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

By Justin, 6 May, 2026

Forum

iOS and iPadOS

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.

Options

Comments

Re: Weather Guardian.

This app is not available here in the UK. If it’s a US app only then putting this in its description would be useful to the rest of us.

I have been wanting access to this info

I just installed your app. Our Weather event ended last night, so it might take me a while to test it.

error trying to load my radar

hi. I signed up for the pay version to get live radar access. When I did that, I received an error telling me my radar info was not in the correct format. In theory, the data should be coming from the high top next rad.
that site would be the closest weather, service, radar, but here in Huntsville, we have several local radars to cover the gaps.

Very Interested

Hi
I would be very interested in testing this app, however I am also in the UK. As a very Keen amateur meteorologist I have been looking for an app with accessible radar for a long time. The best we have here is Apple weather next hour precipitation descriptions that are alright but they don't give you an idea of where precipitation is unless you use multiple locations for context. Hopefully you would be able to release this in the UK also but of course we have different radar infrastructure than in the US.
Eagerly awaiting updates.
Chris

Also had an error when opening the live radar.

I have always been interested in weather and thought I would try this app. I already paid for the yearly subscription. But I also received an error when opening the live radar. I am in Cheswold, D, using an iPhone 15 with the latest updates installed. Should I enter a new location? What else can I do?

Regarding the Data format error on the live radar screen

Hello Everyone,

Many of you are reporting that you're seeing a data format error when you attempt to load the Live Radar screen. This is a known issue, and a fix is being reviewed by Apple and should be approved within the next few hours. Please keep an eye on your App Store updates and download the update as soon as it becomes available. The Live Radar feature should then work properly and also adds additional features and accessibility improvements.

Thank you very much for testing the app and leaving valuable feedback already. Keep the comments coming!

Weather Guardian working great after the update.

The app is working great now and this is actually the first time I have been able to gather radar information accessibly. thanks so much! But I do have one question. I have 4 saved alert locations. How can I switch from one to another to check the weather conditions or the radar without changing my home location? Thanks. I appreciate all of the work that you have put into this.

Re: Weather Guardian working great after the update.

That's great. I'm really glad to hear that. So the home location is really only used for all of the screens or rather menu options that are in the home tab, and it's also used for the live radar tab. If you go into the alerts tab and you add multiple alert locations, then you just tap on those locations in the alerts tab to pull up the list of active alerts for each location. I hope this makes sense, and if you have any suggestions about how I might be able to clarify the user interface a little bit, please feel free to let me know.

received the update

thanks. I agree with Joe earlier in this thread. I've always been interested in Weather, but this is the first time I should be able to access Weather radar without a lying AI. Looking forward to testing it when we start getting showers popping up in our area later this weekend.

Touch explorer

hi. Would you please provide information on how to use touch explorer function in the radar tab I'm not in advanced iPhone user, so maybe this using this feature is obvious, but I'm not able to figure it out yet. I can tell. I'm moving around on the radar map, but I'm not sure how to manage it consistently.

Just downloaded it.

I just got this app and it looks great so far. Is there a way for us to hear the alert sounds so we know what to expect or is that still pending. Also, if i enter a zipcode will the app know what city it is? Great work so far.

I don't hunt and poke

I double tap and swipe to locate info on the iPhone. I do not explore by touching at random. I have not bought the app, yet, because it sounds like I will have to use the less preferred method of gathering info. Any suggestions or thoughts are appreciated. I'd like to get radar info, but not by a random touching method. Thanks.

Re: Only using double-tap gestures, and alert sounds?

Hello everyone!

Thank you for the excellent feedback so far. Version 3.3 is currently in development and it features an explanation of Touch Explorer and other helpful feature explanations.

Using double tap and swipe gestures on the radar map without using touch explorer is perfectly acceptable. You will be able to see radar products for your selected weather location, as well as storm tracks in your area. Touch Explorer is optional and is for those who want to use tap or drag gestures to learn more about points around them.

Regarding the playing of sounds, this has not been implemented and I'm not 100% sure whether I will implement it. I'm still considering updating sounds and the possible implications of being able to play them for testing purposes.

Can’t use the radar unless you pay

Hello,
Like many others have stated, I've wanted access to this data for a long time. However, it appears as though the core feature of your app, the accessible radar data, must be paid for.
Is this true?
I ask because I wanted to try it out last night, so I could leave feedback but it asked me to subscribe, which I declined, until I know what I'm getting into.

Radar

Radar info is not free. You pay for what you get. Happy with my Weather Gods. Long live cats and radars.

Re: Subscription

@KE8UPE I noticed that the yearly subscription comes with a 7 day trial which is pretty normal on the app store. This should be able to give you a sense?...
I think there is a little learning curve for me, I've never had access to any radar info before outside of the weather man on TV. It will be interesting. I took the year subscription.

bought it

Now that I have subscribed for a year, during the 7 day trial, I looked through the radar during approaching storms. I do not want my money back. Justin, good work, and thanks for it. Holger, does Weather Gods give radar descriptions? I like Weather Gods, too, but this is better in some ways. I hope Anonymouse does a review. I think he'll love this app.

I also bought it and love it.

I'm actually waiting for some active weather to investigate the radar. I always had to ask someone with vision what the radar showed. But now, I don't have to. Justin, thanks for your hard work on this app. It is greatly appreciated. I hope that Anonymouse does a review of it also.

Radar Time

Can someone explain how to interpret the radar time? The first part is the day's date e.g., 2026-05-10. After thatn I am not sure what time zone we're talking about. Thanks.

Radar display time and touch explorer.

Hello everyone, thank you so much for the incredible feedback and for testing out and using the app. I hope it continues to prove useful and I'm really glad it's been so well received thus far. Regarding Touch Explorer, when you enable it for the first time, there's a pop-up that tells you a little bit about what it is and how to use it. But in short, it involves using a single tap anywhere on the map to figure out what's going on in terms of what's visible on the radar at that point that you tap. If you double tap, it will take you back to the location which you set on the home tab or via the more actions button at the top of the live radar screen. Regarding time, the radar is shown in UTC or Universal Coordinated Time.
Please feel free to keep the comments and feedback coming, and I look forward to iterating and adding more features as time goes on.

follow me

Hi.
I just bought the subscription for the app, and am wondering if there is any sort of "follow me" feature so the app can update alerts as you move?
I'm assuming not since I was never asked for always access and just started looking at the app, but I'd love to eventually have this be a feature if possible.
I've always wanted accessible radar, so thank you so much for making this.

Re: Follow Me

Hello, thank you for the feedback and the question. Unfortunately, I don't think I'm going to be able to make this feature. I actually did try to develop it and tried to get it to work, but there doesn't seem to be a way to trigger an iOS app to automatically wake up in the background and add locations to a server-side database, which is how locations are stored. And yes, they're deleted immediately whenever you delete them from the app, and they're not linked to any sort of personally identifiable information. But that being said, if we can't wake up the app and have it automatically add an alert location to a server, then in its current implementation, this feature isn't possible, which is really unfortunate. But thank you again for the great question and the excellent feedback.

Focus on Radar

Hi Justin,

I have some feedback about the app. But before I get to the feedback, first and foremost, delivering a VoiceOver-accessible radar is a tremendous accomplishment. I believe this is the first app of its kind. This is something I honestly wondered if we would ever see become a reality. Regardless of my critiques below, congratulations on this effort.

Onto my feedback:

I think your app's point of differentiation is the accessible live radar. I already have multiple other apps that do NWS forecasts and other text products and are more advanced and refined in their functionality. Other apps (Apple Weather and WeatherBug are just two examples) offer severe weather alerts for free, and WeatherBug even does lightning notifications out to 10 miles. With this in mind, have you considered focusing the app exclusively on accessible live radar for a selected location and leaving other functionality for apps that offer more?
Please could you explain what costs (if any) are involved with offering the accessible live radar and why that justifies a $2.99 per month subscription? For example, do you have to pay per-request or in some other way have an ongoing cost associated with either the radar data or turning that into an accessible format? With seemingly most paid apps going to a subscription model, costs add up quickly, and I try to only subscribe to those things I absolutely need. I already pay for a weather app that offers lightning notifications out to 25 miles and notifications for SPC/WPC risks (and probably other notifications as well, though I haven't looked yet), so adding on another recurring subscription in the Weather category is really not something I want to do. At the current price, I am much more likely to subscribe only if I absolutely need access to radar in a given situation and immediately cancel the auto-renew. Even a price reduction to say, $1.99 per month, would help with the value proposition here.
How are the radar descriptions generated? How is accuracy ensured? Put another way: How can a user be sure that what is being reported by VoiceOver is actually what is indicated on radar? I think it would be good for people to know how the descriptions are generated (for example, through AI image analysis) so users can make informed decisions about trusting the data and be aware of any caveats.
When I input my location (a zip code in Chicago), the app defaults to Lincolnwood, a suburb approx. 3 miles away. My local NWS point forecast (available here) correctly states that my location is 3 miles southeast of that point, whereas the app just takes me to the forecast for Lincolnwood. Even 3 miles apart, there can be a difference in the forecast--as evidenced when I checked Weather Guardian's Lincolnwood forecast against another app that appears to be pulling the point forecast for my exact location.
When accessing the radar, my location again appeared to be showing as Lincolnwood and not my actual location 3 miles southeast of that point. Thus, it wasn't particularly easy for me to get an idea of where storms were in relationship to my actual location.
I generally found Advanced Mode to be easier to use, as it just presented me information and allowed me to come to my own conclusions.
In the initial versions of the app (I last tried it on Friday), I had difficulty getting Touch Explorer to work with Direct Touch. This could have been user error on my part.

Despite my critique, this is an incredible project and I hope you are able to make the economics work in a way that will allow you to sustain it.

Re: Focus on Radar

Hi Michael,

Thank you for such thoughtful feedback. I really appreciate both the encouragement and the specific critiques.

You’re right that accessible live radar is the app’s clearest differentiator. That is the core feature I’m most excited about. I built forecasts, current conditions, outlooks, and alerts into Weather Guardian because I wanted the radar to sit beside the other context someone needs during severe weather: what is happening now, what official products are active, what the forecast says, and what may affect friends or family locations. The goal is not to outdo every weather app at every feature, but to provide one accessible severe-weather workspace centered around radar.

On pricing: the subscription is meant to cover ongoing server costs, App Store costs, and the time and effort required to maintain, test, and validate the accessible radar experience. The radar data comes from public NOAA/NWS-related sources, but turning that into fast, reliable, VoiceOver-friendly descriptions requires backend processing, hosting, caching, monitoring, and a lot of testing. I do hear your concern about subscription fatigue, though. There is already a free trial for both monthly and yearly subscriptions, and I will definitely consider extending the monthly trial from three days to one week so people have more time to evaluate whether the app is useful to them.

On radar accuracy and how descriptions are generated: I agree this needs to be clearer inside the app. The radar descriptions are produced from official and public radar/weather sources, including NOAA/NWS radar products, warning polygons, MRMS/NEXRAD-derived data, and app heuristics that translate radar signals into plain language. They are not a replacement for official warnings, NOAA Weather Radio, Wireless Emergency Alerts, or public safety instructions. I’m going to add in-app copy explaining the data sources, the heuristics, the limitations, and what users should and should not infer from the descriptions.

The Lincolnwood issue is a bug. If you enter a ZIP code or select a location, Weather Guardian should anchor radar and forecasts to the actual selected coordinate, not silently shift your mental model to a nearby suburb name. We’ll work on fixing that so the app preserves the exact point and makes the selected location clearer.

Finally, Touch Explorer can have noticeable latency because the app is doing backend radar processing before returning a description. That said, a one- or two-second delay can still feel awkward in a touch exploration flow, so reducing that latency is something we should work on. At minimum, the app should communicate when it is processing a point description.

Thanks again. This feedback is exactly the kind of detail that helps make the app better.
Regards,
Justin

Thanks Justin

Hi Justin,

Thank you for the response and additional details of the inner workings of the app. Your explanation of Touch Explorer makes perfect sense, and I will definitely keep this in mind when I try it next. I have also added the app to the AppleVis iOS App Directory.

Radar

I heard the price of an app would go up if using it. This is why Weather Gods has not done so. Already most apps price are high and people become upset when it goes up. There is so much VO can handle also. Radar is a visual experience, as a formal sighted person, I should know, that was when radar data was easy to look at and now I am sure is more complicated. I ask Scot about this and he mostly let me know the cost was high when he look into it along time. He will check. Long live cats.