ASCII

A character encoding standard that uses numeric codes to represent letters, digits, punctuation, and control characters in computers and communication equipment. ASCII assigns values 0-127 to 128 characters, covering the basic Latin alphabet. In accessibility contexts, ASCII is significant as the common interchange format between text systems and Braille translators, and as a baseline encoding that assistive technologies must handle. Its limitation to English characters led to the development of Unicode, which supports the full range of writing systems needed for multilingual accessibility.