Seeking VoiceOver feedback on Weather Guardian, an accessible severe weather app with live radar

Hi everyone,

I’m a blind iPhone user and developer, and I recently built an app for the US App Store called Weather Guardian. I’m posting here because I would especially value feedback from people who use VoiceOver in real-world situations, not just from a technical accessibility checklist.

Weather Guardian is a severe weather app focused on official alerts, severe weather outlooks, critical weather notifications, and accessible radar information. The main reason I built it is that live weather radar is still mostly visual. During severe weather, sighted users can glance at radar and get a quick sense of where storms are, how they are moving, whether a warning polygon is nearby, and what might happen next. Blind and low-vision users usually have to rely on text alerts, TV coverage, social media, or someone else describing the radar. I wanted to make that experience more independent and more understandable with VoiceOver.

The app includes National Weather Service alerts, Storm Prediction Center convective outlooks, excessive rainfall outlooks, fire weather outlooks, tropical weather products, SPC mesoscale discussions, saved alert locations, push notifications, and Critical Alerts for certain life-threatening warnings. These can include tornado warnings, destructive severe thunderstorm warnings, significant flash flood warnings, tsunami warnings, and extreme wind warnings, depending on the alert and user settings.

The feature I most want feedback on is Live Radar. I built it to be usable with VoiceOver from the beginning, rather than trying to add accessibility to a visual radar map afterward. Live Radar includes Touch Explorer, which lets VoiceOver users move around the radar area and hear information about storms, warnings, hail clues, tornado-related clues, storm motion, and nearby radar context. There is also Radar Coach, which explains radar details in plain language instead of assuming the user already knows meteorology terminology.

The app also tries to be honest about what radar can and cannot tell you. For example, radar may show clues that suggest hail, rotation, or a possible tornado debris signature, but those clues are not treated as official confirmation. Official National Weather Service warnings and instructions from public safety officials always come first.

Weather Guardian includes one free saved location for critical National Weather Service warnings. Weather Guardian Plus unlocks Live Radar, additional saved alert locations, and expanded alert categories such as watches, advisories, special weather statements, outlook-based alerts, and more.

I would really appreciate feedback on the VoiceOver experience, especially around these questions:

Does the radar exploration model make sense without sight?

Are the spoken radar summaries clear enough during stressful weather?

Are the alert settings understandable?

Does the app clearly distinguish official warnings from radar-based clues?

Are there places where the VoiceOver flow is confusing, too verbose, or not descriptive enough?

This app is not a replacement for NOAA Weather Radio, Wireless Emergency Alerts, local emergency management, official NWS warnings, or instructions from public safety officials. My goal is to give blind and low-vision users more access to the same storm context that sighted people often get visually.

The app is called Severe Weather Guardian and is available on the App Store here:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/severe-weather-guardian/id6763809935

Thank you to anyone who tries it or shares feedback. I’m especially interested in making the radar and severe-weather information practical, understandable, and respectful of how VoiceOver users actually navigate under pressure.