Employability is one of the barriers that People with Disabilities (PWD) face to get included in society. Among other opportunities, the software development career can be an option to promote economic and job market inclusion. However, PWD participation in software development teams is still barely addressed in computing research compared to studies that address PWD as technology users. We conducted a systematic literature review to better understand the sociotechnical perspectives previous researchers presented on PWD engagement as software development team members. Out of the 572 papers identified in the last decade (2013 to 2023), thirty-nine were selected to be analyzed in depth. The results show that visual impairment is the most addressed disability, and programming is the most common role played by these professionals. The main challenges occur in the context of teamwork dynamics in mixed-ability teams and tool accessibility in daily work activities. Unveiling the work collaboration practices of PWD, challenges encountered, and the lack of research in other types of disabilities help us understand and consolidate opportunities for the academic community and industry to move towards effectively including these professionals.

In the rapidly advancing field of artificial intelligence, software development has emerged as a key area of innovation. Despite the plethora of general-purpose AI assistants available, their effectiveness diminishes in complex, domain-specific scenarios. Noting this limitation, both the academic community and industry players are relying on contextualized coding AI assistants. These assistants surpass general-purpose AI tools by integrating proprietary, domain-specific knowledge, offering precise and relevant solutions. Our study focuses on the initial experiences of 62 participants who used a contextualized coding AI assistant --- named StackSpot AI--- in a controlled setting. According to the participants, the assistants' use resulted in significant time savings, easier access to documentation, and the generation of accurate codes for internal APIs. However, challenges associated with the knowledge sources necessary to make the coding assistant access more contextual information as well as variable responses and limitations in handling complex codes were observed. The study's findings, detailing both the benefits and challenges of contextualized AI assistants, underscore their potential to revolutionize software development practices, while also highlighting areas for further refinement.

Context: People with Disabilities (PWD) have seen the software development market as an alternative for overcoming some of the inclusion barriers they face in society. A career in software development presents itself as an opportunity for dignified and equal employment conditions. However, there is limited software engineering research about the PWD’s effective inclusion in software development teams. Objectives and Methods: This paper presents the emerging results from a systematic literature review on three Computer Science databases over the last decade (2013-2023). Our objective is to identify relevant technical and human aspects of PWD’s effective inclusion in software development teams. Results: From 1,006 initial papers, 572 were analyzed, and 39 were selected because they discuss PWD as members of software development teams. We examined them with quantitative and qualitative approaches. Our results indicate that including PWD as members of software development teams is a topic underexplored in software engineering research, with 11 papers out of the 39 discussing this topic. In addition, visual impairment is the most addressed disability, while programming is the most common role played by these professionals in software development teams. PWD’s challenges are usually technical and social, such as the accessibility of tools and mixed-ability teams’ work dynamics. We conclude by presenting the PWD’s workarounds to deal with these challenges, which are common and essential to guarantee minimally equal participation. Conclusion: Our contribution is to outline the research trajectory about including PWD as software developers over the past decade and steer new efforts towards their effective integration into software development teams.