Glossary

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C-Print(also: C-Print Pro)

A meaning-for-meaning real-time captioning service where a trained captioner produces a condensed transcription of spoken classroom content, as opposed to the verbatim word-for-word transcription provided by CART. C-Print captioners are trained in text-condensing strategies that…

C-tactile Afferents(also: CT afferents, C-tactile fibres, CT fibres)

Unmyelinated, slow-conducting nerve fibres found in hairy skin that respond selectively to gentle, slow stroking touch at velocities of approximately 1-10 cm/s. C-tactile afferents are strongly associated with affective and social touch, activating neural pathways linked to…

C2C Marketplace(also: Customer-to-Customer Marketplace, Peer-to-Peer Marketplace)

An online platform where individual consumers list goods or services for sale to other individual consumers, rather than selling through a business intermediary. Examples include eBay, Etsy, Mercari, Facebook Marketplace, Vinted, Depop, Gumtree, and Craigslist. C2C marketplaces…

CAPTCHA(also: Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart)

A challenge-response test used on websites to determine whether a user is human, typically requiring users to identify distorted text, select images, or solve puzzles. CAPTCHAs present significant accessibility barriers, particularly for users with visual impairments who cannot…

CARE Principles(also: CARE, Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility, Ethics)

A set of people-and-purpose-oriented principles for Indigenous data governance developed by the Global Indigenous Data Alliance — Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility, and Ethics — designed to complement the more technical FAIR principles (Findable,…

CART(also: Communication Access Real-time Translation, Communication Access Realtime Transcription, Real-time captioning)

A service in which a trained stenographer or speech-to-text reporter transcribes spoken language into text in real time, typically displayed on a screen for deaf or hard of hearing participants during meetings, lectures, and live events. CART providers use specialised…

CART(also: Communication Access Realtime Translation, Computer-Aided Real-Time Translation)

A real-time captioning service in which a trained stenographer uses a specialized keyboard to transcribe spoken language into text as it is spoken, typically achieving accuracy rates above 98%. CART is considered the gold standard for real-time captioning accuracy but is…

CART(also: Communication Access Realtime Translation, Real-Time Captioning, Realtime Captioning)

A professional service providing instant, verbatim text display of spoken content, typically delivered by trained stenographers using specialized equipment. CART achieves accuracy rates of 98% or higher, far exceeding automatic speech recognition systems. It is commonly used in…

CART(also: Communication Access Real-Time Translation, Real-Time Captioning, Stenography)

A real-time captioning service where a trained stenographer uses a specialized keyboard to transcribe speech into text as it is spoken, typically with only a few seconds of delay. CART provides word-for-word transcription of spoken content for deaf and hard of hearing…

CC/PP(also: Composite Capability/Preference Profiles)

A W3C framework for describing device capabilities and user preferences using RDF (Resource Description Framework). CC/PP enables content servers to adapt the delivery of web content based on the characteristics of the requesting device and the preferences of the user, including…

CCTV(also: Closed Circuit Television, Video Magnifier, Desktop Video Magnifier)

A camera-based magnification system used by people with low vision to enlarge text and images on a monitor. Traditional CCTVs consist of a camera mounted over a reading platform that captures material placed beneath it and displays it magnified on an attached screen. Modern…

CCTV Magnifier(also: Closed-Circuit Television Magnifier, Video Magnifier, Desktop Video Magnifier)

An assistive device that uses a camera to capture an image of text or objects and displays it magnified on a screen, typically a television or computer monitor. CCTV magnifiers are one of the most widely used low vision aids, offering high levels of magnification, adjustable…

CEA-708(also: CTA-708, EIA-708, Digital Closed Captioning)

A US standard for digital closed captioning on digital television broadcasts and streaming, superseding the analog-era CEA-608 standard. CEA-708 supports richer presentation than its predecessor, including multiple fonts, colours, opacity, text positioning, and up to 63 caption…

CIE L*a*b*(also: CIELAB, Lab Color Space, CIE Lab)

A perceptually uniform colour space defined by the International Commission on Illumination (CIE) in 1976, where the numerical distance between two colour values approximates the perceived visual difference between those colours. The three dimensions are L* (lightness, from…

CIE LUV(also: CIELUV, CIE 1976 L*u*v*)

A perceptually uniform color space defined by the International Commission on Illumination (CIE) that separates color into luminance (L*) and two chromaticity coordinates (u* and v*). Unlike RGB, which is tied to display hardware and not perceptually uniform, equal distances in…

CLIP(also: Contrastive Language-Image Pre-Training)

A vision-language model developed by OpenAI that learns to associate images with natural language descriptions through contrastive learning on large-scale image-text pairs. CLIP can compute similarity scores between images and text, enabling zero-shot classification and…

CODA(also: Child of Deaf Adults, Children of Deaf Adults)

An acronym for Child of Deaf Adults, referring to a hearing person who was raised by one or more Deaf parents. CODAs typically grow up bilingual and bicultural, fluent in both a sign language and a spoken language, and often serve as cultural bridges between Deaf and hearing…

COM-B Model(also: COM-B, Capability Opportunity Motivation Behaviour Model)

A behaviour-change framework proposed by Michie, van Stralen, and West (2011) that identifies three necessary conditions for behaviour to occur: Capability (physical and psychological ability, including skills and knowledge), Opportunity (physical and social environment that…

CRPD(also: Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, UNCRPD)

An international human rights treaty adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2006 and entered into force in 2008. The CRPD is the first comprehensive human rights treaty of the 21st century focused on disability rights, ratified by 185 UN member states. It affirms that…

CSS Box Model(also: Box Model)

A fundamental concept in CSS that describes how HTML elements are rendered as rectangular boxes with four distinct areas: content (the actual text or image), padding (space between content and border), border (the edge around the padding), and margin (space outside the border…

CSS Media Queries(also: Media Queries, Responsive Breakpoints)

A CSS feature that allows stylesheets to apply different rules based on characteristics of the user's device or viewport, such as screen width, resolution, color capability, or user preferences like reduced motion and high contrast. Media queries are foundational to responsive…

CSUN Assistive Technology Conference(also: CSUN, CSUN Conference, ATIA Conference at CSUN)

The largest annual assistive technology conference in the world, organized by California State University, Northridge's Center on Disabilities. Founded in 1985, the conference brings together thousands of attendees including AT users, professionals, developers, educators, and…

CVAA(also: Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act)

The 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, enacted in the United States in 2010 and updated in 2020, which requires major broadcast and cable networks to make online video content accessible through the provision of audio descriptions and closed captions. The…

CVD Simulation(also: Colour Blindness Simulation, Color Vision Simulation)

A technique that transforms colours in a design to approximate how they would appear to a person with a specific type of colour vision deficiency. CVD simulations are the most widely implemented feature in accessibility design tools, available in browsers (Chrome, Firefox),…

CaBot(also: Carry-on Robot, Carnegie Mellon Suitcase Robot)

A research project begun in 2017 at Carnegie Mellon University that developed a suitcase-shaped autonomous navigation robot to guide blind and low-vision travellers through indoor public spaces. CaBot pioneered the "grip-the-handle-and-walk" interaction pattern, combining LiDAR,…

Calendar Accessibility(also: Accessible Scheduling)

The degree to which calendar applications and scheduling tools can be effectively used by people with disabilities, particularly blind and low vision users who rely on screen readers. Calendar accessibility challenges include visual grid layouts that are difficult to navigate…

Calibrated Trust(also: Appropriate Reliance, Trust Calibration)

An HCI and human-factors concept, articulated by Lee and See, describing the alignment between a user's trust in an automated or AI system and the system's actual capability in a given context: trusting the system when it is reliable and being skeptical when it is not. Designing…

Calibration-Free Interface(also: Zero-Shot Interface, Plug-and-Play Interface, Cross-User Model)

An input system that works for a new user without any per-user training or calibration data, typically by relying on models trained on large multi-user datasets that capture enough physiological and behavioural variation to generalise. Voice assistants and mixed-reality hand…

Calm Technology(also: Peripheral Computing, Ambient Computing)

A design philosophy originated at Xerox PARC in which technology communicates information through the periphery of a user's attention rather than demanding direct focus. Calm technology moves between the centre and periphery of attention, providing awareness without constant…

Camera Aiming(also: Camera Pointing, Camera Guidance)

The challenge blind users face in correctly positioning and aiming a camera to capture the intended visual content. Since blind users cannot see the camera viewfinder, they may inadvertently capture too much, too little, or entirely unintended content, contributing to privacy…

Camera Framing(also: Photo Framing, Object Framing)

The act of positioning a camera so that the intended subject is properly captured within the image frame — not cropped, not too small, and centered enough for clear identification. Camera framing presents a significant accessibility challenge for blind and low-vision users who…

Camera Guidance(also: Camera Aiming Assistance, Framing Assistance)

Non-visual feedback systems that help blind users position a camera to capture usable images of documents, objects, or scenes. Guidance may include spoken directional instructions (e.g., "move up", "move left"), audio tones indicating proximity to a target, or vibration…

Camera Mouse(also: Head-Controlled Mouse Pointer, Head Tracking Mouse)

A computer-vision-based mouse-replacement system that tracks a user's head motion through a standard webcam to control the mouse pointer on screen. Developed at Boston University by Margrit Betke and James Gips, Camera Mouse is freely available and enables people with severe…

Camera Phone(also: Smartphone Camera, Mobile Camera)

A camera phone is a mobile phone equipped with a built-in image sensor, which in an accessibility context serves as the input device for a wide class of vision-based assistive applications. Modern smartphone cameras enable live scene description (Seeing AI, Be My AI), object…

Camera-based assistive technology(also: Camera-based AT, Vision-based AT, VBAT)

Assistive technologies that use cameras (typically smartphone cameras or smart glasses) combined with computer vision and AI to provide visual information to blind and low-vision users. Applications include object recognition, text reading (OCR), scene description, face…

Camouflaging(also: Masking, Social Camouflage, Autistic Masking)

Camouflaging, also known as masking, is the conscious or unconscious suppression of autistic traits and adoption of neurotypical behaviors in order to fit into social situations. This can include forcing eye contact, suppressing stimming, rehearsing social scripts, and imitating…

Camouflaging Autistic Traits Questionnaire(also: CAT-Q)

A 25-item self-report questionnaire developed by Hull, Mandy, Lai, Baron-Cohen and colleagues (2019) for adults to self-assess autistic masking (camouflaging) behaviours. Items are rated on a 7-point Likert scale (e.g., "In social situations, I feel like I am pretending to be…

Candlewick Knot(also: Candlewick Stitch)

An embroidery stitch that creates raised, textured bumps or knots on the fabric surface. Candlewick knots produce one of the roughest and most tactilely distinctive textures available in machine embroidery, making them particularly valuable for tactile graphics where strong…

Cane Simulation(also: Virtual Cane, White Cane Simulation)

A virtual reality application that simulates the experience of using a white cane (long cane) for navigation, allowing blind users to explore virtual environments through haptic feedback. In a cane simulation, the user's finger or hand position is mapped to a virtual cane that…

Cane Technique(also: White Cane Technique, Long Cane Technique)

The set of physical methods a blind or low-vision person uses to manipulate a long white cane while traveling. Common techniques include the two-point touch (side-to-side sweeping, touching ground at each step), constant-contact (sliding the cane tip along the ground in an arc),…

Canonical MathML(also: Canonical Mathematical Markup Language)

A restricted, normalised subset of MathML in which mathematical structures are represented in a deterministic, unambiguous way. While standard Presentation MathML allows the same mathematical expression to be encoded in multiple equivalent ways, Canonical MathML enforces a…

Canonical Syllable(also: Canonical Babbling, Well-Formed Syllable)

A canonical syllable is a well-formed syllable in infant babbling that consists of a consonant-like closure (closant) produced by an oral cavity constriction followed by a vowel-like opening (vocant). Canonical syllables typically appear between 5 and 10 months of age in the…

Capabilities approach(also: Capability approach, Human capabilities framework)

A philosophical framework developed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum that evaluates well-being and justice based on what people are actually able to do and be, rather than on the resources they possess. In disability and accessibility contexts, the capabilities approach…

Capability Sensitive Design

A design approach, proposed by Ilse Oosterlaken, that takes human diversity morally seriously and evaluates technologies by how they actually expand or constrain the real opportunities (capabilities) available to individual users. Capability Sensitive Design extends the…

Capability model(also: User capability profile)

A structured representation of an individual user's abilities across relevant dimensions such as sight, hearing, mobility, and cognition. In accessibility and adaptive interface design, capability models are used to characterize what interaction modalities and design spaces are…

Capacitive Touch(also: Capacitive Sensing, Capacitive Touch Sensing)

A touch detection technology that works by measuring changes in electrical capacitance when a conductive object, such as a human finger, comes near or contacts an electrode surface. The finger and electrode form a capacitor whose capacitance changes upon contact, and this change…

Capacitive Touchscreen(also: Capacitive Touch Display, Cap Touch)

A capacitive touchscreen is a type of display that detects touch input by sensing changes in the electrical field caused by the conductivity of a human finger or conductive stylus. Unlike resistive touchscreens that require physical pressure, capacitive screens respond to the…

Capacitive marker(also: Capacitive fiducial, Conductive marker)

A conductive structure embedded in a physical object that registers as a touch point on a capacitive touchscreen, enabling the device to detect the object's position and orientation without cameras or external sensors. In accessible tactile graphics, capacitive markers printed…

Capacity Building(also: Research Capacity Building, Capability Development)

The process of developing and strengthening the skills, resources, and infrastructure that enable individuals, communities, and organizations to carry out research, develop technologies, and advocate for their needs effectively. In accessibility, capacity building involves…

Caption(also: Image Caption, Figure Caption)

In the context of image accessibility, a caption is text that describes or provides context for an image. Unlike alt text, which is typically hidden and read only by screen readers, captions are often visible to all users and may appear below or alongside an image. Captions can…