Accessibility Audit for the iOS Simulator

Reviewing accessibility by hand takes time, and it’s easy to miss a missing label or a tap target that’s just a few points too small. The Audit tab in RocketSim’s Accessibility window checks the current Simulator screen for you.

You can run an audit in two ways:

• In the UI — Click Run Audit in the side window to see a score, review findings, highlight affected elements, and copy a fix prompt for your agent.
• From the CLI — Run rocketsim accessibility-audit to automate audits, fixes, and validation, for example in an agent loop.

Note

The Audit tab requires RocketSim Pro. The rocketsim accessibility-audit CLI command does not.

Running an audit in the side window

1. Open the Simulator with your app on the screen you want to check
2. In RocketSim’s side window, open the Accessibility tab
3. Select the Audit tab
4. Click Run Audit

RocketSim doesn’t audit automatically when you open the tab. Run it whenever the screen is in the state you want to check. After the screen changes, RocketSim marks the previous result as stale so you know to run it again.

The score

The score runs from 0 to 100 and reflects how many rules pass for the current screen:

Score	Band
90–100	Great
70–89	Good
0–69	Needs work

A screen with any error-level finding can’t reach the Great band.

Findings and highlights

Findings are grouped by rule, each with an explanation of the problem and a suggested fix. RocketSim highlights the affected elements on the Simulator, and the highlights follow the screen as elements move, for example while you scroll.

Highlights aren’t available while Xcode 27’s Device Hub is in expanded mode. Switch to Compact Mode to see them. See Device Hub Support.

Copy a prompt for your agent

Select the findings you want to fix and click Copy Prompt. RocketSim creates a focused prompt for your AI coding agent that tells it to:

• Keep the layout unchanged
• Fix the findings in one batch
• Compare element frames before and after the fix

Paste the prompt into your agent, let it fix the findings, and run the audit again to confirm the score improves.

What the audit checks

The audit combines deterministic rules, which are reliable, with heuristic rules that flag likely problems for you to review.

Rule	What it flags
missing_label	Interactive elements without an accessibility label
image_without_label	Images that VoiceOver reads without a description
label_is_asset_name, non_descriptive_label	Labels that look like asset names, filenames, or identifiers
redundant_role_in_label	Labels that repeat the role, such as “Settings button”
duplicate_labels	Different elements that VoiceOver announces identically
adjustable_without_value	Sliders and steppers that don’t expose a value
hit_region_small	Tap targets below 44×44 points (an error below 28×28 points)
overlapping_targets	Tap targets that overlap each other
offscreen_content_not_scrollable	Content that continues offscreen without being reachable through scrolling
parent_child_conflict	Controls that a combined row hides from VoiceOver
fragmented_group	Content that should be one VoiceOver element but is split into several
no_heading_on_screen, heading_trait_missing	Screens without headings, or section titles without the heading trait
selected_state_missing	Tab or segmented controls that don’t expose which item is selected
contrast_low	Text with low contrast against its background (heuristic)

The audit only reports what VoiceOver users can reach for rules about VoiceOver output. Touch target and contrast rules still check every element. RocketSim also avoids false positives for common patterns: grouped tiles under a heading, text covered by a floating control, controls that only overlap at the current scroll position, and content beyond the edge of a SwiftUI scroll view or carousel aren’t reported.

Some accessibility problems can’t be detected from the screen alone. The audit lists these in a not covered section, for example accessibility hints and information conveyed by color only, so you know what to review manually.

Automating audits with the CLI

The same audit is available from the command line, which makes it a good fit for agents, scripts, and CI-style checks. Install the CLI from Settings → CLI & Agent first. See RocketSim CLI for setup.

rocketsim accessibility-audit \
  [--udid <udid>] \
  [--screen <hash>|latest] \
  [--rules <id,id,...>] \
  [--exclude-rules <id,...>] \
  [--severity error|warning] \
  [--format compact|full] \
  [--no-contrast]

Option	Description
--udid <udid>	Audit a specific booted Simulator instead of the focused one.
--screen <hash>|latest	Guard the audit against a changed screen. Pass a screen hash from rocketsim screen, or latest to use the current stored screen.
--rules, --exclude-rules	Run or skip specific rules by ID.
--severity error|warning	Only return findings of the given severity.
--format compact|full	compact (default) groups repeated findings per rule. full returns one finding per occurrence.
--no-contrast	Skip the heuristic contrast checks.

The response uses the rs/1 protocol and includes:

• A summary with the score, number of errors, warnings, and heuristic findings, and elements_audited
• findings grouped by rule with a severity, whether the rule is deterministic or heuristic, the affected element ids and frames, a message, and a suggested fix
• not_covered with what the audit couldn’t check

Audit, fix, and validate with an agent

The CLI turns accessibility work into a loop your AI agent can run on its own:

1. Audit — The agent runs rocketsim accessibility-audit on the screen under test.
2. Fix — The agent fixes the findings in your code, without changing the visible layout. It saves rocketsim elements output before the fix so it can compare element frames afterwards.
3. Validate — After rebuilding and returning to the same screen, the agent runs rocketsim accessibility-audit --screen latest --format full again and compares the element frames with the ones from before the fix.
4. Repeat — The agent continues until the findings are gone, and reports any heuristic findings it deliberately declined with a short reason.

The RocketSim Agent Skill teaches your agent this workflow, including a dedicated reference for fixing small tap targets without changing layout. You can try it with a prompt like:

Use RocketSim to audit the current screen for accessibility issues, fix the findings without changing the layout, and run the audit again to validate.

Requirements

• RocketSim Pro for the Audit tab in the side window
• A booted Simulator showing the screen you want to audit
• The rocketsim command line tool for CLI audits, installed from Settings → CLI & Agent