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# Unsolved mysteries between Usability and Accessibility in iOS

When ING added a custom long-press gesture, it unexpectedly broke the iOS Large Content Viewer. Discover how they engineered a non-destructive Swift solution to balance usability and accessibility.

- **Speakers:** Moh’d Abualhuda, Stephan Lemnitzer
- **Event:** World Congress 2023
- **Published:** October 6, 2023
- **Duration:** 25:54
- **URL:** https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/737-unsolved-mysteries-between-usability-and-accessibility-in-ios

## Summary

When migrating their banking app's navigation from a traditional burger menu to a native UI tab bar, ING developers faced a critical clash between usability and accessibility. To improve the user experience for multi-profile customers, the team implemented a custom long-press gesture on the tab bar to quickly open a profile switcher. However, this custom interaction overrode the iOS Large Content Viewer—a native accessibility feature that magnifies tab bar icons on long-press for users relying on Dynamic Type. Initially sacrificing structural accessibility for feature usability, the team quickly realized that disabling native accessibility functions violates modern inclusive design principles, especially given the strict requirements of the European Accessibility Act.\n\nTo restore balance, they devised a programmatic solution using Swift and UIKit by configuring the UIGestureRecognizerDelegate to allow simultaneous gesture recognition. This allowed both the Large Content Viewer and the custom profile switcher to trigger. Because simultaneous triggers caused messy UI overlays, developers had to strategically intercept and temporarily disable the system's default long-press recognizer while their custom alert was active. They then increased the custom long-press duration to 1.5 seconds using dynamic listener notifications, guaranteeing visually impaired users would have ample time to read the enlarged content before the profile switching alert appeared.\n\nThis implementation underscores crucial lessons for iOS developers about extending default UIKit components without breaking their built-in accessibility. Because internal view hierarchies can change unexpectedly in future software updates, teams must engineer non-destructive overlays rather than hardcoding gesture overrides. Ultimately, integrating accessibility checks early into the testing workflow alongside functional testing empowers teams to discover structural UI clashes before finalizing a feature's design, guaranteeing software remains robust and legally compliant for all situational and physical abilities.

**Keywords:** ios accessibility integration, dynamic type scaling, large content viewer, swift gesture recognition, uigesturerecognizerdelegate, uikit component customization, mobile inclusive design, european accessibility act compliance, xcode environment overrides, uitabbar usability challenges, simultaneous gesture handling, accessible software development, ui gesture synchronization, multi-profile user navigation

## Chapters

1. **Introduction to software accessibility and European compliance directives** (00:00) — Defining software accessibility as a universal service and adapting to the European Accessibility Act.
1. **Using dynamic type and large content viewer in iOS** (02:31) — How iOS tools like dynamic type enlarge text and the large content viewer displays unscalable interface elements.
1. **Conflict between custom profile switching and system accessibility tools** (04:49) — Implementing a custom long-press gesture for profile switching inadvertently overrides the default iOS large content viewer.
1. **Introducing the demo project workspace and Xcode environment** (08:08) — Setting up the iOS simulator, Swift code, and Xcode overrides reproduces the specific gesture conflict.
1. **Visualizing dynamic type scaling inside the iOS simulator** (11:13) — Testing large accessibility sizes via environment overrides reveals which user interface elements fail to scale natively.
1. **Adding a custom long press gesture to the tab bar** (13:07) — Initializing a long-press gesture on the underlying tab bar catches manual interactions but overrides system defaults.
1. **Accessing tab bar subviews and identifying the event conflict** (15:57) — Iterating over undocumented internal views of the tab bar exposes the runtime clash between custom actions and system events.
1. **Implementing gesture delegates to allow simultaneous event recognition** (18:41) — Conforming to the custom gesture recognizer delegate allows both the system content viewer and custom switch alert to fire.
1. **Synchronizing custom alert presentation with native content viewers** (20:47) — Temporarily disabling the default large content interaction during the manual sequence prevents conflicting screen overlays.
1. **Adjusting custom gesture duration to improve reading accessibility** (23:04) — Extending the minimum press duration of actions ensures disabled users have adequate time to read customized text.
1. **Balancing product usability goals with core system accessibility features** (24:37) — Integrating accessibility testing early in the software development lifecycle preserves platform conventions alongside feature requirements.

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