It's impossible for people who are blind to look at weather radarin any real detail, so I built an app that has fully accessible radar, custom alerts, and other NWS products

Hi r/Apple, I’m the developer of Severe Weather Guardian, a severe weather app for iPhone and iPad that I built partly because weather radar has never been meaningfully accessible to me as a blind VoiceOver user.

Most weather apps treat radar as a visual image. That works well if you can see it, but it leaves VoiceOver users with very little useful detail. I wanted to build something that keeps radar useful visually for sighted users, while also making storm structure, warnings, storm tracks, hail clues, rotation clues, and other severe-weather context explorable with VoiceOver.

The main feature is Live Radar, which includes a VoiceOver-focused Touch Explorer. You can move around the radar and hear plain-language context about storms, warnings, hail potential, tornado indicators, storm tracks, hook echo clues, and possible tornado debris signatures. There is also a Radar Coach that explains what the app is seeing in more understandable language instead of just showing a radar image and expecting the user to interpret it.

The app also includes National Weather Service alerts, SPC convective outlooks, excessive rainfall outlooks, fire weather outlooks, tropical products, mesoscale discussions, forecasts, current conditions, Home Screen widgets, Lock Screen widgets, saved alert locations, and push notifications. One saved alert location is free for critical NWS warnings, and Weather Guardian Plus unlocks Live Radar, additional saved locations, and expanded alert categories.

I’ve tried to be very careful about how the app communicates uncertainty. Radar clues are best-effort guidance, not official confirmation, and the app is not a replacement for NOAA Weather Radio, Wireless Emergency Alerts, official National Weather Service warnings, emergency services, or public safety instructions.

The app is free with in-app purchases:

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

I’d be glad to hear feedback from other Apple users, especially anyone who uses VoiceOver, relies on weather alerts, or has strong opinions about how severe weather information should be presented on iPhone.