Accessibility Issue - iPad

I am building a course and am working on adding some accessibility options for learners with dyslexia. Learners will generally take the course on an iPad. Rather than teach all of the VoiceOver gestures and the complications of features that do not work while it is on, I would prefer to use Speak on Touch via the Spoken Content Speech Controller. 

The problem is that some items will read when selected, but others seem not to register. While troubleshooting and using VoiceOver, I discovered that the hit box for an item is not the shape that contains the text but instead a seemingly arbitrary rectangle. For the items that were not working, it is tiny and not even necessarily covering the text. I've attached screenshots of two such hitboxes highlighted when using VoiceOver. One shows the hitbox for the blue box containing the word "Immediately" (hitbox mostly covers the word) and another for the word "Clear" (barely touches the edge of the word).

For both, the text is part of the shape (i.e., Insert shape and then Edit Text in the shape's context menu). Is there a way to make the hitbox match the shape that contains the text?