Glossary
Terms used in accessibility research and practice. Each entry has a definition, common aliases, and category tags.
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- SMILES(also: Simplified Molecular-Input Line-Entry System)
- A text-based notation system that represents chemical molecular structures as short character strings, making them both machine-readable and human-readable. For accessibility, SMILES is significant because it provides a linear, non-visual way to represent chemical structural…
- Semantic Scene Graph(also: SSG, scene graph)
- A semantic scene graph is a structured data representation of a 3D or 2D environment that encodes objects, their properties (such as position, size, color, and audio characteristics), and the spatial and hierarchical relationships between them. In accessibility research,…
- Sighted Assistance(also: Visual Interpreting, Remote Sighted Assistance)
- Sighted assistance refers to services that connect blind or low-vision individuals with sighted people who can provide visual information on demand, typically through a live video call from a smartphone or smart glasses. Services like Be My Eyes (volunteer-based) and Aira…
- Sighted Guide(also: Sighted Guide Technique, Human Guide)
- A technique in which a sighted person assists a blind or low vision individual with navigation and orientation by serving as a visual reference and mobility aid. In physical settings, the blind person typically holds the guide's arm just above the elbow and walks a half-step…
- Sighted Memory(also: Visual Memory, Sighted Recall)
- A mental representation of a physical environment developed through past visual experience, used by people who lose their sight later in life to navigate and understand spaces they previously knew visually. People with acquired vision loss often rely on sighted memory to recall…
- Social Distancing(also: Physical Distancing)
- The practice of maintaining a minimum physical distance from other people to reduce the transmission of infectious diseases, widely adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic with recommended distances of at least 1 metre (WHO) or 6 feet (CDC). Social distancing presented unique…
- Social Wayfinding(also: Social Navigation Assistance)
- Social wayfinding refers to the capacity to perceive and navigate the dynamics of a social scene, not just its physical layout. It covers identifying who is present, where they are oriented, whether they are available for interaction, what they are doing, and how they are…
- Spatial Memorization(also: Spatial Memory Strategy, Kitchen Layout Memory)
- A compensatory strategy used by blind and low vision individuals to navigate and interact with environments by memorizing the spatial layout of objects, tools, and landmarks. In cooking, spatial memorization involves learning where ingredients, utensils, and appliances are…
- Spatial Reasoning
- The cognitive process of understanding where objects are, how they are oriented, and how they relate to each other in three-dimensional space. Spatial reasoning is central to tasks like assembling products, navigating environments, reading diagrams, and manipulating tools. Blind…
- 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…
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