UITextView with voiceover

Question

Here is my very simple code for creating a UITextView.

UITextView *textView = [[UITextView alloc] initWithFrame:self.view.bounds];
textView.editable = NO;
textView.text = @"Using iOS 3.0 and later, VoiceOver is available to help users with visual impairments use their iOS-based devices. The UI Accessibility programming interface, introduced in iOS 3.0, helps developers make their applications accessible to VoiceOver users. Briefly, VoiceOver describes an application’s user interface and helps users navigate through the application’s views and controls, using speech and sound. Users familiar with VoiceOver in Mac OS X can leverage their experience to help them quickly come up to speed using VoiceOver on their devices.";
[self.view addSubview:textView];

Given that I could not possibly do anything wrong here I am just wondering if this is an expected behaviour or a bug perhaps somebody also faced:

With voiceover enabled I expect the entire text view to be “highlighted” on tap, then its accessibilityLabel to be read to a user and after they double tap, the entire text view’s text to be read.

But what is happening is that a small portion of the text view is highlighted (usually 2 lines), accessibilityLabel is not read, but the first “highlighted" line and the first letter (!) of the second line are read instead and only after a user double taps the entire text is read.

Especially reading the first letter in the second highlighted line confuses me. Plus shouldn’t accessibilityLabel be always read in the beginning? This looks like a big to me but Apple has always paid so much attention to accessibility, so I’m having doubts if I should report it, may be the meant it to be this way.

Another question: is there a way to achieve the following behaviour (without subleasing UITextView) when voiceover is enabled: user taps UITextView -> accessibilityLabel and the entire text are read?

Answer 1

In case someone else has this problem here is the answer:

textView.accessibilityTraits = UIAccessibilityTraitStaticText;

Answer 2

Combining the other two answers from this post has the desired effect. i.e.

textView.isAccessibilityElement = true 
textView.accessibilityTraits = .staticText

Also if you are setting the attributedText property on the UITextView make sure you DO NOT set the accessibilityLabel (on the UITextView). Doing so will cause VoiceOver (Xcode 12.5, iOS 14.4.2) to read the text twice.