It sounds like they're referring (rather vaguely) to the KVC Compliance documentation here:
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/KeyValueCoding/Articles/Compliant.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/20002172
Specifically, you need to see if the class responds to valueForKey:
and setValue:forKey:
for a given key. The documentation is rather spare on how you should actually check for compliance. My first thought is wrap your code in a try/catch block, and catch the exception, but that probably won't work given how that exception is generally thrown.
The general assumption is most objects in UIKit are NOT KVO compliant, and if you need them to be, you can subclass and implement it. You can see a very similar question / duplicate here, with an answer from Dave Delong, the Apple Frameworks Evangelist:iOS: How do I know if a property is KVO-compliant?