Every question the Accessibility pages answer
The 12 accessibility pages answer 36 named questions between them. Every one is listed below, and every link lands on the paragraph that answers it rather than the top of the page.
VoiceOver and the numbers that change during a set
- Should a rep counter announce every rep to a VoiceOver user?No. A rep count is the kind of element Apple's updatesFrequently documentation describes: one that updates its label or value too…
- What is the difference between the updatesFrequently trait and posting an announcement?They solve opposite problems. Apple documents updatesFrequently for an element that updates its label or value too frequently to send…
- How do I stop a two-second rest toast from disappearing before a screen reader reaches it?Check whether the screen reader is on and change the lifetime. Apple documents isVoiceOverRunning as a Boolean value indicating whether…
TalkBack and the Android workout screen
- Should every cell of a set row be its own TalkBack stop?Usually not. Google documents that composables and modifiers can indicate they want to merge their descendants' semantics properties by…
- Which Compose semantics property should a rest-finished alert use?The live region property. Google documents that alert-like components can be marked with the liveRegion semantics property, which allows…
- Does Jetpack Compose label a workout screen's custom views for me?Only the standard parts. Google states that in most cases Compose APIs and Material have default accessibility support in place, and that…
What to call an exercise, a set and a rep range
- How should a screen reader read a set row like 3x10 at 60kg?As a sentence, not as the characters. Our wording would be three sets of ten reps at sixty kilograms, generated from the same model that…
- Should the weight unit be spoken on every set or said once per exercise?Our judgement is once, on the value that carries it, and never as a suffix repeated across fragments of the same row. Hearing kilograms…
- Is a finished set's completion part of its label or its state?Its state. Renaming the row on completion moves the row's identity under the user, who then has to re-hear the whole thing to learn one bit…
Making a health chart readable without the chart
- What should the accessible description of an HRV trend chart say?Our format is four ingredients in a fixed order: direction over the window, the range with the dates of the low and the high, the latest…
- Is there an Android equivalent of Apple's audio graphs?We could not verify one in this pass. We did not find and read a primary Google page describing an audio or sonified representation of…
- Should a data-table view of a chart replace the chart or sit next to it?Sit next to it, and make it visible to everybody rather than revealing it only when an assistive technology is detected. A table of dates…
Dynamic Type on a workout screen: what breaks at 200 percent
- At what enlarged text size should a workout row stop being horizontal and start stacking?There is no number to read off a spec, so find it empirically. Open the live screen at every text size the platform offers and note the…
- Is it ever acceptable to truncate a rep count or a load when text is enlarged?No. A truncated label is untidy but a truncated value is wrong, and it is wrong invisibly, because a clipped number still reads as a…
- Does an ultralight numeral font need a larger size to stay legible on a timer?Apple's guidance points that way. The Human Interface Guidelines say thicker weights are easier to read at smaller font sizes and advise…
Touch targets when the hand is shaking
- How much padding belongs between a pause button and an end workout button?Apple does not publish a spacing figure, only the instruction to consider spacing between controls as important as size and to include…
- Is Apple's 44 pt control size the same thing as Google's 48dp recommendation?Treat them as two separate figures for two separate platforms, and do not convert between them. Apple's Human Interface Guidelines publish…
- Do Jetpack Compose Material components already meet the minimum touch target?Google states that in Jetpack Compose, many built-in Material components like Button, IconButton and ListItem already enforce this minimum…
Colour contrast when the screen is in sunlight
- What contrast ratio does Google recommend for a 16sp secondary metric label?At least 4.5:1. Google's Android accessibility guidance says the exact threshold depends on font size and boldness: text smaller than 18sp,…
- How should heart-rate zones be shown without relying on hue alone?Give every zone a second channel besides colour. Put the zone number or name inside the band rather than only in a coloured legend, label…
- Should brand accent colours be used for small text on a workout screen?Be careful with it. Brand accents are usually chosen large, saturated and isolated, and they end up on a workout screen as small text on a…
Reduce Motion in a coaching interface
- Should a looping exercise demonstration be removed when Reduce Motion is turned on?No, replaced. The loop is not decoration: it is how somebody learns where their elbows go, so deleting it removes the instruction rather…
- Does Android have a setting equivalent to Apple's Reduce Motion?We could not verify one. The Google documentation we fetched while researching this cluster contains no primary page describing an…
- Is a live pose overlay covered by Apple's guidance on reducing animation?Apple's paragraph addresses automatic and repetitive animations, including zooming, scaling and peripheral motion. A skeleton drawn over…
Gestures and hands-free control during a workout
- Does every swipe gesture in a workout app need an onscreen button as well?Apple's guidance is to offer onscreen ways to achieve the same outcome, using the example of a swipe that dismisses a view also having a…
- Should I build an Android accessibility service to add a hands-free mode?Google's own documentation pushes back on that. It describes accessibility services as running in the background to inspect screen content…
- How does Voice Control change what I need to do to a workout screen?Less than teams expect, and it is work you should be doing anyway. Apple describes Voice Control as letting people interact with their…
Haptics when the audio channel is already busy
- Should a rest-timer haptic replace the chime or play alongside it?Alongside. Apple's guidance is to use haptics in addition to audio cues, and to consider pairing a sound with matching haptics for people…
- How many distinct haptic patterns can somebody tell apart during a set?Fewer than you want. We have measured nothing here, so treat this as design judgement rather than a platform fact: assume two or three…
- What happens to haptic cues when the user is wearing gloves or the phone is in an armband?They may not arrive at all, and your app will never know. Gloves, lifting straps, cold hands and reduced sensation all cut the channel at…
Captions, subtitles and audio descriptions for workout video
- What is the difference between captions and audio descriptions for an exercise demo video?They move information in opposite directions. Apple defines captions as the textual equivalent of audible information in video or…
- Does a silent exercise demo loop need anything if there is no dialogue to caption?Yes, and it needs the most work of anything in your library. With no dialogue there is nothing for captions to do, but the whole…
- Do you have verified guidance for captioning video in an Android fitness app?No, and we will not improvise it. When we compiled the evidence for this cluster the Android captions reference loaded but produced no…
Testing accessibility in a fitness app
- Can Accessibility Scanner or Accessibility Inspector find the accessibility bugs specific to a live workout screen?Only some of them. Google describes Accessibility Scanner as looking at content labels, clickable items, contrast and more, and Apple…
- Which accessibility failures in a fitness app only show up while somebody is moving?The ones that define the category. A live metric that updates several times a second can turn a screen reader into continuous speech, so…
- How do I run an accessibility pass on a workout flow with the screen reader on and the display off?Turn the screen reader on and leave it on. Start a workout from your app's home screen without looking, then turn the display off or put…
Back to the Accessibility hub, or see every question this site answers.