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Mobile A11y

A11yUITests: An XCUI Testing library for accessibility

·397 words·2 mins
Author
Mobile A11y
This article is archived. The APIs, tools, or guidance it covers may have changed since publication.

A11yUITests is an extension to XCTestCase that adds tests for common accessibility issues that can be run as part of an XCUITest suite. I’ve written a detailed discussion of the tests available if you’re interested in changing/implementing these tests yourself. Alternatively, follow this quick start guide.

Getting Started
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Adding A11yUITests
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I’m assuming you’re already familiar with cocoapods, if not, cocoapods.org has a good introduction. There is one minor difference here compared to most cocoapods, we’re not including this pod in our app, but our app’s test bundle. This means your podfile will look something like this.

target 'MyAwesomeApp' do
    target 'MyAwesomeApp_Tests' do
        pod 'A11yUITests'
    end
end

Starting a New Test Suite
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Setting Up Testing
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In Xcode, create a new suite of UI Tests from File > New > Target and choose UI Testing Bundle. On the next screen ensure the app you’re looking to test is selected under ‘Target to be Tested.’ Xcode will generate an example XCTestCase subclass for you, we’ll use this in the ‘your first test’ step.

Your First Test
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Add import A11yUITests at the top of your XCTestCase subclass.

Write a new test function beginning with the word test

import A11yUITests
import XCTest

class AwesomeTests: XCTestCase {
    func testAccessibility() {   

    }
}

Place your cursor inside the braces and press the record button in the bottom left of Xcode’s editor window. This will launch the app and record your interactions. Navigate to the screen where you want to check accessibility, and Xcode will write the steps into your test in code.

Xcode’s record button

After this generated code, add a11yCheckAllOnScreen(). This command will then run A11yUITests’ full suite on your screen.

Existing UI Test Suites
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Add import A11yUITests into the XCTestCase subclass where you want to add accessibility checks.

Pepper a11yCheckAllOnScreen() calls around when you navigate to a new screen or make a major change to a screen.

Customising Test Suites
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For more detail, see the A11yUITests Readme. There are 4 provided test suites, but you can build your own if you find some tests don’t quite work for you.

You can do this by creating an array of A11yTests enum values. Run your chosen suite by passing your array along with the elements you want to test to a11y(tests: [A11yTests], on elements: [XCUIElement]). You can get all elements on screen with the following.

let elements = XCUIApplication().descendants(matching: .any).allElementsBoundByAccessibilityElement