Glossary

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Ability-Based Design(also: ABD)

A design paradigm for accessible technology introduced by Jacob Wobbrock and colleagues that emphasizes adapting systems to meet users' abilities rather than requiring users to adapt to systems. Ability-based design applies "design-for-one" strategies universally, positioning…

Accessibility Persona(also: Disability Persona, Inclusive Persona)

A detailed, realistic description of a hypothetical user with specific disabilities, assistive technology configurations, and usage contexts, used during design and evaluation to help teams consider accessibility requirements from the perspective of real people. Accessibility…

Accessible Content Creation(also: Accessible Authoring)

The design of tools, workflows, and processes that enable people with disabilities to create original content — including visual illustrations, documents, presentations, and multimedia — independently and with full creative control. Traditional content creation tools often rely…

Accessible Web Design(also: Accessible Web Authoring, Nonvisual Web Design)

Accessible web design refers both to the practice of designing webpages that meet accessibility standards (such as WCAG) and — in a second, increasingly important sense — to the practice of enabling people with disabilities to act as web designers themselves, not just as testers…

Blocks4All

An accessible touchscreen-based block-based programming environment designed for students with visual impairments. Blocks4All enables drag-and-drop-like programming interactions on touchscreen devices with screen reader support, making it one of the few on-screen block-based…

Code Jumper(also: Project Torino)

An accessible physical programming toolkit originally developed by Microsoft Research (under the name Project Torino) that uses tangible pods connected by cables to teach programming concepts to children with visual impairments. Each pod represents a programming construct such…

Communicational Accessibility(also: Communicative Accessibility)

An approach to accessible design that goes beyond providing access to raw content (content accessibility) to preserving the designer's intended communicative strategy across all modalities and for all users. Where content accessibility asks "can the user access the…

Device Independence(also: Device-Independent Design, Input Agnostic Design)

A web design principle that ensures content and functionality are accessible regardless of the input device or interaction method used to access them. Device-independent design avoids assumptions about how users will interact with content — not relying solely on mouse events,…

End-User Customization(also: User Customization, Personalisation)

The ability for users to modify the presentation or behaviour of a digital interface according to their individual preferences and needs. In accessibility, end-user customization is particularly important because there is no universal profile for many disability groups — people…

Holistic Accessibility(also: Holistic Approach to Accessibility)

Holistic accessibility is an approach that considers web accessibility not as an isolated technical concern but as one factor within a broader context including usability, user experience, audience characteristics, usage environment, available technologies, and organizational…

OM Principle(also: Object Model Principle)

A design principle for accessible digital content stating that any digital object is made more accessible by using the application's designated object model for that content rather than visual workarounds. For example, graph titles should be entered in the graphing application's…

Quorum(also: Quorum Programming Language)

An evidence-based programming language designed with accessibility as a core principle, making it usable by people with and without visual impairments. Quorum provides audio input and output, screen reader compatibility, and an accessible debugger called SODBeans that uses…

Shift-Left Accessibility(also: Early-Stage Accessibility, Accessibility by Design)

An approach to software development that moves accessibility considerations earlier in the development lifecycle — from testing and remediation phases to requirements gathering and design phases. The term borrows from the broader "shift-left" movement in software engineering,…

Social Accessibility

A design paradigm introduced by Shinohara and colleagues emphasizing that assistive technologies must be designed for the social worlds they will be used within, not just for functional task completion. Social accessibility recognizes that assistive technologies often have a…

Swift Playgrounds(also: Apple Swift Playgrounds)

A hybrid block-based and text-based programming environment developed by Apple for iPad and Mac that teaches coding using the Swift programming language. Swift Playgrounds is notable in the accessibility education space because it integrates with VoiceOver, includes tactile maps…

Tangible Programming(also: Physical Programming, Tangible Coding, Tactile Programming)

A programming approach that uses physical objects — such as blocks, cards, or robots — that users can manipulate with their hands to create programs, rather than typing code or dragging on-screen elements. Tangible programming is particularly valuable for students with visual…

Tile-Based Interface(also: Tile-Based Interaction)

An interaction paradigm that represents spatial content as a grid of discrete, navigable tiles rather than a continuous coordinate plane. In accessible design contexts, tile-based interfaces provide blind or visually impaired users with an alternative way to understand and…

Typeface Classification(also: Font Classification, Typeface Categories)

The set of broad categories used to describe and compare typefaces. The most common groupings are: serif (letters with small projecting strokes at terminals, e.g. Times, Roboto Serif), sans-serif (no terminal strokes, e.g. Helvetica, Arial, Roboto), slab serif (heavy…

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