Information Foraging Theory

A theory proposed by Pirolli and Card describing how people seek information by adaptively optimising for maximum information gain with minimum effort, analogous to animal foraging. Key constructs include information scent (cues signalling potential usefulness), information patches (clusters of related content), foraging cost, and foraging strategies. In accessibility research, IFT helps explain why blind screen-reader users expend disproportionate effort per unit of information when navigating linear, auditory content with weak scent and poor patch structure.