CodeA11y: Making AI Coding Assistants Useful for Accessible Web Development

TL;DR

This paper introduces CodeA11y, an extension for AI coding assistants that helps novice developers produce accessible web UI code by providing accessibility suggestions and validation reminders, addressing a key challenge in accessible computing.

Contribution

It presents a novel extension that enhances AI coding assistants with accessibility features, improving novice developers' ability to create accessible web interfaces.

Findings

CodeA11y effectively guides developers in accessibility practices.

The extension increases awareness of manual validation steps.

It improves accessibility compliance in generated web code.

Abstract

A persistent challenge in accessible computing is ensuring developers produce web UI code that supports assistive technologies. Despite numerous specialized accessibility tools, novice developers often remain unaware of them, leading to ~96% of web pages that contain accessibility violations. AI coding assistants, such as GitHub Copilot, could offer potential by generating accessibility-compliant code, but their impact remains uncertain. Our formative study with 16 developers without accessibility training revealed three key issues in AI-assisted coding: failure to prompt AI for accessibility, omitting crucial manual steps like replacing placeholder attributes, and the inability to verify compliance. To address these issues, we developed CodeA11y, a GitHub Copilot Extension, that suggests accessibility-compliant code and displays manual validation reminders. We evaluated it through a controlled study with another 20 novice developers. Our findings demonstrate its effectiveness in guiding novice developers by reinforcing accessibility practices throughout interactions, representing a significant step towards integrating accessibility into AI coding assistants.