the tool does three main things --
1) accessible by default code suggestions
2) built-in accessibility error detection, and
3) reminders to complete template code

using CodeA11y, people created more accessible code --

Thanks Mina!! :)

Thank you! :)

Thanks Frank! :)

Thank you so much :)

Big thanks to my collaborators: @jeffreybigham.com @yihaopeng.bsky.social, Jason Wu and Aaron Steinfeld

A technical evaluation of CodeA11y with 20 developers demonstrated a statistically significant improvement in producing accessible UI code without compromising their satisfaction and ease of use.
(5/n)

We built CodeA11y, a GitHub Copilot Extension that addresses the observed gaps by consistently reinforcing accessible development practices throughout the conversational interaction.
(4/n)

Our formative study with 16 developers revealed 3 barriers to this opportunity: i) developers failed to prompt for accessibility considerations explicitly, ii) uncritically accepted incomplete suggestions, and iii) struggled to detect accessibility issues in their code.
(3/n)

Prior work shows getting front-end developers to write accessible UI code has proven exceptionally difficult. We argue that AI coding assistants (e.g., Github Copilot), already widely adopted, could offer an opportunity to make UI code more accessible.
(2/n)

Thank you! :)