iOS accessibility: label vs hint

Question

What is the difference between the "label" and "hint" property if I'm trying to make a control accessible? Moreover, what do the "traits" do? Are all of these properties spoken by VoiceOver if I fill them in?

Solution

This is all described in Apple's Accessibility Programming Guide.

But here's my random take on your question:

I would try to think of the accessibility properties in terms of how a sighted person would use your app.

They would look at the display and see stuff.

A button might have a short title, such as "Stop". A slider might have a nearby label saying "Volume". That's the type of stuff that a sight impaired person might like to find in the control's label property.

A sighted person would recognize a standard button or slider by it's shape and decoration. But a vision impaired person might have no clue about that shape. So that's the type of information that should go in the traits property for someone who can't see whether something looks like a button. "button".

If you had a short help document for your app, it might show a picture of your app, with arrows pointing at the elements, and a small bubble caption on each of those arrows saying stuff like "Stops playing annoying fart sounds" and "Changes fart loudness from silent to ear shatteringly gross". These would be your helpful "hints".

Traits and hints are optional, just as some apps in the App store have no help documentation, and weird unrecognizably shaped buttons. But every visible or active control element should have a label.

'zat help?

Comments

[Jared]

As a voiceover user that's a pretty good description. I think you meant site impaired instead of hearing impaired?

[hotpaw2]

Thanks. Edited in the more appropriate impairment analogy.

[Anne Nonimus]

Thank you for the response. Does VoiceOver speak the label, hint, traits, and value of each element or a combination of the properties?

[Peter Johnson]

Typically you hear "Label" "Value"- "Object Type"- then "Hint". For example "sound effects on - button- toggles sound" Try to make the first label as short and descriptive as possible, so that users can skip quickly through the objects.

[user1202032]

@PeterJohnson's comment should be the answer

[jamesdlin]

This answer doesn't really explain the difference between labels and hints other than saying that hints are optional and labels aren't.