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Shared Mobility(also: Shared Transportation)

Transportation services in which vehicles, rides, or trips are shared among multiple users, including ridesharing (Uber, Lyft), carsharing (Zipcar), bikesharing, scooter-sharing, microtransit, and — increasingly — autonomous-vehicle shuttles. Shared mobility is relevant to…

Shared Movement(also: Linked Locomotion, Guided Movement)

A virtual reality interaction technique that allows one user to move through a virtual environment by attaching to or following another user's avatar, inspired by the physical sighted guide technique used by blind and low vision people. In shared movement, a user can grab a…

Shared Reality(also: Shared Realities)

Shared reality is the experience of a common inner state - thoughts, feelings, or perceptions about an object or situation - between two or more people, established through communication and mutual acknowledgement. In dementia care and accessibility research, sustaining shared…

Shared Visual Attention(also: Collective Visual Attention, Visual Joint Attention)

A core feature of Deaf-centred interaction in which all participants coordinate their gaze, body orientation, and signing space so everyone can see the current signer, referenced content, and each other. Shared visual attention is foundational to Deaf pedagogy and DeafSpace…

Shared control(also: Collaborative control, Blended control)

A control paradigm in assistive technology where input from multiple sources — such as a wheelchair user and a companion, or a user and an autonomous system — is combined to produce a single action. Shared control enables collaborative interaction that can adapt to the user's…

Sheet Music(also: Musical Score, Written Music)

A printed or digital document that uses musical notation to represent a musical composition, showing pitch, rhythm, dynamics, and other performance instructions through standardized symbols on a staff. Reading sheet music while playing (sight-reading) is fundamental to musical…

Sheltered Employment(also: Sheltered Workshop, Sheltered Work)

A form of employment in which people with disabilities work in a segregated setting, separate from the general labour market, typically under supervised conditions and often for below-minimum wage. Sheltered workshops were historically the primary employment model for people…

Sheltered Employment(also: Sheltered Work, Sheltered Workshop, Protected Employment)

A model of employment where people with disabilities work in a controlled environment specifically designed to accommodate their needs, typically with lower productivity expectations and specialized supervision. Sheltered work organizations provide employment opportunities for…

Shepard Tone(also: Shepard Scale, Shepard-Risset Glissando)

A psychoacoustic auditory illusion created by layering sine waves separated by octaves, producing the paradoxical perception of a tone that continuously rises (or falls) in pitch indefinitely, yet cycles back without apparent discontinuity. Named after cognitive scientist Roger…

Shift-Left Accessibility(also: Early-Stage Accessibility, Accessibility by Design)

An approach to software development that moves accessibility considerations earlier in the development lifecycle — from testing and remediation phases to requirements gathering and design phases. The term borrows from the broader "shift-left" movement in software engineering,…

Shoreline(also: Shoreline Technique, Trailing)

In orientation and mobility, a shoreline refers to a consistent edge or boundary that a blind traveler follows for orientation and navigation. This can include the edge where a wall meets the floor, the border between grass and pavement, a fence line, or the curb of a sidewalk.…

Shoreline Technique(also: Trailing, Edge Following)

An orientation and mobility technique used by people who are blind or have low vision in which the traveler follows a consistent edge or boundary — such as the edge of a sidewalk, a wall, a fence line, or the border between grass and pavement — to maintain orientation and stay…

Shorelining(also: Trailing)

An orientation and mobility technique in which a person with a visual impairment follows a consistent surface edge — such as a wall, curb, edge of a sidewalk, or other contrasting surface — to maintain a specific orientation and navigate through an environment. The technique…

Short-Form Video Content(also: SFVC, Short-Form Content, SFC)

Brief video content, typically 15–60 seconds long, presented in portrait orientation and consumed via infinite vertical scroll on platforms such as TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, Facebook Reels, and Douyin. The format has become an important information and community…

Short-Term Memory(also: STM, Immediate Memory)

The cognitive system that temporarily holds small amounts of information (typically 7±2 items) for brief periods, usually less than 30 seconds without rehearsal. Short-term memory is distinct from working memory, which involves actively manipulating information. Many cognitive…

Shoulder Surfing

A form of visual eavesdropping where an attacker observes a person entering sensitive information such as passwords, PINs, or personal data by looking over their shoulder or from a nearby vantage point. Shoulder surfing is a particularly significant security concern for people…

Shutdown(also: Autistic Shutdown)

A response to overwhelming sensory, emotional, or cognitive input in which an autistic person withdraws or retreats from their environment. Unlike meltdowns (which are outward expressions of distress), shutdowns involve a reduction in communication, interaction, and…

Sidewalk Accessibility(also: Pedestrian Accessibility, Walkway Accessibility)

Sidewalk accessibility refers to the degree to which pedestrian pathways and related infrastructure — including sidewalks, curb ramps, crosswalks, and pedestrian signals — can be safely and independently used by people with disabilities, particularly those with mobility…

SigLIP(also: Sigmoid Loss for Language Image Pre-Training)

A vision-language model that uses sigmoid loss instead of contrastive loss for aligning images with text descriptions. SigLIP improves upon CLIP by using a more efficient training objective that computes image-text similarity without requiring large batch sizes. In accessibility…

Sight Reading(also: Sight-Reading, Prima Vista)

The practice of performing music from a written score without prior rehearsal or familiarity with the piece. Sight reading is a core skill in many musical contexts, particularly classical music, orchestral auditions, and freelance performance work. For musicians with low vision,…

Sight-Reading(also: Sight Reading)

The ability to read and perform music from a written score for the first time, without prior practice or memorization. Sight-reading requires simultaneously decoding musical notation and executing it on an instrument in real time, making it one of the most demanding musical…

Sighted Assistance(also: Visual Interpreting, Remote Sighted Assistance)

Sighted assistance refers to services that connect blind or low-vision individuals with sighted people who can provide visual information on demand, typically through a live video call from a smartphone or smart glasses. Services like Be My Eyes (volunteer-based) and Aira…

Sighted Assistant(also: Sighted Guide, Visual Interpreter)

A sighted person who provides support to blind or low vision participants during design workshops, research activities, or other collaborative tasks. In accessible design contexts, sighted assistants help with tasks like locating materials, reading printed information,…

Sighted Bias(also: Visual Bias, Ocularcentrism)

The tendency in technology design to privilege sighted ways of perceiving and understanding the world, often unconsciously centering visual sensibilities in interfaces, descriptions, and assessment criteria. In accessibility contexts, sighted bias manifests when designers create…

Sighted Braille Learner(also: Visual Braille Learner)

A person with typical vision who learns to read and write braille, usually for professional or personal reasons such as teaching blind students or supporting a blind family member. Sighted braille learners process braille visually rather than tactilely, which creates a…

Sighted Guide(also: Sighted Guide Technique, Human Guide)

A technique in which a sighted person assists a blind or low vision individual with navigation and orientation by serving as a visual reference and mobility aid. In physical settings, the blind person typically holds the guide's arm just above the elbow and walks a half-step…

Sighted Memory(also: Visual Memory, Sighted Recall)

A mental representation of a physical environment developed through past visual experience, used by people who lose their sight later in life to navigate and understand spaces they previously knew visually. People with acquired vision loss often rely on sighted memory to recall…

Sighted People Interference(also: Sighted Interference)

A social barrier experienced by blind and visually impaired people when sighted individuals's reactions, interventions, or presence impede their independent activities in public spaces. This can include unsolicited help, judgmental reactions from store staff or other shoppers,…

Sighted-Centric Design(also: Vision-Centric Design)

Design approaches and practices that privilege sighted sensemaking and marginalize blind and non-visual ways of relating to the world. Sighted-centered design produces technologies, interfaces, and descriptive standards that assume visual perception as the default mode of…

Sign Duration(also: Sign Speed, Signing Speed)

The average time spent performing individual signs during sign language production, typically measured in seconds. Sign duration is a key parameter in sign language animation that affects both understandability and user satisfaction. Research has shown that DHH users of ASL…

Sign Language

A visual-gestural language system that uses hand shapes, movements, body language, and facial expressions to convey meaning. Sign languages are complete, natural languages with their own grammar and vocabulary and are not visual representations of spoken languages. There are…

Sign Language Classifier(also: Classifier Sign, Depicting Sign, Classifier Predicate)

A type of sign in sign languages that is not part of a fixed vocabulary but is created dynamically during discourse to represent a class of objects sharing a common shape, size, or physical characteristic. Classifiers function as "super-pronouns" — they replace and describe…

Sign Language Corpus(also: ASL Corpus, Signed Language Corpus)

A structured collection of recorded signed-language performances — typically video, and increasingly motion-capture data — annotated by expert signers with time-stamped linguistic information such as individual signs, non-manual markers, eye gaze, grammatical boundaries, and…

Sign Language Dictionary(also: SL Dictionary, ASL Dictionary)

A reference tool that allows users to look up signs in a sign language, providing video demonstrations, definitions, and usage examples. Sign language dictionaries can be organized by English gloss (word-based lookup), linguistic features (handshape, location, movement), or…

Sign Language Generation(also: Sign Language Synthesis, Signing Generation)

The automatic production of sign language content, typically through computer-generated animations of signing avatars or video synthesis. Sign language generation systems convert text or symbolic representations of signs into visual output, often using motion-capture data,…

Sign Language Interface(also: Sign-language interface, Signing interface)

A computing interface that accepts input from, or presents output to, a user in a signed language such as American Sign Language (ASL) or British Sign Language (BSL), rather than assuming a spoken or written language. Sign-language interfaces span sign-language recognition…

Sign Language Interpretation(also: Sign Language Interpreting, SLI)

The process of conveying spoken or written language into a sign language (or vice versa) by a trained interpreter, enabling communication access for Deaf and hard of hearing individuals. In digital media and immersive environments, sign language interpretation is typically…

Sign Language Interpreter(also: SLI, Interpreter)

A professional who facilitates communication between Deaf or hard of hearing individuals and hearing individuals by translating between a sign language and a spoken language. Interpreters must be fluent in both languages and understand the cultural norms of both communities. In…

Sign Language Interpreting(also: Sign Language Interpretation, ASL Interpreting)

The professional practice of translating bidirectionally between a signed language (such as American Sign Language) and a spoken language (such as English) to facilitate communication between Deaf or Hard-of-Hearing individuals and hearing people. Sign language interpreters are…

Sign Language Learning(also: Sign Language Education, Sign Language Acquisition)

The process by which people learn a sign language as a first or second language, through instruction, immersion, or self-directed study. For hearing second-language learners, reading back fingerspelling and comprehending fast, connected signing are reported as the hardest skills…

Sign Language Machine Translation(also: English-to-ASL Translation, Sign Language MT, Text-to-Sign Translation)

The automatic translation of written or spoken text into a signed language (or vice versa) using computational methods, typically producing output as an animated signing avatar or, less commonly, as recorded video clips. Because signed languages such as American Sign Language…

Sign Language Phonology

The study of the smallest meaningful units that make up signs in signed languages, analogous to phonemes in spoken languages. In American Sign Language, signs are composed of phonological parameters including handshape, movement, location (place of articulation), and non-manual…

Sign Language Processing(also: SLP, Sign Language Technology)

A field of artificial intelligence and computer science focused on developing computational systems that can understand, generate, and translate sign languages. Sign language processing encompasses sign language recognition (detecting and interpreting signs from video input),…

Sign Language Recognition(also: SLR, Automatic Sign Recognition)

A computer vision and machine learning task focused on automatically detecting and classifying signs from video input. Sign language recognition ranges from isolated sign recognition (identifying individual signs) to continuous sign recognition (interpreting sequences of signs…

Sign Language Synthesis(also: Sign Language Generation, Sign Language Avatar, Signing Avatar)

Sign language synthesis is the automated generation of sign language output, typically through 3D animated avatars or computer graphics, from text or other input. The technology involves translating written or spoken language into the grammar, vocabulary, and spatial expressions…

Sign Language Translation(also: SLT, Sign-to-Text Translation, Sign-to-Speech Translation)

The task of converting between a sign language and a spoken or written language, in either direction. Sign-to-spoken/written translation (e.g., ASL to English) involves recognizing signs from video and producing equivalent text or speech. Spoken/written-to-sign translation…

Sign Language Video(also: Sign Language Interpretation Video)

Pre-recorded or live video content presenting information in sign language, used to augment or replace written text for deaf and hard of hearing users. In reading support contexts, sign language videos have been explored as visual augmentations to text, providing sign…

Sign Language Writing System(also: Sign Language Script, Sign Language Notation, Sign Language Character System)

A system of symbols or characters designed to represent sign language in written form. Unlike spoken languages, which have well-established writing systems, sign languages generally lack a standard written form — meaning the approximately 70 million people worldwide who use sign…

Sign Linguistics(also: Sign Language Linguistics)

The scientific study of the structure and properties of sign languages. Sign linguistics examines the phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic components of visual-gestural languages. Key parameters studied include handshape (approximately 90 distinct configurations…

Sign Name(also: ASL name sign, Name sign)

A unique sign in American Sign Language (or another signed language) used to uniquely identify an individual person or, in some proposals, an object or device, in place of fingerspelling their English name. Sign names are culturally significant in Deaf communities and are…