Tab to Autocomplete: The Effects of AI Coding Assistants on Web Accessibility

A long-standing challenge in accessible computing has been to get developers to produce the accessible UI code necessary for assistive technologies to work properly. AI coding assistants (e.g., Github Copilot) potentially offer a new opportunity to make UI code more accessible automatically, but it is unclear how their use impacts code accessibility and what developers need to know in order to use them effectively. In this paper, we report on a study where developers untrained in accessibility were tasked with building web UI components with and without an AI coding assistant. Our findings suggest that while current AI coding assistants show potential for creating more accessible UIs, they currently require accessibility awareness and expertise, limiting their expected impact.