Mobile Flow Analyzer and Perfecto

The Evinced Mobile Flow Analyzer is a free tool that allows you to connect to a mobile device right from your desktop and scan any native mobile applications for accessibility issues. Actionable reports can be created with a single click to make communicating with developer team members easier than ever.

The Evinced rule set goes beyond what the vendor accessibility APIs offer to help you find more issues that could be impacting the accessibility of your application. In addition, Evinced uses advanced algorithms to create a single actionable report that is easy to digest. Best of all, access to the source code isn’t required! There is no need to rebuild the app or modify it in any way to test it for accessibility issues.

The one thing missing from this powerful tool is access to a wide variety of devices and operating systems. This is crucially important for both the Android and iOS platforms.

For Android, breadth of coverage is extremely important due to the large segmentation in the Android market (Samsung, Google, LG, HTC, OnePlus, Huawei, etc). All these manufacturers take the default Android OS image from Google and make it their own. This creates the need for additional testing to make sure we give the best experience possible to all users. For iOS, you may have noticed that once you upgrade your iOS device it is impossible to roll it back to a previous version. This way, proper testing requires a library of iOS devices on all the versions a potential customer might be using to ensure a great experience.

Fortunately, Perfecto has a comprehensive cloud based continuous testing platform where we can scan our app for accessibility issues on nearly any device and operating system combination. In this blog we will walk through how easy it is to connect to an iOS device in the Perfecto cloud from the Evinced Mobile Flow Analyzer desktop client.

Perfecto makes this process very easy with their DevTunnel feature. Here is description from the Perfecto documentation page:

With Perfecto DevTunnel, developers can leverage real devices in the Perfecto Smart Lab, a cloud-based test lab, as if they were connected locally to their workstation over a USB cable. At the same time, developers can fully control the device environment to perform development and debugging activities.

To get started, launch a manual testing session from the Perfecto UI. On the side panel you will notice the DevTunnel option. If this is the first time you are making this type of connection, download the installer and follow the instructions. Perfecto has a great video walking through the installation steps. Then, click connect.

The Perfecto UI with an iPad open for manual testing. The DevTunnel menu is open with options to download the DevTunnelInstaller or Connect.

Once the DevTunnel connection is established we can then move to the Evinced Mobile Flow Analyzer UI. You can download the desktop client for Mac or Windows and then login. Select iOS and then we can choose our device from the dropdown.

The Evinced Flow Analyzer for Mobile iOS connection page with the device selection dropdown showing a list of iOS devices and simulators.

Select the Perfecto device, enter your Apple Developer Team ID and click connect. Thats it! We are now ready to start scanning our app for accessibility issues on any of the thousands of devices that are available from Perfecto.

The Perfecto UI and the Evinced desktop client showing an accessibility scan from an app launched on the Perfecto device. There is a Tappable Area violation and Accessibility Not Enabled violation.

Check out the Evinced and Perfecto pages for more information on getting started!