Open Radar

 
Area:
Accessibility

The new screenshot capabilities in iOS 11 are wonderful, but they could be made much more useful for visually-impaired users if the system were to capture + embed the current VoiceOver state (label, traits, hint, frame, etc) in the screenshot image; that way, users could explore a screenshot long after taking it, and could also access that data in other apps. It would give visually-impaired users the same ability to capture the current state of their phone (for sharing or remembering or annotating or whatever other purpose) that sighted users have now.

As a bonus, this could also have a number of useful benefits for sighted users; for example, one could pull up a screenshot in a foreign language dictionary / translator app and easily translate embedded text, or one could tag / index screenshots based on their text for later retrieval, or social networking services could automatically detect + crop out the user interface portion of a screenshot and show just the content.

This would also provide an added incentive for developers to support VoiceOver, since now sighted users would have a reason to demand VoiceOver support too.