Design space

A medium, physical or abstract, through which a user and a device exchange information. The visual design space uses sight (screens, displays), the sonic design space uses hearing (speech, earcons, music), and the haptic design space uses touch (braille displays, vibration, force feedback). Accessibility fundamentally concerns the ability to convey information across multiple design spaces so that content is not locked to a single modality. The multi-sensory design space is the aggregate of all available spaces through which interaction can occur. Effective accessible design considers how information maps between these spaces — for example, how a visual chart can be represented sonically or how a spoken instruction can be conveyed haptically.