Equal Access, Unequal Gains? GitHub Copilot and Productivity Among Developers with Disabilities
Generative AI tools are increasingly used in software development and have been associated with benefits such as faster task completion and improved perceived productivity. However, whether these benefits extend across different developer populations remains unclear. This is especially relevant for developers with disabilities, whose work can already be impacted by accessibility barriers. Yet, evidence remains limited across a broader range of disability groups. This study investigates whether the wider availability of GitHub Copilot is associated with changes in productivity among GitHub users who self-identify as having a disability. Using publicly available profile and repository data, we curated a dataset of 199 developers across multiple disability groups and compared their activity before and after GitHub Copilot became freely available. We found that most disability groups showed a descriptive pattern of fewer commits but more code modified. In several disability groups, the distribution of developers across commit activity levels shifted toward both lower and higher level, leaving fewer developers at moderate level. However, we found no evidence that changes in commits or net lines modified differed across disability groups. These findings suggest that the wider availability of GitHub Copilot cannot be associated with a broad increase or decrease in observable development activity, while patterns of change varied across developers and disability groups.