Steve Sawczyn

  • Tip: Does the FaceTime control bar sometimes get in your way? There's an accessible way to dismiss it.

    One of the new features introduced in iOS15 is this call control bar which provides FaceTime audio controls across the top of the iOS screen during a FaceTime audio call.

    Screen shot of Steve's very messy iOS home screen with the FaceTime control bar across the top. Visible controls, from left to right, are leave call, open messages, Audio route, Mute, camera, share content.
    Screen shot of FaceTime control bar

    I actually really like this new control bar because it gives me the option to mute/unmute from wherever I am and for me, this is much faster than having to switch back to the FaceTime app each and every time. That said, there are times when this control bar gets in the way. For example, sometimes I'll be in an application and I know there's a "back" button, but I can't get to it with VoiceOver because it's obscured by the FaceTime audio control bar. I mentioned my frustration about this to a sighted friend and she told me that visually, it's possible to swipe this control bar away. At first, I thought we might have an accessibility issue of some sort as I could not find a way to do this when using VoiceOver. Eventually, I remembered the two-finger scrub gesture and like magic, away it went.

    For anyone unfamiliar with it, the two-finger scrub gesture is a VoiceOver command that can be used in a few different ways depending on context. IF a keyboard is visible, the two-finger scrub gesture will dismiss it. If an application has a "back" button, the two-finger scrub gesture will perform that action. The easiest way to think about the purpose of this gesture is that it can help you get out of something by dismissing a control, navigating back, closing a pop-up or menu -- in many ways, similar to what might happen when pressing the escape key when using a desktop application. To perform this gesture, place two fingers on the screen and move them quickly in a scrubbing motion such as right, left, right.

    Putting it all together

    If you ever have a reason to temporarily dismiss the FaceTime Audio call control bar and need to do so using VoiceOver, here's how to do it.

    1. Touch the FaceTime Audio control bar with one finger, this will set VoiceOver's focus to the correct place. This is important because otherwise, VoiceOver's focus will remain on your home screen or on whatever aplicationp screen you have open and the scrub gesture will not dismiss the control bar.
    2. Perform the two-finger scrub gesture. If successful, the control bar will go away. IF not, double check that you have correctly set VoiceOver focus to the control bar as just described. If the two-finger scrub gesture isn't performed correctly, it is possible that focus may inatvertantly move away from the FaceTime Audio control bar.

    A few more things to note. First, I don't know of a way to permanently dismiss the FaceTime Audio control bar and so you will have to repeat these steps whenever you need to dismiss it. Second, if you dismissed the control bar and then want to have it back, you can make it reappear by double tapping the call indicator located on the iOS status bar.

    I really like the new FaceTime Audio control bar and find it super useful to have call controls available regardless of which app I'm in or which screen I'm on. For those times though where it might come in handy to move that bar out of the way, I'm glad there's an accessible way to do so.

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