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 checks.
Getting Started
To install the scanner into your app create a copy of you 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 your app and tell you if any issues are found.
WARNING You must not add this dependency directly to your app target but only to a copy of it so as to ensure you never ship your app with an 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.framework
to your App - Launch your app to scan its UI.
GSCXScanner
repo
1. Download Download the GSCXScanner
repo and unzip it.
GTXiLib
repo
2. Download 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/
...
GSCXScanner.framework
to your App
3. Add Add GSCXScanner.xcodeproj
as a dependency for your app:
Either open your 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 to
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
of 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.