From Zero to accessible - Making your app accessible from the ground up

Daniel Devesa Derksen-Staats & Rob Whitaker

⏱ 180-min-workshop
beginner
intermediate
10:00-13:00, Monday, 19th May 2025
Accessibility is about creating delightful, inclusive experiences that everyone can enjoy. But it's not about optional extras for your users. With the European Accessibility Act (EAA) set to be enforced from June 2025 regulation will now impact native apps for most businesses operating within the EU. Is your app ready?

In this hands-on workshop, we’ll take an app from zero to accessible in UIKit and SwiftUI. By mastering essential APIs, techniques, and concepts, you’ll gain the tools to address common issues across most iOS apps. All of this will be knowledge you can take back to form an action plan to make your own apps accessible for users, and compliant with the law.

  • Accessibility:
    • An overview of the EAA and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).
  • VoiceOver 101:
    • Labels and Values
    • Traits
    • Semantic views: grouping and order
    • VoiceOver's "snowball effect": how VoiceOver improvements can enhance experiences for other assistive technologies
  • Dynamic Type
    • Supporting Larger Text
    • Scaling images
    • Implementing adaptive layouts
  • Best Practices
    • Alt text for images
    • Ensuring sufficient color contrast
    • Providing adequate touch target sizes
    • Multimodality
    • Honouring user settings

🏷 Accessibility
🏷 VoiceOver
🏷 Dynamic Type
🏷 UIKit
🏷 SwiftUI

Daniel Devesa Derksen-Staats

Dani has his dream job as an iOS engineer specialising in accessibility. He’s loved working at Spotify, Skyscanner, and the BBC, where he gained valuable experience making iOS apps more inclusive and fostering organisational cultures that prioritise accessibility. Sometimes, he lets Xcode take a break and shares his passion for accessibility at conferences. He is the author of the book "Developing Accessible iOS Apps", and likes to keep himself busy by writing iOS and accessibility tips on social media with the hashtag #365DaysIOSAccessibility.
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Rob Whitaker

Rob Whitaker is an iOS and macOS accessibility specialist with extensive experience in creating inclusive mobile applications. Having worked as a senior iOS engineer at companies like Capital One, Rob has most recently brought his expertise to Apple, where he focuses on enhancing the accessibility of its applications. He is the author of the book Developing Inclusive Mobile Apps, a comprehensive guide on mobile accessibility. Rob has consulted for major brands including Spotify and provided many of the accessibility rule definitions for iOS developer tool Reveal. Rob is a passionate advocate for building apps that are usable by everyone.