Glossary

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Semantic Listening

A mode of listening, identified by composer and theorist Pierre Schaeffer, in which the listener focuses on decoding a coded audio signal to arrive at its intended message — for example, understanding a musical motif as representing a particular region or culture. Semantic…

Shepard Tone(also: Shepard Scale, Shepard-Risset Glissando)

A psychoacoustic auditory illusion created by layering sine waves separated by octaves, producing the paradoxical perception of a tone that continuously rises (or falls) in pitch indefinitely, yet cycles back without apparent discontinuity. Named after cognitive scientist Roger…

Signal-to-Noise Ratio(also: SNR, S/N Ratio)

A measure of the strength of a desired signal relative to background noise, expressed in decibels (dB). In accessibility, signal-to-noise ratio is critical for the effectiveness of auditory interfaces: if background noise is too high relative to device audio output, speech…

Sound Design(also: Audio Design)

The craft of creating, selecting, and arranging audio elements - dialogue, music, ambient sound, foley, and effects - to shape the experience of a film, game, broadcast, or interactive product. For accessibility, sound design is doubly important: it carries narrative and…

Sound Visualization(also: Audio Visualization, Sound-to-Visual Mapping)

The practice of representing audio information through visual means, enabling Deaf or Hard-of-hearing individuals to perceive sound-based information that would otherwise be inaccessible. Sound visualization goes beyond simple captioning to convey characteristics like loudness…

Sound localization(also: Auditory localization, Spatial hearing)

The ability to identify the direction and distance of a sound source, relying on cues such as interaural time differences, intensity differences, and spectral filtering by the outer ear. Sound localization is critical for spatial awareness, safety, and immersive experiences in…

Spatial Audio(also: 3D Audio, Spatialised Sound, Binaural Audio)

Audio technology that creates the perception of sound coming from specific locations in three-dimensional space around the listener, using techniques such as head-related transfer functions (HRTFs), binaural rendering, and ambisonics. In accessibility, spatial audio can convey…

Spatial audio beacon(also: Audio beacon, 3D audio waypoint)

A virtual sound source placed at a specific geographic location that a user can hear through headphones, providing directional guidance by leveraging spatial audio to indicate the direction and distance of a destination. As the user turns toward the beacon, the sound appears to…

Spatialised Audio(also: Spatial Audio, 3D Audio, Directional Audio)

Audio technology that places sounds in specific locations in three-dimensional space relative to the listener, creating the perception that sounds come from particular directions or distances. In accessibility applications for blind and low-vision users, spatialised audio can…

Spatialization(also: Spatialisation, Audio Spatialization, 3D Audio Spatialization)

The process of rendering a sound so that it appears to originate from a specific location in three-dimensional space around the listener. Spatialization typically combines head-related transfer functions (HRTFs) to model how ears filter sound by direction, binaural or ambisonic…

Speaker Diarisation(also: Speaker Diarization, Speaker Segmentation)

The automatic process of segmenting an audio recording by speaker identity — answering "who spoke when" — and labelling each segment. A critical pre-requisite for accessible transcripts of multi-voice audio such as interviews, podcasts, and meetings, since a flat transcript…

Spearcon

A spearcon is a type of auditory icon created by compressing a spoken phrase until it becomes a very brief, distinctive audio cue. Unlike earcons, which use abstract musical sounds, spearcons retain a connection to the original speech, making them easier to learn and associate…

Speech Gap(also: Dialogue Gap, Audio Gap)

A pause or silence between spoken dialogue in a video or film where audio descriptions can be inserted without overlapping with the original soundtrack. Identifying speech gaps is a critical first step in audio description production, as descriptions must fit within these…

Structured Audio(also: Structured Digital Audio)

Structured audio refers to digital audio content that has been encoded with hierarchical markers and metadata, allowing non-sequential access to specific segments such as chapters, sections, paragraphs, and phrases. Unlike linear audio recordings (such as traditional audio…

Synthesized Video Description(also: TTS Video Description, Text-to-Speech Description, Synthesized Audio Description)

An audio description for video content that is generated using text-to-speech (TTS) technology rather than recorded by a human narrator. A describer writes a text script describing the visual elements of a video, and speech synthesis software converts this text into spoken…

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