Sense of Control

A psychological construct describing a user's subjective feeling of agency over what a system does, distinct from objective control measures such as available options or task-completion rates. In accessibility research on AI-assisted tools, sense of control has emerged as a first-class user experience metric: Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing users evaluating hybrid ASL dictionary search, and users of Automatic Text Simplification reading tools, both report higher sense of control when systems offer on-demand AI assistance rather than pre-applying changes. Sense of control correlates with engagement and willingness to continue using a tool, and can be measured with adapted Likert-type items from psychological scales such as the Index of Autonomous Functioning.