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Accessibility focus indicator on iOS

Users should know which element has focus when using a keyboard or assistive technology. For example, you could show a rectangle around the focused element. Or you can adjust the colors whenever an element receives focus. Focus indicators can take many different forms. The focus indicator should remain visible while the element is in focused state.

On iOS, you can adjust colors when an element receives focus. However, it's not possible to change the focus indicator of assistive technologies. Users can adjust their preferences in the system settings of iOS.

You can override the accessibilityElementDidBecomeFocused and accessibilityElementDidLoseFocus methods to listen to focus state changes. By subclassing an element, you can change the colors based on the element state.

The code sample below shows how to change the background color of a button on focus.

class Button: UIButton {
    
    override open func accessibilityElementDidBecomeFocused() {
        backgroundColor = .focused
    }

    override open func accessibilityElementDidLoseFocus() {
        backgrounColor = .default
    }
}

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