diff --git a/CHANGES b/CHANGES
index 16767c362..eae6d5059 100644
--- a/CHANGES
+++ b/CHANGES
@@ -30,6 +30,8 @@ Bugs fixed
   Hirai.
 * #1871: Fix for LaTeX output of tables with one column and multirows.
 * Work around the lack of the HTMLParserError exception in Python 3.5.
+* #1949: Use ``safe_getattr`` in the coverage builder to avoid aborting with
+  descriptors that have custom behavior.
 
 
 Release 1.3.1 (released Mar 17, 2015)
diff --git a/sphinx/ext/coverage.py b/sphinx/ext/coverage.py
index 8e3ac1ae3..c564aeedd 100644
--- a/sphinx/ext/coverage.py
+++ b/sphinx/ext/coverage.py
@@ -20,6 +20,7 @@ from six.moves import cPickle as pickle
 
 import sphinx
 from sphinx.builders import Builder
+from sphinx.util.inspect import safe_getattr
 
 
 # utility
@@ -187,7 +188,10 @@ class CoverageBuilder(Builder):
                         for attr_name in dir(obj):
                             if attr_name not in obj.__dict__:
                                 continue
-                            attr = getattr(obj, attr_name)
+                            try:
+                                attr = safe_getattr(obj, attr_name)
+                            except AttributeError:
+                                continue
                             if not (inspect.ismethod(attr) or
                                     inspect.isfunction(attr)):
                                 continue