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Blocks-based programming environments are a popular tool to teach children to program, but they rely heavily on visual metaphors and are therefore not fully accessible for children with visual impairments. We evaluated existing blocks-based environments and identified five major accessibility barriers for visually impaired users. We explored techniques to overcome these barriers in an interview with a teacher of the visually impaired and formative studies on a touchscreen blocks-based environment with five children with visual impairments. We distill our findings on usable touchscreen interactions into guidelines for designers of blocks-based environments.
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This content will become publicly available on April 25, 2026
The Impact of Generative AI Coding Assistants on Developers Who Are Visually Impaired
The rapid adoption of generative AI in software development has impacted the industry, yet its efects on developers with visual impairments remain largely unexplored. To address this gap, we used an Activity Theory framework to examine how developers with visual impairments interact with AI coding assistants. For this purpose, we conducted a study where developers who are visually impaired completed a series of programming tasks using a generative AI coding assistant. We uncovered that, while participants found the AI assistant benefcial and reported signifcant advantages, they also highlighted accessibility challenges. Specifcally, the AI coding assistant often exacerbated existing accessibility barriers and introduced new challenges. For example, it overwhelmed users with an excessive number of suggestions, leading developers who are visually impaired to express a desire for “AI timeouts.” Additionally, the generative AI coding assistant made it more difcult for developers to switch contexts between the AI-generated content and their own code. Despite these challenges, participants were optimistic about the potential of AI coding assistants to transform the coding experience for developers with visual impairments. Our fndings emphasize the need to apply activity-centered design principles to generative AI assistants, ensuring they better align with user behaviors and address specifc accessibility needs. This approach can enable the assistants to provide more intuitive, inclusive, and efective experiences, while also contributing to the broader goal of enhancing accessibility in software development
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- Award ID(s):
- 2339443
- PAR ID:
- 10590836
- Publisher / Repository:
- ACM
- Date Published:
- ISBN:
- 9798400713941
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1 to 17
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- Yokohama Japan
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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