Glossary

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Co-Design(also: Participatory Design, Co-Creation)

A design methodology that actively involves end users, stakeholders, and domain experts as equal partners throughout the design process. In accessibility, co-design ensures that the people who will use assistive technologies or accessible products have meaningful input into…

Co-Design(also: Co-creation, Cooperative Design)

Co-design is a collaborative design approach that actively involves all stakeholders — including end users, domain experts, and designers — as equal partners in the design process. In accessibility work, co-design ensures that people with disabilities and the professionals who…

Co-Embodiment(also: Shared Embodiment, Collaborative Embodiment)

A design concept where multiple users jointly control or inhabit a single virtual body or avatar, each contributing different aspects of the character's movements or actions. In CoSignPlay, co-embodiment allows one player to control non-manual signs (facial expressions, head…

Co-Located Collaboration(also: Co-Located Cooperation)

Co-located collaboration is the shared activity of people working or playing together while physically present in the same space, as distinct from remote or distributed collaboration. In HCI and accessibility research, co-located collaboration is studied because it adds embodied…

Co-Making(also: Co-Fabrication, Collaborative Making)

Co-making is a participatory practice in which people with disabilities work directly with collaborators — researchers, AI assistants, peers, or family members — to build physical assistive technology together, rather than being passive recipients of devices designed and…

Co-Pilot Mode(also: Copilot Mode, Xbox Copilot)

Co-Pilot Mode is an accessibility feature, introduced by Microsoft on Xbox in 2017 and since adopted elsewhere, that lets two controllers be combined so they act as a single logical controller driving the same in-game player. The feature was created primarily for disabled…

Co-Presence(also: Copresence)

The sense of being together with another person in a shared space, whether physical or virtual, where individuals are aware of each other's presence and are "accessible, available, and subject to one another" (Goffman). Co-presence does not require active interaction—the mere…

Co-Regulation(also: Coregulation)

Co-regulation is the process by which one person helps another manage their emotional or physiological state, through presence, calming behaviours, modelling coping strategies, or environmental adjustment. It is well established in developmental psychology (parent helping a…

Co-Researcher(also: Community Co-Researcher, Peer Researcher)

A person with lived experience of disability who contributes to research not merely as a participant or informant but as an active member of the research team, involved in planning, data collection, analysis, and co-authoring outputs. The co-researcher role goes beyond co-design…

Co-contraction(also: Unintended Co-contraction, Muscle Co-activation)

The simultaneous activation of antagonistic muscles — for example, the biceps and triceps firing at the same time. Some co-contraction is normal and useful for joint stability, but involuntary or excessive co-contraction is common in conditions such as spasticity, cerebral…

Co-creation workshop(also: Co-creation session, Co-design workshop)

A structured collaborative session in which researchers, designers, and participants (including end users) work together to generate ideas, explore concepts, and shape the design of products, services, or research. In accessibility contexts, co-creation workshops are valued for…

Co-design(also: Co-creation, Cooperative design)

A design methodology that actively involves end users, stakeholders, and communities as equal partners throughout the design process, going beyond consultation to shared decision-making and creative collaboration. In accessibility and disability research, co-design is valued for…

Co-design(also: Co-creation, Cooperative Design)

A design methodology where end users actively participate as partners throughout the design process, contributing their expertise and lived experience to shape solutions. In co-design, researchers and participants collaboratively create design artifacts, validate concepts, and…

Co-morbidity(also: Comorbidity, Co-occurring Conditions, Multiple Disabilities)

The simultaneous presence of two or more medical conditions or disabilities in a single individual. In accessibility contexts, co-morbidity is a critical design consideration because many users, particularly older adults, experience multiple impairments simultaneously — for…

Coarticulation

A linguistic phenomenon in sign language where the production of one sign influences the physical form of adjacent signs in continuous signing. For example, the ending hand position or handshape of one sign may affect the starting position or handshape of the next sign.…

Cochlear Implant(also: CI)

A surgically implanted electronic device that provides a sense of sound to individuals who are severely deaf or hard of hearing. Unlike hearing aids that amplify sound, cochlear implants bypass damaged portions of the ear and directly stimulate the auditory nerve. Users still…

Cochlear Implant(also: CI)

A surgically implanted electronic device that provides a sense of sound to individuals who are deaf or have severe hearing loss. Unlike hearing aids which amplify sound, cochlear implants bypass damaged portions of the inner ear and directly stimulate the auditory nerve. The…

Cochlear implant(also: CI, Bionic ear)

A surgically implanted electronic device that provides a sense of sound to a person with severe to profound sensorineural hearing loss by directly stimulating the auditory nerve, bypassing damaged hair cells in the cochlea. Unlike hearing aids, which amplify sound, cochlear…

Cocktail Party Effect(also: Selective Auditory Attention)

The human ability to focus auditory attention on a single speaker or sound source while filtering out competing background noise or other simultaneous conversations. Named after the experience of following one conversation at a noisy party, this perceptual phenomenon has been…

Cocktail Party Effect

The human ability to focus auditory attention on a single speaker or sound source while filtering out competing voices and background noise. Named after the experience of following one conversation at a noisy party, this perceptual phenomenon demonstrates that the auditory…

Cocktail party effect(also: Selective auditory attention)

The well-documented human ability to focus auditory attention on a single speech source among multiple simultaneous conversations, while still detecting relevant information (such as one's name) in unattended streams. The cocktail party effect is foundational to the design of…

Code Accessibility(also: Programming Accessibility, Accessible Coding)

The practice of making programming environments, source code, and software development tools usable by people with disabilities, particularly those with visual impairments. Code accessibility encompasses accessible IDEs and text editors, aural or tactile representations of code…

Code Editor(also: Source Code Editor, Text Editor)

A software application designed specifically for editing source code, offering features like syntax highlighting, code completion, bracket matching, and indentation management. Code editors range from lightweight tools like Notepad++ and Vim to full-featured editors like Visual…

Code Folding(also: Code Collapsing, Outlining)

Code folding is a feature in text editors and integrated development environments (IDEs) that allows programmers to collapse sections of code (such as functions, classes, or loops) into a single line, hiding the detailed content while retaining a high-level structural overview.…

Code Jumper(also: Project Torino)

An accessible physical programming toolkit originally developed by Microsoft Research (under the name Project Torino) that uses tangible pods connected by cables to teach programming concepts to children with visual impairments. Each pod represents a programming construct such…

Code Literacy(also: Coding Literacy, Programming Literacy)

The ability to read, write, and understand computer code, increasingly recognized as a fundamental skill for education and employment in the digital economy. In accessibility contexts, code literacy education faces significant barriers for people who are blind or have low vision…

Code Navigation(also: Code Browsing, Codebase Navigation)

Code navigation refers to the process of moving through, understanding, and locating specific elements within a software codebase. For sighted developers, this is supported by visual cues such as syntax highlighting, indentation, code folding, and spatial layout. For blind…

Code Review(also: Peer Code Review)

A software quality assurance practice in which one or more developers systematically examine source code written by a colleague, looking for bugs, design issues, readability problems, and adherence to coding standards. Code reviews can be asynchronous (reviewing pull requests)…

Code Smell(also: Code Anti-Pattern)

A characteristic in source code that indicates a potential deeper problem, even if the code technically functions correctly. In accessibility contexts, code smells include patterns like using div or span elements instead of semantic HTML (buttons, headings, nav), inline styles…

Code Walkthrough

A form of peer review in which a developer leads colleagues through a segment of code, explaining its logic, structure, and design decisions line by line. Unlike pair programming where both developers actively write code, a walkthrough is typically led by one person while others…

Code-Based Modeling(also: Programmatic Modeling, Scripted 3-D Modeling)

An approach to creating 3-D models by writing code rather than using visual direct manipulation interfaces. Code-based modeling tools like OpenSCAD allow users to define shapes, transformations, and boolean operations through programming languages. This approach is inherently…

Code-switching(also: Language switching, Code-mixing)

Code-switching is the practice of alternating between two or more languages, dialects, or communication styles within a single conversation or even a single sentence. It is common in multilingual households, immigrant communities, and among speakers of non-standard dialects.…

Codebook (Research)(also: Coding Manual, Qualitative Codebook)

A codebook is a structured set of codes, definitions, and application rules used to systematically analyse qualitative data (interview transcripts, observation notes, documents) or to extract data from literature for review work. It typically specifies each code's name,…

Coercion Resistance(also: Receipt-Freeness, Anti-Coercion)

Coercion resistance is a security property of voting systems that prevents a coercer from verifying how a voter cast their ballot, even if the voter cooperates with the coercer. A related but weaker property, receipt-freeness, means the voter cannot produce proof of their vote…

CogTool

A cognitive modeling tool developed at Carnegie Mellon University that generates quantitative predictions of human task performance times based on the Keystroke-Level Model (KLM) and the ACT-R cognitive architecture. Designers create storyboards of user interface screens and…

Cognitive Accessibility(also: Cognitive A11y)

The practice of designing digital content and interfaces to be usable by people with cognitive, intellectual, learning, and neurological disabilities. Cognitive accessibility addresses barriers related to attention, memory, problem-solving, comprehension, and executive function.…

Cognitive Accessibility Guidelines(also: COGA, Making Content Usable for People with Cognitive and Learning Disabilities)

W3C guidance for making web content accessible to people with cognitive and learning disabilities, including intellectual disabilities, autism, dementia, ADHD, dyslexia, and dyscalculia. Published as a W3C Working Draft, COGA provides design patterns for supporting users in…

Cognitive Aging(also: Age-Related Cognitive Decline)

Cognitive aging refers to the normal, gradual changes in cognitive function that occur as people grow older. These changes typically include declines in processing speed, working memory capacity, selective attention, and fluid intelligence (the ability to reason about novel…

Cognitive Artifact(also: Cognitive Artefact)

An artificial device — physical or digital — designed or appropriated to maintain, display, or operate on information in ways that support human cognitive performance. The term was codified by Don Norman to describe how objects like calendars, shopping lists, sticky notes,…

Cognitive Assessment(also: Neuropsychological assessment, Cognitive testing)

Structured evaluation of cognitive abilities — attention, memory, executive function, language, visuospatial processing, and more — using standardized tasks, questionnaires, or interactive assessments. Cognitive assessments support clinical diagnosis, screening for decline or…

Cognitive Assistance(also: Cognitive Aid, AI-Powered Assistance, Assisted Cognition)

Technology that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to supplement or expand human cognitive and perceptual abilities. In accessibility contexts, cognitive assistance systems recognise people, objects, text, and environments and convey that information through…

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy(also: CBT)

A widely used, evidence-based form of psychotherapy that focuses on identifying and modifying dysfunctional thought patterns and behaviors. CBT is based on the premise that thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are interconnected, and that changing negative thinking patterns can…

Cognitive Cycle(also: Cognitive Processing Time, Cognitive Response Time)

In the Model Human Processor framework, the cognitive cycle represents the time required for a person to process perceived information and make a decision about how to respond. A single cognitive cycle is approximately 70-110 milliseconds. Research with motion-impaired users has…

Cognitive Decline(also: Cognitive Deterioration, Cognitive Aging)

A gradual reduction in cognitive abilities such as memory, attention, language, reasoning, and executive function that may occur as part of normal aging or as a symptom of neurological conditions such as mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or dementia. Cognitive decline exists on a…

Cognitive Demand(also: Cognitive Complexity, Cognitive Requirements)

The amount of mental effort, attention, and processing required to use a technology, interface, or system. High cognitive demand in assistive technology interfaces can prevent adoption by users with cognitive impairments, fatigue, or limited experience with technology.…

Cognitive Disability(also: Cognitive Impairment, Cognitive Disabilities)

A broad term encompassing conditions that affect cognitive processes such as memory, attention, perception, learning, language, and executive function. Cognitive disabilities include intellectual disabilities, traumatic brain injuries, neurodegenerative conditions, and…

Cognitive Disability(also: Cognitive Impairment, Intellectual and Cognitive Disability)

A broad category of disabilities affecting cognitive functions such as memory, attention, problem-solving, reading, language comprehension, and executive function. Cognitive disabilities can be developmental (such as Down Syndrome or Autism Spectrum Disorder), acquired (such as…

Cognitive Disability(also: Cognitive Impairment, Intellectual and Developmental Disability)

A broad category of disabilities affecting cognitive functions such as memory, attention, problem-solving, learning, and information processing. Cognitive disabilities may be developmental (present from birth or early childhood, such as Down syndrome or intellectual disability)…

Cognitive Dysfunction(also: Cognitive Impairment, Cognitive Disability)

A broad term encompassing conditions that affect cognitive functions such as memory, attention, problem-solving, learning, language, and executive function. Cognitive dysfunction ranges from mild impairments (age-related memory decline, mild cognitive impairment) to major…

Cognitive Flexibility(also: Mental Flexibility, Set Shifting, Task Switching)

The executive function that allows a person to adapt their thinking and behavior in response to changing demands, switch between tasks, or consider multiple perspectives simultaneously. Cognitive flexibility is often challenged in autism, ADHD, and other neurodevelopmental…