"Do You Want Me to Participate or Not?": Investigating the Accessibility of Software Development Meetings for Blind and Low Vision Professionals

Title of the Paper

“Do You Want Me to Participate or Not?”: Investigating the Accessibility of Software Development Meetings for Blind and Low Vision Professionals

Paper Information

• Subject Area: Software Engineering, Accessibility Technology, Workplace Collaboration
• Keywords: Software Development, Accessibility, Meetings, Blind and Low Vision, Collaboration, Workplace Inclusivity, Human-Computer Interaction, Assistive Technology

Research Background and Problem

• What problems or challenges did the authors identify?

  • Accessibility issues for Blind and Low Vision (BLV) professionals in software development meetings have not been adequately studied.
  • Software development meetings are critical to team collaboration and the success of the development process, but their dynamic and visually dependent nature poses significant challenges for BLV professionals.
  • These meetings encompass not only coding but also design, planning, and communication activities, areas that often lack accessibility considerations.

• Why is this problem important?

  • Accessibility is a crucial component of professional and social equity. Despite the rapid growth of the IT industry, BLV individuals face low employment rates and frequent discrimination and challenges in the workplace.
  • Software development meetings are a vital part of professional collaboration, and the inability to fully participate in these meetings directly impacts career development and work efficiency.

• Research Motivation and Related Work

  • Previous research has primarily focused on the experiences of BLV developers and the development of tools, with limited attention to the accessibility of meetings.
  • This study aims to fill this academic gap by exploring the accessibility challenges in meetings and the strategies employed by BLV individuals to address them.

Solutions

• What methods or solutions did the authors propose?

  • The authors proposed technical and organizational recommendations to improve the accessibility of software development meetings:
    • Enhance detailed descriptions of meeting content and provide materials in advance.
    • Develop personalized solutions for BLV individuals and promote the use of more accessible meeting software.
    • Establish policy-driven corporate accessibility guidelines.

• What is innovative about this solution?

  • This is the first systematic study of accessibility in software development from the perspective of meeting participation.
  • It focuses on non-coding tasks and social dynamics (e.g., the impact of disclosing disabilities), rather than being limited to traditional coding needs.
  • The solution combines technical and policy-driven approaches, emphasizing collaboration within the overall work environment and practices.

• What are the implementation steps and key technologies used?

  • The research team conducted semi-structured interviews with 26 participants, including BLV developers, managers, and other roles.
  • Reflexive thematic analysis was used to uncover meeting types, accessibility challenges, and labor-intensive solutions.
  • The study explored participant-created technical tools such as OCR screen recognition tools, screen reader aids, and volume adjustment plugins.

Research Outcomes

• What specific outcomes were achieved?

  • The study found that certain meetings, such as design, review, and architecture planning, are particularly challenging for BLV professionals.
  • Introduced the concept of “access labor,” which includes additional work such as pre-meeting preparation, in-meeting coping strategies, and post-meeting remediation.
  • Identified the social dynamics of accessibility practices in meetings, such as whether BLV participants choose to disclose their disabilities and the negative consequences of such decisions.

• What advantages does it have compared to existing solutions?

  • Identified directions for technical improvements (e.g., AI-assisted content generation, OCR tool optimization).
  • Proposed policy-driven solutions that can be integrated into corporate-level accessibility culture.

• What were the experimental or evaluation results?

  • Through interviews, the authors revealed multiple challenges to meeting accessibility and assessed the feasibility of the proposed technical and strategic recommendations.
  • The analysis highlighted deficiencies in current corporate accessibility policies and the need for more research on low-vision technologies for BLV professionals.

• Limitations and Future Directions

  • Limitations: Participants were primarily from North America and India, with an unbalanced gender distribution skewed toward males. Additionally, the proportion of low-vision participants did not fully reflect real-world demographics.
  • Future Directions:
    • Conduct research in other cultural and regional contexts to provide a global perspective.
    • Investigate the accessibility needs of different software development roles, especially the unique challenges faced by low-vision individuals.
    • Develop AI-driven tools to help BLV professionals handle visual content and the complexities of meeting interactions.