Glossary

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Broad-Shallow Interface(also: Broad-Shallow UI, Single-Page Interface)

A user interface design pattern that presents a large amount of information on fewer screens, typically requiring scrolling to view all content. Most mainstream apps, including Google Calendar, use this approach. While efficient for experienced users who can quickly scan and…

Broadening Participation in Computing(also: BPC)

A term of art, promoted heavily by the U.S. National Science Foundation and professional societies such as ACM, referring to concerted efforts to increase the participation of groups that are historically underrepresented in computing — including women, people of color, people…

Broca's Aphasia(also: Nonfluent Aphasia, Expressive Aphasia, Motor Aphasia)

A type of aphasia caused by damage to Broca's area in the left frontal lobe of the brain, typically resulting from stroke. People with Broca's aphasia have difficulty producing speech and writing but generally retain good comprehension of spoken and written language. Their…

Browser Accessibility(also: Accessible Browsing, Web Browser Accessibility)

The degree to which web browsers themselves are usable by people with disabilities and age-related impairments, distinct from the accessibility of web content. Browser accessibility encompasses built-in features such as text zoom, high contrast modes, keyboard navigation, screen…

Browser Developer Tools(also: DevTools, Web Inspector, Developer Console)

Built-in browser utilities that allow web developers to inspect, debug, and modify web pages in real-time. Features include DOM inspection, CSS editing, JavaScript debugging, network monitoring, and performance profiling. Major browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge) include…

Browser Extension(also: Browser Plugin, Browser Add-On)

A software module that adds functionality to a web browser, typically installed from a browser's extension store. Browser extensions are a common delivery mechanism for accessibility tools because they can modify webpage content and behavior without requiring changes to the…

Browser Extension Accessibility(also: Accessible Browser Extension, Assistive Browser Extension)

The design and development of web browser extensions that either enhance the accessibility of existing web content or are themselves fully accessible to users of assistive technologies. Assistive browser extensions can augment web pages with additional accessible content,…

Browser Fingerprinting(also: Device Fingerprinting, Canvas Fingerprinting)

A technique used to identify and track users based on the unique characteristics of their web browser and device configuration, including installed plugins, screen resolution, fonts, and accessibility settings. Browser fingerprinting poses privacy concerns for assistive…

Browser Helper Object(also: BHO)

A plugin module for web browsers (originally Internet Explorer) that loads with each browser instance and has access to the Document Object Model and browser events. In accessibility contexts, BHOs have been used to implement client-side web page transformations such as text…

Browsing Fatigue(also: Navigation Fatigue, Screen Reader Fatigue)

Physical and cognitive exhaustion experienced by users — particularly screen reader users and those with motor impairments — when navigating web content through repetitive, effortful interactions. For blind screen reader users, browsing fatigue results from excessive keyboard…

Brushing and Linking(also: Brush and Link, Linked Highlighting)

An interactive visualization technique where selecting or highlighting data in one chart automatically highlights the corresponding data in other linked charts within a dashboard. For example, clicking a bar in a bar chart might highlight the same data points in an adjacent…

Brute-Force Fallback(also: Reset Strategy, Exhaustive Recovery)

A workaround strategy employed by assistive technology users when standard interaction methods fail, involving systematically trying all available options or completely restarting a task from a known good state. Brute-force fallbacks are particularly common among screen reader…

Bubble Cursor(also: Dynamic Cursor, Area Cursor)

An enhanced pointing technique that dynamically resizes the cursor's activation area to make target selection easier, particularly for users with motor impairments. The bubble cursor expands to encompass the nearest target, effectively enlarging the clickable region without…

Bubble Cursor(also: Area Cursor, Enhanced Area Cursor)

An assistive pointing technique where the cursor's activation area is dynamically enlarged to make it easier to select targets on screen. Rather than requiring precise pixel-level accuracy, a bubble cursor expands its clickable region, effectively reducing the precision needed…

Buddy Button

A widely used commercial assistive technology switch manufactured by AbleNet, designed for single-switch access to computers, communication devices, and adapted toys. Buddy Buttons are large, colorful, easy-to-activate mechanical switches that can be positioned on various body…

Bug Report(also: Defect Report, Issue Report)

A structured document submitted to a bug tracking system that describes a software defect, including steps to reproduce, expected behavior, and actual behavior. In the accessibility context, bug reports are a critical mechanism for users with disabilities and developers to…

Bug Repository(also: Bug Tracker, Issue Tracker, Bug Tracking System)

A software system used to record, track, and manage bug reports throughout their lifecycle. Popular examples include Bugzilla, Jira, GitHub Issues, and Monorail (used by Google Chromium). Bug repositories serve as archives of defect information and are valuable for research into…

Built environment

The human-made surroundings that provide the setting for daily activity, encompassing buildings, streets, sidewalks, parks, transit systems, and all other constructed infrastructure. In accessibility, the built environment is a primary source of disabling barriers — missing curb…

Bus stop accessibility(also: Accessible bus stops, Bus stop landmarks)

The design, infrastructure, and information features that make bus stops findable, identifiable, and usable by people with disabilities. For blind and low-vision riders, bus stop accessibility depends heavily on the presence of detectable physical landmarks such as shelters,…

Busyness(also: Activity Level, Activity Intensity)

In the telecare literature, busyness is a coarse-grained measure of overall domestic activity — typically the count of ambient sensor firings per room per time period — used as a proxy for a resident's level of engagement with their home environment, without attempting to…

Bystander privacy(also: Third-party privacy, Incidental privacy)

The privacy concerns of people who are unintentionally captured or observed by technology being used by others. In the context of assistive technology, bystander privacy refers to the rights and concerns of sighted people who may be recorded, analyzed, or described by…

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…