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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 developmentmore » « lessFree, publicly-accessible full text available April 25, 2026
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AI has revolutionized the processing of various services, including the automatic facial verification of people. Automated approaches have demonstrated their speed and efficiency in verifying a large volume of faces, but they can face challenges when processing content from certain communities, including communities of people of color. This challenge has prompted the adoption of "human-inthe-loop" (HITL) approaches, where human workers collaborate with the AI to minimize errors. However, most HITL approaches do not consider workers’ individual characteristics and backgrounds. This paper proposes a new approach, called Inclusive Portraits (IP), that connects with social theories around race to design a racially-aware human-in-the-loop system. Our experiments have provided evidence that incorporating race into human-in-the-loop (HITL) systems for facial verification can significantly enhance performance, especially for services delivered to people of color. Our findings also highlight the importance of considering individual worker characteristics in the design of HITL systems, rather than treating workers as a homogenous group. Our research has significant design implications for developing AI-enhanced services that are more inclusive and equitable.more » « less
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The popularity of 3D printed assistive technology has led to the emergence of new ecosystems of care, where multiple stakeholders (makers, clinicians, and recipients with disabilities) work toward creating new upper limb prosthetic devices. However, despite the increasing growth, we currently know little about the differences between these care ecosystems. Medical regulations and the prevailing culture have greatly impacted how ecosystems are structured and stakeholders work together, including whether clinicians and makers collaborate. To better understand these care ecosystems, we interviewed a range of stakeholders from multiple countries, including Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, France, India, Mexico, and the U.S. Our broad analysis allowed us to uncover different working examples of how multiple stakeholders collaborate within these care ecosystems and the main challenges they face. Through our study, we were able to uncover that the ecosystems with multi-stakeholder collaborations exist (something prior work had not seen), and these ecosystems showed increased success and impact. We also identified some of the key follow-up practices to reduce device abandonment. Of particular importance are to have ecosystems put in place follow up practices that integrate formal agreements and compensations for participation (which do not need to be just monetary). We identified that these features helped to ensure multi-stakeholder involvement and ecosystem sustainability. We finished the paper with socio-technical recommendations to create vibrant care ecosystems that include multiple stakeholders in the production of 3D printed assistive devices.more » « less
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