Reification

The process of making concrete that which is abstract. A photograph is a reification of a moment in time and place, with all the selectivity and distortion that the lens and framing impose. A web page is a reification of underlying data and semantic relationships, rendered through HTML and CSS into a specific visual form. In accessibility, reification is important because every concrete representation involves choices about what to include and exclude — choices that may inadvertently exclude users. When a dataset is reified as a bar chart, the visual form may be inaccessible to blind users; when reified as a data table, it becomes accessible but may lose the immediate comparative impact of the visual form. The fidelity of a reification — how accurately it represents the abstract original — varies widely and is a central concern in content adaptation.