How to make VoiceOver read characters individually

Paul Hudson @twostraws December 1st 2022

Updated for Xcode 14.2

Most text can be read as words, but some special text such as passwords, stock symbols, and certain numbers, must be read by VoiceOver letter by letter in order to be useful. In SwiftUI this can be enabled using the speechSpellsOutCharacters() modifier, which is used like this:

Text("abCayer-muQai")
    .speechSpellsOutCharacters()

This modifier returns another Text instance, which means you can chain it to other Text-only modifiers if you want.

It works particular well when grouping accessibility elements together so they are read as one, like this:

VStack {
    Text("Your password is")
    Text("abCayer-muQai")
        .font(.title)
        .speechSpellsOutCharacters()
}
.accessibilityElement(children: .combine)

Using that code, VoiceOver will automatically read “Your password is” naturally, then spell out the password part as requested.