Glossary
Terms used in accessibility research and practice. Each entry has a definition, common aliases, and category tags.
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- Cascading Access Barriers(also: Compounding Barriers, Barrier Cascades)
- A pattern where an initial accessibility barrier triggers a chain of subsequent barriers, each compounding the difficulty of the previous one. For example, missing a pharmacy notification (first barrier) leads to a medication gap (second barrier), which worsens executive…
- Complex Adaptive System(also: CAS)
- A system composed of many interconnected, diverse components that interact and adapt in response to each other and their environment, producing emergent behaviors that cannot be predicted from the properties of individual parts. Education systems, healthcare systems, and the Web…
- Disabling by Design(also: Designed Disability, Systemic Disablement)
- A critical framework describing how systems, policies, and processes create disability through their design rather than through malicious intent. When a system requires cognitive, physical, or sensory capabilities that it simultaneously undermines or fails to accommodate, it is…
- Wicked Problem
- A problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize. Wicked problems resist traditional problem-solving approaches because effects cannot be isolated, outcomes are unpredictable,…
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