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)
- Download
GSCXScanner - Download
GTXiLib - Add
GSCXScanner.frameworkto your App - 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.
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.