Contextual Learning

The tendency of both humans and AI systems to learn patterns and behaviours from the surrounding context rather than from abstract rules. In web development, contextual learning means that developers working on accessible codebases are more likely to produce accessible code themselves, while those working on inaccessible sites tend to replicate existing barriers. AI code generation models exhibit this same behaviour: they produce more accessible suggestions when the existing codebase follows accessibility standards and generate inaccessible elements when the surrounding code lacks accessibility. This has significant implications for the web accessibility gap, as models trained predominantly on non-compliant code may perpetuate and scale inaccessibility.