Glossary

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Accessible Name(also: Accessible Label, Acc Name)

The text string that assistive technologies such as screen readers use to identify and announce a user interface element. The accessible name is computed by browsers following the W3C's Accessible Name and Description Computation algorithm, which checks a priority-ordered…

Accessible Onboarding(also: Inclusive Onboarding)

The process of integrating new employees into an organization in a way that is fully accessible to people with disabilities, encompassing all required documentation, training, system access, and orientation activities. Accessible onboarding requires that every mandatory step —…

Accessible PDF(also: Tagged PDF, PDF/UA)

An accessible PDF is a Portable Document Format file that has been structured with tags, reading order, alternative text for images, and other metadata so that it can be navigated and read by assistive technologies such as screen readers. The PDF/UA (Universal Accessibility)…

Accessible Pedestrian Signal(also: APS, Audible Pedestrian Signal, Audible Traffic Signal)

A device integrated into pedestrian signal systems at traffic intersections that communicates walk and don't-walk information to pedestrians who are blind or have low vision through audible tones, verbal messages, vibrotactile surfaces, or a combination of these. APS devices…

Accessible Pedestrian Signal(also: APS, Audible Pedestrian Signal, Talking Traffic Signal)

A traffic control device that communicates pedestrian signal information in non-visual formats, typically through audible tones, speech messages, or vibrating surfaces, enabling blind and visually impaired pedestrians to know when it is safe to cross a street and in which…

Accessible Photography(also: Blind Photography, Inclusive Photography)

The practice and technology of enabling people with visual impairments to take, manage, browse, and share photographs. People who are blind or have low vision face challenges at every stage of photography: aiming the camera at a target, composing the frame, reviewing the result,…

Accessible Programming(also: Accessible Software Development, Inclusive Coding)

Accessible programming encompasses the tools, practices, and accommodations that enable people with disabilities to write, test, debug, and maintain software code. Challenges for disabled developers include inaccessible development environments, difficulty navigating code…

Accessible Prototyping(also: Inclusive Prototyping)

The practice of adapting prototyping methods and materials to enable participation by people with disabilities, particularly in early-stage design activities. Accessible prototyping goes beyond simply providing alternative materials—it requires holistic adaptation of the entire…

Accessible Public Procurement(also: Accessible Procurement, ICT Procurement)

The practice of requiring accessibility standards to be met when government authorities purchase goods, services, and works using public money. Because governments are often the largest buyers in a market, accessible procurement policies have significant power to drive…

Accessible Publishing(also: Inclusive Publishing, Born Accessible Publishing)

The practice of creating digital publications — including e-books, journals, and documents — that are accessible to people with disabilities from the point of creation rather than through after-the-fact remediation. Accessible publishing involves using semantic structure…

Accessible Relocation(also: Accessible Migration)

The process of moving to a new city or country while maintaining or re-establishing access to disability-related services, accommodations, and support networks. Accessible relocation involves challenges at every phase: researching accessibility conditions of the destination…

Accessible Role(also: ARIA Role, Role)

An accessible role is a property that defines the type and expected behavior of a user interface element as exposed to assistive technologies through the accessibility tree. Roles communicate what an element is (e.g., button, link, heading, list, table, dialog) so that assistive…

Accessible Routing(also: Accessible Navigation, Barrier-Free Routing, Accessible Wayfinding)

The calculation of travel routes that account for accessibility barriers and the specific mobility needs of disabled pedestrians. Unlike standard navigation that optimises solely for distance or time, accessible routing considers factors such as kerb heights, stairs, surface…

Accessible Slides(also: Accessible Presentation Slides, Non-Visually Accessible Slides)

Presentation slides that have been structured and annotated to be usable by people with disabilities, particularly blind and visually impaired users who access content via screen readers. Accessible slides include proper read order for elements, alternative text for images and…

Accessible Software(also: Accessible Application, Accessible Program)

Software that is designed and developed so that people with disabilities can effectively perceive, understand, navigate, interact with, and contribute using the application. Accessible software properly exposes its interface elements through platform accessibility APIs, supports…

Accessible Tourism(also: Inclusive Tourism, Disability Tourism, Universal Tourism)

Accessible tourism refers to the effort to ensure that tourism destinations, products, and services are usable by all people regardless of their physical, sensory, or cognitive abilities. This encompasses the entire travel chain: pre-trip information and booking, transportation,…

Accessible Tourism(also: Inclusive Tourism, Tourism for All)

The practice of ensuring that tourism destinations, products, and services are accessible to all people regardless of their physical, sensory, or cognitive abilities. Accessible tourism encompasses the entire travel chain — from trip planning and booking through transport,…

Accessible Transit(also: Accessible Public Transportation, Transit Accessibility)

The design and provision of public transportation systems — including buses, trains, subways, and associated infrastructure — that are usable by people with disabilities. Accessible transit encompasses physical accessibility (low-floor buses, ramp access, tactile platform…

Accessible Transportation(also: Inclusive Transportation, Transportation Accessibility)

Transportation systems, vehicles, infrastructure, and services designed to be usable by people with disabilities, including those with mobility, vision, hearing, and cognitive impairments. Accessible transportation encompasses physical features (wheelchair ramps, tactile paving,…

Accessible VR Gaming(also: Accessible Virtual Reality Games, Inclusive VR Gaming)

The design and development of virtual reality games and experiences that can be independently played and enjoyed by people with disabilities, including those who are blind or have low vision, deaf or hard of hearing, or have motor impairments. Accessible VR gaming requires…

Accessible Virtual Environments(also: Accessible Virtual Worlds)

Virtual spaces and worlds designed to be navigable and usable by people with disabilities, including consideration of locomotion methods, barrier placement, spatial layout, and environmental features. In VR research, disabled users express nuanced views on virtual environment…

Accessible Voting(also: Inclusive Voting, Accessible Elections)

Accessible voting refers to the design and implementation of voting systems, processes, and polling places that enable all eligible citizens — including those with disabilities — to cast their ballots independently and privately. Barriers to accessible voting include…

Accessible Web Design(also: Accessible Web Authoring, Nonvisual Web Design)

Accessible web design refers both to the practice of designing webpages that meet accessibility standards (such as WCAG) and — in a second, increasingly important sense — to the practice of enabling people with disabilities to act as web designers themselves, not just as testers…

Accessible Workplace(also: Inclusive Workplace, Accessible Work Environment)

A work environment—including its physical spaces, digital tools, and organizational practices—designed to be usable by all employees regardless of ability or age. In the digital context, an accessible workplace ensures that internal ICT systems such as HR platforms, financial…

Accessible data capture(also: Inclusive data collection methods)

Research data collection methods and tools that can be independently operated by researchers with disabilities. Current standard data capture methods in HCI research — video cameras, GoPros, visual note-taking, screen-based recording software — present significant barriers to…

Accessible eLearning(also: Accessible Online Learning, Inclusive eLearning)

Digital learning content and platforms designed to be usable by people with disabilities. For people with intellectual disabilities, accessible eLearning requires step-by-step approaches, visual demonstrations with audio narration, consistent layouts, familiar metaphors from…

Accessible parking(also: Disability parking, Handicapped parking, Reserved parking)

Designated parking spaces that meet specific design requirements under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and similar regulations to ensure equitable access for people with disabilities. Accessible parking spaces must have minimum dimensions, adjacent access aisles for…

Accessmonkey

Accessmonkey was a 2007 client-side scripting framework, built on Greasemonkey for Mozilla Firefox, that let users and developers run site-specific JavaScript to repair inaccessible web pages on the fly. Scripts could add alternative text, restructure pages, or inject…

Accommodation(also: Reasonable Accommodation, Academic Accommodation, Disability Accommodation)

A modification, adjustment, or support provided to enable a person with a disability to participate equally in education, employment, or public services. In the United States, accommodations are mandated by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Section 504 of the…

Accommodation Letter(also: Letter of Accommodation, LOA, Faculty Notification Letter)

A formal document produced by a university's disability services office that notifies faculty of their obligation to provide specific approved accommodations to a student with a disability. The letter details the accommodations but does not disclose the student's specific…

Accommodation Process(also: Accommodation Workflow, Accommodation Request Process)

The organizational workflow through which workplace accommodations for employees with disabilities are requested, negotiated, implemented, and monitored. The accommodation process typically involves multiple stakeholders including the employee, human resources, supervisors, IT…

Accommodations(also: Reasonable Accommodations, Workplace Accommodations)

Modifications or adjustments to environments, processes, or practices that enable disabled people to participate equally. In employment contexts, reasonable accommodations may include flexible scheduling, remote work options, modified job duties, assistive technology provision,…

Accordion Interface(also: Accordion Widget, Collapsible Sections, Disclosure Widget)

A user interface pattern that presents content in vertically stacked sections, each with a header that can be expanded or collapsed to show or hide the associated content. Accordions are particularly useful for accessibility because they allow users to navigate a hierarchical…

Achromatopsia(also: Rod Monochromacy, Total Color Blindness, Complete Achromatopsia)

A rare inherited vision condition in which a person has little or no ability to perceive color, seeing the world primarily in shades of grey. People with achromatopsia typically also experience light sensitivity (photophobia), reduced visual acuity, and involuntary eye movements…

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…

Acoustic Activity Recognition(also: Sound Activity Recognition, Audio Activity Recognition, Environmental Sound Recognition)

The use of microphones and machine learning to automatically identify and classify sounds occurring in an environment, such as doorbells, alarms, appliances, speech, and other everyday acoustic events. Acoustic activity recognition is particularly relevant to accessibility for…

Acoustic Analysis(also: Acoustic Signal Analysis)

The computational examination of sound signals to extract measurable properties such as duration, fundamental frequency (pitch), intensity, spectral characteristics, and formant structure. In accessibility and clinical contexts, acoustic analysis is used to objectively assess…

Acoustic Event Detection(also: Sound Event Detection, Audio Event Detection, Sound Event Classification)

The automated process of identifying and classifying specific sounds within an audio stream, such as recognizing a phone ringing, door knocking, fire alarm, or speech from continuous environmental audio. Acoustic event detection systems use machine learning trained on labeled…

Acoustic Model(also: AM)

An acoustic model is the component of an automatic speech recognition (ASR) system that maps short segments of audio (typically 10–25 ms frames of spectral features) to the linguistic units that produced them — most commonly phonemes or sub-phonetic states. Classical acoustic…

Acoustic Phonetics

The branch of phonetics concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds, including their production, transmission, and perception as acoustic signals. Acoustic phonetics uses techniques such as spectral analysis, formant tracking, and landmark detection to characterize…

Acoustic Vehicle Alerting System(also: AVAS, Minimum sound requirement, Pedestrian warning sound)

A class of vehicle systems that emit artificial sound to alert pedestrians and other road users to the presence and movement of quiet vehicles — typically electric and hybrid vehicles at low speeds, where tire and aerodynamic noise are insufficient for detection. Regulatory…

Acquiescence Bias(also: Agreement Bias, Yea-Saying)

A response bias in which participants tend to agree with statements or respond affirmatively regardless of the actual content, often to be accommodating or to avoid conflict with the researcher. In accessibility research, acquiescence bias can be amplified among participants…

Acquiescence Bias(also: Agreement Bias, Yea-Saying)

A type of response bias where survey respondents tend to agree with statements regardless of their actual content. This "yea-saying" tendency can skew research results, particularly in accessibility studies where participants may feel inclined to provide positive feedback.…

Acquired Brain Injury(also: ABI)

Brain damage occurring after birth that is not hereditary, congenital, degenerative, or induced by birth trauma. ABI encompasses both traumatic brain injury (TBI) from external forces like falls or accidents, and non-traumatic causes such as stroke, anoxia, infection, or tumors.…

Acquired Disability(also: Adventitious Disability, Late-onset Disability)

A disability that develops after birth, typically due to illness, injury, or aging, as opposed to congenital disabilities present from birth. Common causes include stroke, traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury, progressive diseases (such as multiple sclerosis or macular…

Action Research(also: Participatory Action Research, PAR)

A research methodology that combines investigation with practical action, involving iterative cycles of planning, acting, observing, and reflecting. In accessibility research, action research allows researchers to work alongside communities and organizations to simultaneously…

Action research(also: Participatory action research, PAR)

A research methodology that combines investigation with practical action, where researchers work collaboratively with community stakeholders to address real-world problems while simultaneously generating knowledge. Action research is cyclical — plan, act, observe, reflect — and…

ActionScript

A programming language used within Adobe Flash to create interactive content, animations, and web applications. ActionScript code was compiled into bytecode embedded in SWF files and executed by the Flash Player virtual machine. Because ActionScript ran inside the closed Flash…

Active Aging(also: Active Ageing, Healthy Aging, Successful Aging)

A policy framework and paradigm promoted by the World Health Organization that emphasizes maintaining physical activity, social engagement, and independence in later life to improve health outcomes and quality of life. While the concept has influenced health policy and…

Active Exploration(also: User-Directed Exploration)

An interaction paradigm in non-visual interfaces where users physically control their navigation through information, discovering content by directing a pointer, stylus, or finger across a surface or through a virtual space. In contrast to passive exploration, where the entire…