Glossary

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Digital Ruler(also: Reading Ruler, Line Guide)

A digital tool that constrains the visible area of text to specific lines or paragraphs, reducing visual crowding and helping readers maintain focus on the current reading position. Digital rulers are analogous to physical reading rulers or overlays used by people with dyslexia.…

Digital Scaffolding(also: Inclusive Digital Scaffolding)

An educational framework that applies Vygotsky's scaffolding theory to the acquisition of digital skills by people with disabilities, particularly in low-and-middle-income countries. Digital scaffolding structures learning through four zones: the Out of Reach Zone (baseline…

Digital Self-Efficacy(also: Technology Self-Efficacy, Computer Self-Efficacy)

An individual's belief in their ability to effectively use digital technologies to accomplish tasks. Digital self-efficacy influences how people approach technology challenges, persist through difficulties, and recover from errors. For people with progressive cognitive…

Digital Services Act(also: DSA)

A European Union regulation (Regulation (EU) 2022/2065) that governs online intermediaries and platforms, including social networks, online marketplaces, and content-sharing services. Among many provisions, the DSA prohibits online platforms from designing, organising, or…

Digital Sheet Music(also: Electronic Sheet Music)

Musical scores displayed on electronic devices such as tablets, computers, or head-mounted displays rather than printed on paper. Digital sheet music offers accessibility advantages over print including the ability to magnify, adjust colors and contrast, invert colors for better…

Digital Signal Processor(also: DSP)

A specialised microprocessor designed to perform mathematical operations on digital signals in real time, such as filtering, compression, and pattern recognition. In assistive technology, DSPs are used in hearing aids to process and amplify sound, in speech recognition systems,…

Digital Skills Training(also: Digital Literacy Training, ICT Skills Training)

Structured instruction in using digital technologies effectively, including basic device operation, internet navigation, application use, and accessibility feature configuration. For people with disabilities in low-resource settings, digital skills training is often as important…

Digital Stimming(also: Digital self-stimulation)

The deliberate, controlled engagement with digital content — typically apps, videos, or sites commonly labeled as 'distracting' — as a self-regulatory or soothing behavior, analogous to physical stimming (repetitive self-soothing actions recognized in neurodivergent…

Digital Storytelling(also: Multimedia Storytelling, Personal Digital Narrative)

The use of digital media — including photographs, video clips, audio recordings, and text — to create and share personal narratives. In the context of accessibility and AAC, digital storytelling offers an alternative to text-based and real-time spoken communication, allowing…

Digital Surveillance(also: Online Surveillance)

The monitoring, tracking, and collection of data about individuals through digital technologies, including by governments, corporations, and other institutions. For disabled people, digital surveillance creates specific accessibility concerns: assistive technology data may…

Digital Talking Book(also: DTB, DAISY Digital Talking Book, Talking book)

A multimedia document format that synchronises text, audio narration, and navigation structure to provide accessible reading experiences for people who are blind, have low vision, or have print disabilities. Based on the DAISY (Digital Accessible Information System) standard,…

Digital Television(also: DTV, Digital TV, iTV)

Television broadcasting and receiving technology that uses digital signals rather than analogue, enabling additional features such as interactive services, electronic programme guides, on-demand content, and multiple channel packages. Digital television accessibility is a…

Digital Twin

A digital twin is a virtual replica of a physical object, space, or system that is updated in real time to mirror its real-world counterpart. In accessibility contexts, digital twins of physical environments can enable remote exploration and interaction with spaces — allowing…

Digital Well-Being(also: Digital wellbeing, Digital wellness)

A field of research, design, and consumer technology focused on supporting healthy, intentional relationships between people and their devices. Digital well-being spans screen-time tracking, attention management, notification control, distraction blockers, intentional-use…

Digital Whiteboard(also: Online whiteboard, Virtual whiteboard, Collaborative whiteboard)

A web- or app-based collaborative canvas (e.g., Miro, FigJam, Mural, Google Jamboard) that lets multiple users co-create content on an effectively boundless surface using sticky notes, sketches, shapes, images, and connectors. Digital whiteboards have become central to remote…

Digital accessibility for ageing(also: Age-related accessibility, Accessible ageing, Senior accessibility)

The practice of designing digital technologies that remain usable as people experience age-related changes in vision (presbyopia, contrast sensitivity loss, cataracts), hearing (presbycusis), motor control (reduced dexterity, tremor), cognition (slower processing, working memory…

Digital by Default(also: Digital-first, Digital-only)

A public-sector service design strategy, formalised in the UK from 2012, that treats online channels as the primary (and often sole) means of accessing government services, with phone and in-person support positioned as exceptional fallbacks. While framed as delivering…

Digital divide(also: Digital gap, Digital inequality)

The disparity between individuals, households, or communities in access to, use of, and benefits from information and communication technologies. For older adults and people with disabilities, the digital divide encompasses not just access to hardware and internet connectivity,…

Digital fabrication(also: Fab, Digital manufacturing)

The process of creating physical objects from digital designs using computer-controlled tools such as 3D printers, laser cutters, and CNC machines. In accessibility contexts, digital fabrication enables the creation of customised assistive devices tailored to individual needs —…

Digital literacy(also: Digital competence, Technology literacy)

The ability to find, evaluate, use, create, and communicate information using digital technologies, encompassing both technical skills (operating devices, using software) and critical thinking (evaluating online information, understanding privacy). Digital literacy is a…

Digital mental health(also: E-mental health, Digital therapeutics)

The use of digital technologies including AI chatbots, mood tracking apps, and online therapeutic platforms to support mental health assessment, monitoring, and intervention. Designing accessible and explainable AI for digital mental health is particularly challenging because…

Digitized Assessment(also: Digitised Assessment, Digital Hiring Assessment, Computer-Based Employment Assessment)

A computer-based hiring test used by employers to evaluate candidates' personality, cognition, skills, or judgement. Common formats include personality inventories, gamified cognitive tasks (balloon-inflating risk tests, Flanker attention tasks, arithmetic mini-games),…

Dignity of risk(also: Right to risk)

A disability rights principle, articulated by Robert Perske in 1972, asserting that people with disabilities have the right to make self-directed choices that involve risk, including the freedom to fail and learn from experience. In technology contexts, the dignity of risk…

Dimensionality Reduction(also: Dimension Reduction, UMAP, t-SNE)

Dimensionality reduction is a class of machine learning techniques that transform high-dimensional data — such as the vector embeddings produced by neural networks — into lower-dimensional representations (typically 2D or 3D) that can be visualised and explored by humans. Common…

Dinner Table Syndrome

The social and emotional isolation experienced by deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals in hearing family settings where spoken language is the primary mode of communication. Named for the common experience of sitting at a family dinner table surrounded by conversation one cannot…

Diphone(also: Diphone Synthesis)

A unit of speech used in text-to-speech synthesis, consisting of the transition from the middle of one phoneme to the middle of the next. Diphone-based synthesis works by recording a set of all possible phoneme-to-phoneme transitions in a language and concatenating the…

Diplegia(also: Spastic Diplegia)

A form of paralysis or weakness affecting corresponding parts on both sides of the body, most commonly both legs. Spastic diplegia is one of the most common forms of cerebral palsy, where muscle stiffness primarily affects the lower extremities while upper body function may be…

Direct Discrimination

A form of unlawful discrimination where a person is treated less favorably than others because of a protected characteristic such as disability, race, or sex. Under UK and EU equality law, direct discrimination occurs when the unfavorable treatment is explicitly motivated by the…

Direct Machine Translation(also: Direct MT, Dictionary-Based Machine Translation)

The simplest machine-translation paradigm: source-language words are translated into target-language words using a bilingual dictionary, with limited or no syntactic analysis and only shallow reordering heuristics. Direct MT is cheap to build and always produces some output, but…

Direct Manipulation(also: Direct Manipulation Interface, DMI)

An interaction style in human-computer interfaces where users directly act on visible objects rather than issuing commands. Key characteristics include continuous representation of objects, physical actions instead of complex syntax, and immediately visible results. Examples…

Direct Speech Access(also: Speech-Enabling)

An approach to providing speech output where applications generate spoken feedback directly from their semantic context, as opposed to the traditional screen-reading approach where an external program interprets the visual display. In direct speech access, each application has…

Direct Touch Mapping(also: DTM, Touch-to-Audio Mapping)

An interaction technique in accessible touchscreen interfaces where the physical position of a user's finger on the screen corresponds directly to a position within the underlying content, such as a data visualization. When applied to chart accessibility, direct touch mapping…

Directed graph(also: Digraph)

A mathematical structure consisting of nodes connected by edges that have a defined direction — the connection from A to B is distinct from the connection from B to A. Web navigation is modelled as a directed graph: a hyperlink from page A to page B does not imply a link back…

Direction-Based Navigation(also: Directional Navigation, Direction-Based Cursor Control)

A cursor control method where users issue directional commands such as "move left," "move up," or "move down" to reposition the cursor on screen. In speech-based implementations, these commands move the cursor continuously or in fixed increments. Direction-based navigation is…

Directional Guidance(also: Navigation Guidance, Orientation Feedback)

Real-time feedback that helps users maintain correct positioning or navigate toward a target, commonly provided through audio cues (such as pitch changes) or haptic signals (such as vibration patterns). In accessible reading systems, directional guidance indicates when a user…

Directional Stimulus Prompting(also: DSP)

A prompt engineering technique for large language models that provides specific keywords or directional stimuli to guide the model toward generating output focused on particular aspects or attributes. In accessibility applications, DSP is used to produce targeted,…

DisCrit(also: Disability Critical Race Studies, Dis/ability Critical Race Studies)

DisCrit (Disability Critical Race Studies) is a theoretical framework that merges Disability Studies with Critical Race Theory to analyze how racism and ableism are interdependent systems that work together to marginalize people at the intersection of race and disability.…

Disability

A complex, multidimensional concept encompassing physical, sensory, cognitive, and psychosocial differences that interact with societal barriers to limit full participation. The social model of disability distinguishes between impairment (a bodily difference) and disability (the…

Disability Aesthetics

A discourse related to reclaiming the visibility of disability in mainstream art, particularly visual and performance arts, through the depiction of disabled bodies as both beautiful and inspiring. Unlike disability art, disability aesthetics does not necessarily carry a social…

Disability Art(also: Disability Arts)

Artistic work created by disabled artists that is specifically informed by their experience of disability, often rooted in the social dynamics of identity, disability culture, and the struggle for disability justice and equality. Disability art is distinct from art therapy…

Disability Arts(also: Disability Art, Crip Art)

A cultural and artistic movement in which disabled artists create work that draws on, reflects, and is informed by their lived experience of disability. Disability arts encompasses visual art, performance, music, theatre, dance, and digital media, and is distinct from art…

Disability Awareness(also: Disability Awareness Training)

The understanding and recognition of the experiences, challenges, and rights of people with disabilities. Disability awareness encompasses knowledge of different types of disabilities, the barriers (physical, digital, attitudinal, and systemic) that people with disabilities…

Disability Community(also: Disabled Community)

A group of people connected by shared experiences of disability who may share culture, identity, advocacy goals, and mutual support networks. Disability communities can be organized around specific conditions (e.g., the Deaf community, the blind community), broader disability…

Disability Culture(also: Crip Culture)

Disability culture encompasses the shared experiences, values, art, language, humor, and traditions that have developed among people with disabilities as a distinct social group. It includes disability art, literature, music, film, and performance, as well as communal practices…

Disability Disclosure(also: Self-Disclosure, Disability Identity Disclosure)

The act of revealing one's disability status to others, including employers, educators, peers, or service providers. Disability disclosure is a complex, strategic decision influenced by stigma, fear of negative perception, institutional culture, and the nature of the disability…

Disability Disclosure(also: Disclosure)

The act of revealing information about one's disability to others, whether voluntarily or through necessity. Disclosure decisions are complex, involving considerations of privacy, safety, accommodation needs, social acceptance, and legal protections. People with invisible…

Disability Divide(also: Digital Disability Divide)

The sociotechnical disparity between people with and without disabilities in terms of access to, use of, and benefits from digital technologies. While digitalization has transformed work, education, and daily life, many digital systems remain inaccessible or insufficiently…

Disability Dongle

A term coined by disability advocate Liz Jackson describing a well-intentioned but ultimately useless technology solution created for disabled people by non-disabled people who have not engaged with the community they intend to serve. Disability dongles are typically conceived…

Disability Employment(also: Disability and Employment)

The broad domain encompassing how disability intersects with employment, including hiring discrimination, workplace accommodations, underemployment, employment gaps, and alternative work arrangements. Disabled people face persistent employment disparities, with significantly…

Disability Employment Gap(also: Employment Disparity)

The significant difference in employment rates between people with and without disabilities. Statistics consistently show that people with disabilities are employed at roughly half the rate of non-disabled people — for example, 34.4% versus 75.4% in the United States (2015…