What is Google Scanner for A11y?

Google Scanner for A11y abbreviated GSCX is a developer assistant, as an objective-C library it sits in an iOS app's process scanning it for issues to catch them before the developer even writes a test for them. The scanner comes built-in with checks for catching accessibility issues and supports an extensible plugin framework for adding your own checks.

Getting Started

To install the scanner into your app create a copy of your app target and add GSCXScanner library as a dependency to it.

Launch this new app target and your will notice a "Perform Scan" button overlaid on top of the app. Tap it and Scanner will scan you app and tell you if any issues are found.

WARNING You must not add this dependency directly to you app target but only to a copy of it so as to ensure you never ship your app with accessibility scanner installed on it.

One additional step needed will be to provide GTXiLib for the scanner framework to link to. If you have added static frameworks to your app previously, this process will be very familiar.

Installation Steps overview (Cocoapods)

You can use GSCXScanner pod to add a11y scanner to your app. For example:

target 'FooBarTarget' do
  use_frameworks!

  # Pods for FooBarTarget
  # ...
  pod 'GSCXScanner'
end

Installation Steps overview (manual)

1. Download GSCXScanner
2. Download GTXiLib
3. Add GSCXScanner.framework to your App
4. Launch your app to scan its UI.

1. Download GSCXScanner repo

Download the GSCXScanner repo and unzip it.

2. Download GTXiLib repo

Download the GTXiLib, unzip it and place it in the same parent directory as GSCXScanner. As an example, the directory structure might look like this:

foo_root_dir/
    GSCXScanner/
    GTXiLib/
    ...

3. Add GSCXScanner.framework to your App

Add GSCXScanner.xcodeproj as a dependency for your app: Either open you app's Xcode project and drag and drop the GSCXScanner Xcode project file into the project navigator or choose File > Add Files and select GSCXScanner.xcodeproj. Always choose add folder references to prevent Xcode from making a copy of the project.

Under Build Phases of your app, add GSCXScanner.framework under both Target Dependencies and Link Binary With Libraries.

Note that GSCXScanner depends on GTXiLib, which depends on Protobuf. If you're manually adding GSCXScanner.xcodeproj to your project, follow the steps at Protobuf-C++ to build and install the proto library. Don't forget to add the correct flags to your Xcode Project settings. If you're building with Cocoapods, this step is unnecessary. The GTXiLib CocoaPod includes Protobuf-C++ for you.

4. Launch your app to scan its UI

Launch your app and the GSCXScanner UI will appear overlaid on top of the app's UI. Use the app normally and at the point where you want to scan the app's UI for accessibility issues, just press the Scan button located at the bottom-left of the screen.

Plugins

Scanner is extendable, to customize scanner use GSCXScannerLib instead to the default scanner framework to avoid auto installing it on your app. and then customize it using the APIs in GSCXInstaller class.

Discuss

Please join us on the ios-accessibility Google group to discuss all things accessibility and also to keep a tab on all updates to Scanner.

Note: This is not an official Google product.