Glossary

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Visual processing(also: Visual perception, Visual cognition)

The brain's ability to interpret, organise, and make sense of visual information received from the eyes, involving multiple neural pathways including the ventral stream (object recognition, "what" pathway) and the dorsal stream (spatial awareness and motion, "where" pathway).…

Visual question answering(also: VQA, Visual QA)

A computer vision and natural language processing task in which a system answers natural language questions about the content of an image or video. In accessibility contexts, VQA enables blind and visually impaired users to query visual content interactively — asking specific…

Visual search

The perceptual task of scanning a visual scene to locate a specific target among distractors. Visual search is significantly affected by low vision, visual field loss, and other visual impairments, as reduced acuity or restricted fields make it harder and slower to locate…

Visual substitution(also: Sensory substitution, Vision substitution)

Visual substitution is a design strategy in assistive technology that replaces visual information with output in another sensory modality, such as audio descriptions, haptic feedback, or tactile representations. It contrasts with visual enhancement, which amplifies or augments…

Visually Impaired(also: Vision Impairment, Visual Impairment, BVI)

An umbrella term for any degree of reduced visual function that cannot be fully corrected with standard glasses or contact lenses, ranging from mild low vision to total blindness. The term is frequently combined as BVI (blind and visually impaired) in accessibility research to…

Voice and Video-Capable Language Model(also: VVLM, Multimodal AI Assistant, Video-Capable LLM)

A large language model that can process real-time or near-real-time video and audio input alongside text, enabling conversational interaction about the visual world. VVLMs represent a shift from static image analysis (single photo question-answering) to dynamic, continuous…

Voicemarking(also: Voice Bookmark, Speech-Based Bookmark)

A speech-based technique for creating and retrieving semantic bookmarks in assistive web browsers. Users create voicemarks by speaking the name of a concept (e.g., "Major Headlines") and optionally a keyword, allowing them to later jump directly to that content on any website…

Web Mobility(also: Hypertext Mobility, Web Navigation Mobility)

A conceptual framework that applies principles of physical mobility and wayfinding to web navigation, particularly for visually impaired users. Web mobility encompasses the ability to move through hypertext with purpose, ease, and accuracy, requiring knowledge of current…

Web Page Preview(also: Page Preview, Link Target Preview)

A summary or representation of a web page's content provided to users before they navigate to that page, allowing them to assess its relevance without committing to a full visit. For sighted users, visual previews like thumbnails or pop-up snippets serve this purpose. For screen…

White Cane(also: Long Cane, Mobility Cane, Blind Cane)

A lightweight, typically white or white-with-red-tip cane used by blind and visually impaired individuals as a mobility aid for detecting obstacles, changes in terrain, and environmental features while walking. The white cane serves dual purposes: as a practical tool for probing…

Zoom cycling(also: Zoom toggling, Magnification cycling)

An interaction behaviour observed in screen magnifier users who frequently alternate between high magnification (to read fine details like axis labels and segment boundaries) and lower magnification (to see overall chart structure and make comparisons). Zoom cycling adds…