Information Foraging

A theoretical framework from cognitive science that models how people search for and navigate to information, drawing an analogy to animal foraging behaviour. Users assess "information scent" — cues like link text, headings, and page structure — to decide whether to continue searching in a current location or move elsewhere. In accessibility contexts, information foraging is particularly relevant because screen reader users receive weaker information scent from web pages due to the loss of visual cues, spatial layout, and at-a-glance scanning ability. This can lead blind users to spend significant time searching for information that may be inaccessible or nonexistent on a page, a problem described as "not knowing what you don't know" (NKWYDK).