Psychophysics

Psychophysics is the scientific study of the quantitative relationship between physical stimuli and the sensations and perceptions they produce. Founded in the 19th century, it uses rigorous experimental methods to measure how humans detect, discriminate, and scale sensory information across modalities including vision, hearing, touch, and proprioception. In accessibility research, psychophysical methods such as magnitude estimation and threshold detection are used to understand how users perceive interface elements — for example, determining how virtual textures map to perceived roughness, how audio parameters map to perceived urgency, or how contrast levels affect visibility for users with low vision.