Glossary
Terms used in accessibility research and practice. Each entry has a definition, common aliases, and category tags.
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- Acoustic Accessibility(also: Sound Accessibility)
- An emerging framing of accessibility that considers a user's full acoustic environment - which sounds reach them, how loud, and in what mix - as a design surface to be adapted to individual sensory needs rather than treated as fixed background. While hearing accessibility has…
- Active Noise Cancellation(also: ANC, Active Noise Control)
- A technique that reduces unwanted ambient sound by using microphones to capture incoming noise and electronically generating an inverted (anti-phase) audio signal that destructively interferes with it, lowering the perceived noise reaching the listener's ear. ANC is the core…
- Audio Interference(also: Audio Conflict, Speech Conflict)
- Audio interference in a digital accessibility context is the overlap of two or more sound streams in a user's environment such that one masks another — most commonly, auto-playing media audio on a webpage drowning out a screen reader's synthesized speech. Because most consumer…
- Audio Tone(also: Auditory Cue, Earcon)
- Non-speech audio signals used to convey information such as the presence, location, or status of objects or interface elements. In accessibility contexts, audio tones can supplement or replace verbal descriptions, similar to how screen readers like JAWS use different sound…
- Auditory Description(also: Audio Description, Spoken Description, Verbal Description)
- The practice of providing spoken narration that describes visual information, making content accessible to people who are blind, have low vision, or benefit from auditory reinforcement of visual content. Auditory description has evolved from pre-recorded narration for film and…
- Auditory Masking(also: Sound Masking, Acoustic Masking)
- A perceptual phenomenon where the presence of one sound makes it difficult or impossible to hear another sound. Masking occurs when sounds share similar frequencies or when a louder sound overwhelms a quieter one. In accessible design, understanding auditory masking is essential…
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