How to get VoiceOver to announce section labels in iOS?

Question

In the iPhone Weather App, when using VoiceOver, I noticed that tapping into a section for the first time, it will announce the section.

For example, in iOS 9, tapping on any item the middle strip for the first time will announce "Hourly forecasts" before continuing to describe the element you tapped on. Tapping anything else in the strip will not announce "hourly forecasts".

Tapping on anything on the bottom table, will announce "Daily forecasts" before continuing to describe the element you tapped on. Tapping anything else in this table will not prefix with "Daily Forecasts".

Is there a simple API to name sections of your app? Or do you have to do this manually by tracking the voiceover cursor and dynamically changing your label? (Does this even work? Can you change the accessibilityLabel after something is tapped but before it is read?)

Answer 1

There are two approaches I guess:

1. Subclassing the UITableViewCell and overriding the accessibilityLabel.

   - (NSString *) accessibilityLabel
   {
       NSString* voiceOverString;
       // append section title on voiceOverString and then the elements value
       return voiceOverString;
   }
   

2. See this link from Apple docs: You can setAccessibilityLabel of the cell from cellForRowAtIndexPath. The example is for the weather app itself.