Post #1749547

2026-04-28 14:07 UTC

I'd never used Apple News before this morning and it's an intriguing mix of rich text and custom accessibility semantics: The rotors for moving by heading, link and image are specific to News, ignoring the users rotor ordering setup and duplicating the built-in headings rotor. Heading levels are conveyed within the accessible name rather than programmatically. Lists are rendered as a single VoiceOver swipe instead of the user being able to read items one by one. Links are likewise rendered in the middle of text rather than getting their own swipe targets. VoiceOver's haptic feedback for focus changes doesn't fire when swiping through the elements of an article. On one hand, the rotor setup shows that accessibility effort was put in. But the outcome is an experience that feels atypical and, to me at least, demonstrably worse than a standard web view. It also shows that when it comes to rich content, Apple apparently struggle with their own accessibility framework.

Replies (4)

@Blindy@convo.casa 2026-04-28 16:34

@jscholes@dragonscave.space I've used Apple news since the app came out in iOS 9, which was a long time ago, approximately 2015. It has changed a lot over the years, including the addition of Apple News+ in 2019.

Open ##1749546
@SteveSawczyn@mspsocial.net 2026-04-28 18:22

@jscholes@dragonscave.space I think the other aspect of this is that Apple is likely getting the content from the publisher and needing to dynamically reformat everything which may pose additional accessibility challenges depending on the quality of that source content. Especially with ads and such, they probably don't know exactly what to expect from the publisher anymore. I do like Apple News, but the experience used to be more consistent than it is now.

Open ##2427940
@jpellis2008@dragonscave.space 2026-04-28 20:18

@BTyson@dragonscave.space @jscholes@dragonscave.space Agree 100%.

Open ##2427941
@pesh@mastodon.social 2026-04-30 10:28

@jscholes@dragonscave.space It is quite odd, and I find it unusable. I think of it as such a missed opportunity to provide an accessible way of accessing news, amid the landscape of bloated, hard-to-use news websites. Also, I think the macOS System Settings app suffers from the same problem with its headings.

Open ##2427942