There's Nothing to See Here: A Study of Deaf and Hearing Developer Use of Stack Overflow

In this short paper, we analyse the 2022 Stack Overflow developer survey data that, for the only time, included questions on accessibility. We extracted data from both deaf and hearing developers to determine any differences in the way each used Stack Overflow; nine of the original survey questions were explored relating to frequency, nature and extent of Stack Overflow use. Our over-arching aim was to show that there were differences between the two. Based on a randomly selected sample of hearing developers however, we found no evidence of any difference between the two groups across the nine questions. When we ran the same analysis matching the two groups identically on years of coding experience, we found (counterintuitively) marginally more difference. In fact, from eighteen tests in total, only one was statistically significant. Understanding developer accessibility issues is important, but if our results are common across software development practice, then we question the ethos of collecting accessibility data. Developers (deaf or hearing) act in the same way with respect to Stack Overflow use, irrespective of any barriers they may face.