Glossary

Search results

Semantic Abstraction

The practice of defining interface elements, content, or interactions by their meaning and purpose rather than their specific visual or physical presentation. In accessibility, semantic abstraction is a foundational principle — semantic HTML elements like nav, main, and button…

Signifier(also: Perceived Affordance)

A perceptible cue — visual, auditory, or tactile — that indicates how an element can or should be used, making an underlying affordance discoverable. In Don Norman’s refinement of affordance theory, the affordance is the action possibility, and the signifier is the signal that…

Simultaneous Assistance

Simultaneous assistance, described by Cynthia Bennett and Daniela Rosner, is a form of support in which help flows in multiple directions at once rather than unidirectionally from a non-disabled helper to a disabled recipient. In a simultaneous-assistance encounter, the disabled…

Situational Limitations(also: Situational Impairments, Contextual Limitations)

Temporary constraints on a user's ability to interact with technology due to their environment, device, or circumstances rather than a permanent disability. Examples include using a mobile phone in bright sunlight (limiting screen visibility), being in a noisy environment…

Situational Visual Impairment(also: SVI, Situational Visual Impairments)

A temporary reduction in a person's effective vision or reading performance caused by the environment or context rather than by a medical condition. Common examples include trying to read a phone screen in bright sunlight, while walking or on a moving vehicle, in low light, or…

Situationally-Induced Impairments and Disabilities(also: SIIDs, Situationally Induced Impairments and Disabilities, Situation-Induced Disabilities)

An accessibility framework, introduced by Sears et al., that describes how everyday environments and tasks can temporarily impose the same kinds of barriers on non-disabled users that permanent impairments create for disabled users. Examples include reading a phone in bright sun…

Social Play

Social play is intrinsically motivated, voluntary activity between two or more children that has no purpose beyond itself, yet is essential to emotional, cognitive, and social development. Developmental researchers categorise it along two axes: social level (Parten's six stages…

Speech Dialogue Design(also: Speech Interface Design, Auditory Dialogue Design)

The practice of designing the structure, content, ordering, and delivery of information presented through synthetic speech in computer interfaces. Effective speech dialogue design considers psycholinguistic principles such as the recency effect (items heard last are best…

Speech Diversity(also: Diverse Speech, Non-Typical Speech)

The full range of ways human speech varies from the narrow 'typical' speech on which most speech-AI systems are trained and benchmarked. Speech diversity includes people who stutter, d/Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing speakers, people with dysarthria, aphasia, or other neurological…

Standard Human Interface(also: SHI)

A concept within the Pervasive Accessible Technology framework referring to a standardized set of input and output capabilities — including microphones, speakers, touch screens, glidepoint touchpads, kiosks, infrared devices, and video cameras — that serve as the physical point…

Symbiotic Learning

Symbiotic Learning is a conceptual framing introduced by Jiang et al. (CHI 2026) describing a mode of mixed-ability family learning in which parents and children mutually enable each other's participation and development through AI-mediated communication. Rather than positioning…

System-Class Accessibility(also: Platform-Level Accessibility)

The architectural support built into an operating system to make the entire platform usable by people with disabilities. System-class accessibility encompasses three components: alternative input and output modalities (such as speech synthesis, braille displays, and switch…

12 results.