a profile name that you can edit via your profile information. This name is a display name which is associated with, but not necessarily the same as, your user name.

The toggle option here then determines whether VoiceOver reads both the display name and the user account name every time in a tweet. Or, whether the display name is spoken and not the user name. As previous, use a DOUBLE TAP gesture to toggle the control on and off depending on what you prefer.

Read Shortened URLs

This toggle option determines how much of a short or long-form link is spoken on focus. When set to Off, all of the link is spoken and when set to On only the first part of the link is spoken. Clearly, activating this option will make the screen echo a bit less verbose as only the domain or first bit of any links is spoken on read through.

Again, you might want to switch this on to keep the screen echo lean, some of the short form links in particular are pretty cryptic anyway - they tend to just be a bunch of letters and numbers - so you're not necessarily missing a lot of quality info by choosing not to read them.

Magic Tap Action

The magic tap gesture (a DOUBLE FINGER DOUBLE TAP in case you were wondering!) is sometimes used in particular apps to give the user access to some wider functionality. This final setting in the menu determines the specific Twitter action that happens when you use the magic tap gesture and there are three actions you can choose from:

• None: This is the default action. So, when you DOUBLE FINGER DOUBLE TAP - nothing happens!
• Compose Tweet: Here the magic tap gesture launches the main "Compose a New Tweet" screen.
• Tweet Actions: With this set, the magic tap gesture will launch a "tweet actions" context menu. Depending on the tweet you have focused on, such a menu will consist of options such as: Reply, Favourite, Retweet and so on.

To change the options do the following:

1. DOUBLE TAP the "Magic Tap Action" option.
2. SWIPE RIGHT through the three items outlined above.
3. DOUBLE TAP the option you want to select.
4. SWIPE LEFT to the Back button and DOUBLE TAP.
5. In the Accessibility section, locate the Back button and DOUBLE TAP.
6. In the Settings section, locate the Done option after the Settings heading and DOUBLE TAP to confirm the changes.

My advice is to set your magic tap gesture to the tweet actions menu, this gives you fairly swift access to some important functions in Twitter.

And there we are - the main Accessibility settings options in the Twitter app! Through time I'm sure they may add a few more settings but, having said that, I don't think Twitter needs a huge of options here as it is relatively swift and simple in use.

Have fun exploring the options in the Twitter app and by the way, if you want to get in touch, find me here: @BarryACoates