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.

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.

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

target 'FooBarTarget' do
  use_modular_headers!

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

Note Objective-C projects have use_frameworks! but Swift projects have use_modular_headers!. As of CocoaPods 1.5.0, use_frameworks! is no longer required for Swift projects. use_frameworks! makes Abseil, which is a dependency of GTXiLib, fail to import properly. Thus, you cannot use use_frameworks!, which means you must use use_modular_headers!. You may also specify :modular_headers => true on a per-pod basis.

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.

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.

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.