S
Sinan BOZKUŞ
## Summary
@expo/ui/swift-ui/modifiers
exposes
accessibilityLabel
,
accessibilityHint
,
accessibilityValue
, and recently
accessibilityHidden
/
accessibilityIdentifier
— but there is no way to set a view's
VoiceOver speech language
. In multilingual apps where the in-app UI language can differ from the device language, VoiceOver pronounces SwiftUI labels with the device-language voice, producing garbled speech.
## Use case
A language-learning app where users pick the app interface language independently of the device language. For React Native views we use the
accessibilityLanguage
prop (BCP-47) so VoiceOver reads each element in the correct language. There is no equivalent for
@expo/ui
SwiftUI components — e.g. a
Menu
with
Button
items whose labels are already localized text but get read in the wrong accent.
## What we tried
  • No
    accessibilityLanguage
    / speech-language modifier exists in
    @expo/ui/swift-ui/modifiers
    .
  • accessibilityLabel(label: string)
    only takes a plain
    string
    , so we can't pass an
    AttributedString
    carrying
    accessibilitySpeechLanguage
    .
  • environment('locale', '<bcp47>')
    makes VoiceOver pronounce the **
    Menu
    trigger label
    in the given language ✅, but it does
    not** reach the
    Menu
    's presented popup items; per-item
    environment('locale', …)
    had no effect on the items either.
## Proposal
Add an
accessibilityLanguage(bcp47: string)
modifier mapping to SwiftUI's accessibility speech language (e.g. an
AttributedString
with
accessibilitySpeechLanguage
, or the underlying UIKit
accessibilityLanguage
), in a way that also propagates to a
Menu
's presented items.
## Environment
  • @expo/ui
    : 56.0.14
  • expo
    : ~56
  • react-native
    : 0.85.3
  • Platform: iOS 26 (SwiftUI
    Menu
    )