Defluffing

The process of removing non-essential visual elements from a web page — such as banners, advertisements, decorative images, and sidebar content — to expose the core information content more directly to assistive technology users. In the context of web accessibility transcoding, defluffing addresses the problem that screen readers must process every element on a page sequentially, meaning that visual clutter which sighted users can easily ignore becomes a significant barrier for non-visual browsing. Research has shown that defluffing can dramatically reduce the time screen reader users need to find information on web pages, making it one of the most impactful accessibility transformations available.