Accessibility actions labels are not read by VoiceOver

[joonasmkauppinen]

Description

On iOS the accessibilityActions labels are not read out by VoiceOver.

For example, in the code below, VoiceOver only reads the name of each accessibility action. Instead it should read the provided label.

<Pressable 
  style={styles.button}
  accessibilityActions={[
  { name: 'LIKE', label: 'Add a like.' },
  { name: 'BOOKMARK', label: 'Add item to bookmarks.' },
  { name: 'MENU', label: 'Open menu screen.' },
  ]}
  onAccessibilityAction={event => {
    ...
  }}
>
  <Text style={styles.buttonLabel}>Simple Button</Text>
</Pressable>

We noticed this issue after migrating our project to the new a architecture. We have also verified that this is not an issue on the old architecture.

Steps to reproduce

1. Turn on VoiceOver on an iOS device.
2. Move VoiceOver focus on an element that has accessibilityActions.
3. Swipe up/down to go through the actions.
4. VoiceOver only reads the action names and not the labels.

React Native Version

0.79.6

Affected Platforms

Runtime - iOS

Areas

Other (please specify)

Output of npx @react-native-community/cli info

Reproducible with the provided Expo app on an iOS device.

Stacktrace or Logs

-

MANDATORY Reproducer

https://github.com/joonasmkauppinen/repro-rn-accessibility-actions-label-issue

Screenshots and Videos

No response

[cortinico]

So are you saying that accessibilityActions is effectively always ignored?

Is this a regression from a previous version of RN or just a missing feature?

[joonasmkauppinen]

I wouldn't say accessibilityActions are ignored. They are there and users can use them through the screen reader actions menu. Screen reader just announces the wrong property to the user. Screen reader should read the label, but it reads the name. This leads to very poor UX since the name is just an identifier to distinguish between the different accessibility actions.

Without looking at the native side implementation, it seems that there is just a small bug in the native code where instead of passing the action label to the screen reader, the action name is passed.

And this does seem to be a regression from an older version of RN. Before we migrated to the new architecture accessibilityActions used to work perfectly.