Glossary

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Communication Breakdown(also: Conversational Breakdown, Communication Failure)

A disruption in conversation where the intended message is not successfully conveyed or understood, leading to confusion, misunderstanding, or loss of conversational coherence. In AAC communication, breakdowns can occur when backchanneling cues are missed (because the partner is…

Communication Burden(also: Burden of Communication, Conversational Burden)

The disproportionate effort that people with communication-related disabilities must exert to participate in conversations, particularly in mixed-ability groups. In the context of Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) individuals, communication burden refers to the repeated need to ask…

Communication Diary(also: Communication Notebook, Communication Book)

A low-tech, typically paper-based personal resource used by individuals with communication difficulties to support daily interactions. Communication diaries may contain written keywords, names, drawings, photographs, collaged objects, and other materials that serve as memory…

Communication Disability(also: Communication Impairment, Complex Communication Needs)

A condition that significantly limits a person's ability to communicate through speech, language, or other conventional means. Communication disabilities can result from neurological conditions (cerebral palsy, stroke, ALS, Parkinson's disease), developmental conditions,…

Communication Impairment(also: CI, Communication Disorder, Communication Disability)

Damage to brain functions responsible for language and memory that impairs the expression and understanding of spoken and written language. Communication impairments can result from neurological disease, stroke, or acquired brain injury, and include conditions such as aphasia…

Communication Partner(also: Conversational Partner, Interaction Partner)

A person who regularly interacts with an AAC user and supports their communication, including family members, caregivers, teachers, therapists, and peers. Communication partners play a critical role in AAC success — they model AAC use, create opportunities for communication,…

Communication Partner(also: CP, Conversation Partner)

A person who communicates with an AAC user, whether through speech, sign, or other means. Communication partners play a critical role in the success of AAC interactions — their willingness to wait, their ability to interpret messages, and their understanding of AAC devices…

Communication Partner Training(also: Conversation Partner Training)

Structured training for the people who regularly communicate with an AAC user — including family members, caregivers, teachers, and peers — to help them support effective communication. Communication partner training teaches strategies such as allowing extra time for AAC…

Communication Privacy Management Theory(also: CPM, CPM Theory)

A communication theory developed by Sandra Petronio that treats private information as something people own and collectively manage through negotiated rules about boundaries, co-ownership, and turbulence (boundary violations). CPM is widely used to analyse online…

Communication Rate(also: Communication Speed)

The speed at which a person can convey messages, typically measured in words per minute (WPM). For AAC users, communication rate is often significantly slower than natural speech (100-200 WPM)—unaided AAC users may achieve only 2-10 WPM with scanning systems, while more advanced…

Communicational Accessibility(also: Communicative Accessibility)

An approach to accessible design that goes beyond providing access to raw content (content accessibility) to preserving the designer's intended communicative strategy across all modalities and for all users. Where content accessibility asks "can the user access the…

Communitas

A sense of community, solidarity, and mutual support that emerges among people sharing a liminal or transitional experience. Coined by anthropologist Victor Turner, communitas describes the bonds formed when individuals navigate uncertain life transitions together. In…

Communities of Practice(also: CoP)

Groups of people who share a concern or passion for something they do and learn how to do it better through regular interaction. In accessibility, communities of practice form around shared experiences of navigating barriers, developing workarounds, creating accessible tools,…

Community Advocate(also: Peer Advocate, AT Champion)

An individual, often a person with a disability or caregiver, who voluntarily promotes awareness of assistive technology programs and resources within their community. Community advocates play a crucial role in expanding the reach of AT services by sharing information through…

Community Based Participatory Research(also: CBPR, Participatory Action Research)

A research methodology that creates equitable partnerships between researchers and community members throughout the entire research process, from defining research questions to disseminating findings. CBPR aims to reduce health and social disparities by ensuring that the people…

Community Care(also: Community-Based Care, Care in the Community)

A policy and practice model in which health and social care services are provided to disabled and elderly people in their own homes or local communities rather than in residential institutions. Community care aims to promote independence, choice, and social inclusion, but can…

Community Center(also: Community Space, Community Hub)

A physical or virtual space where members of a particular community gather for social support, resources, education, and shared activities. In the context of marginalized communities such as LGBTQIA+ individuals and people with disabilities, community centers serve as safe…

Community Health Worker(also: CHW, Lay Health Worker)

A frontline healthcare provider who is a trusted member of the community they serve and who delivers basic health services, education, and referrals, typically with limited formal training. Community health workers extend the reach of formal health systems into homes and…

Community Navigation(also: Community Travel, Community Mobility)

The ability to plan, initiate, and complete trips within one's community, including getting to transit points on time, using public transportation, and accessing services at destinations. For people with cognitive disabilities such as traumatic brain injury, community navigation…

Community Sourcing(also: Community-Driven Accessibility)

An approach to creating accessible content by drawing on community members who have domain expertise or vested interest in the content, rather than relying on professional describers or general crowdworkers. Unlike crowdsourcing, which draws from a broad pool of workers who may…

Community Sustainability(also: Research Sustainability)

The principle that research practices should not deplete, harm, or overburden the communities from which participants are recruited. In accessibility research, community sustainability requires considering the cumulative impact of multiple studies drawing from the same…

Community of Practice(also: CoP)

A group of people who share a common interest or concern and learn together through regular interaction, sharing knowledge, and collaborative problem-solving. In technology adoption contexts, communities of practice form organically when groups such as older adults in…

Community-Based Design(also: Community-Based Participatory Design, CBPD)

A design approach that situates the design process within a specific community, engaging community members as active participants and co-creators rather than passive research subjects. Unlike lab-based user research, community-based design takes place in the community's own…

Community-Based Participatory Research(also: CBPR, Community-based participatory design)

A research orientation in which academic researchers and community members collaborate as equal partners throughout the full research cycle — problem definition, design, data collection, analysis, and dissemination — to address issues of shared concern and produce outcomes that…

Community-Based Rehabilitation(also: CBR)

Community-based rehabilitation (CBR) is a strategy for enhancing the quality of life of people with disabilities by improving service delivery, providing equitable opportunities, and promoting their rights and social inclusion within their own communities. CBR programs operate…

Community-Based Research(also: Community-Based Participatory Research, CBPR)

A research approach that centers the knowledge, priorities, and participation of the community being studied, treating community members as equal partners rather than research subjects. In disability and accessibility research, community-based approaches recognize that disabled…

Community-Centered Design(also: Community-Based Design)

A design approach that centers the expertise, needs, and perspectives of specific communities throughout the technology development process, rather than designing for communities from the outside. In accessibility, community-centered design involves blind and disabled…

Community-Driven Accessibility(also: Crowdsourced Accessibility, Peer-Driven Accessibility)

Accessibility improvements initiated and maintained by community members rather than platform operators or content creators. Examples include viewers adding timestamps and chapter breakdowns in video comments, community members providing alternative text descriptions, users…

Community-Driven Research(also: Community-Based Research, Community-Led Research)

A research approach where the community being studied plays a central role in defining research questions, designing methodologies, collecting data, and interpreting results. In accessibility, community-driven research ensures that disabled communities — particularly those in…

Community-sourcing(also: Community Sourcing, Community-contributed Data)

A data collection approach where members of a specific community contribute information based on their direct experience and local knowledge, as distinct from general crowdsourcing which draws on anonymous, unrelated workers. In accessibility contexts, community-sourcing…

Comorbidity(also: Co-occurring Conditions, Dual Diagnosis)

The simultaneous presence of two or more medical conditions or disorders in the same individual. Comorbidity is extremely common in neurodevelopmental and mental health conditions—for example, ADHD frequently co-occurs with anxiety, depression, autism, learning disabilities, and…

Compassion Fatigue(also: secondary traumatic stress, empathy fatigue)

A state of emotional and physical exhaustion that results from the prolonged exposure to others' suffering, particularly in caregiving contexts. Unlike burnout, which develops gradually from chronic workplace stress, compassion fatigue can emerge rapidly and is characterized by…

Compensatory Technology(also: Compensatory Approach)

Assistive technology designed primarily to offset or make up for a person's functional limitations, focusing on what the person cannot do rather than building on their existing abilities. While compensatory approaches have historically dominated AT design, there is a growing…

Competency-Based Design(also: Competency-Based Approach)

An accessible design methodology that extends ability-based design by focusing on "competencies"—the representative practical skills people develop through participation in everyday activities, particularly mainstream technologies like social media. Unlike ability-based design,…

Complementary Cognition

A theory proposed by Taylor, Fernandes, and Wraight suggesting that the human species has adapted and evolved cognitively to complement each other through cognitive specializations and effective collaboration. Under this framework, different neurological profiles (including…

Complex Adaptive System(also: CAS)

A system composed of many interconnected, diverse components that interact and adapt in response to each other and their environment, producing emergent behaviors that cannot be predicted from the properties of individual parts. Education systems, healthcare systems, and the Web…

Complex Communication Needs(also: CCN)

A term describing the communication challenges faced by individuals who cannot rely on speech alone to meet all their communication needs in daily life. People with complex communication needs may use a combination of speech, gestures, sign language, communication boards, and…

Complex Needs(also: Complex Access Needs, Complex Support Needs)

Complex needs refers to the situation where an individual requires support across multiple areas of functioning due to a combination of physical, sensory, cognitive, communication, or behavioral factors that interact in ways that make standard single-impairment approaches…

Composite Figure(also: Multi-panel Figure, Multi-element Figure)

A figure that contains multiple distinct visual elements combined into a single image, such as a series of screenshots labeled (a) through (f), a set of charts showing different data sets, or a mix of photographs and diagrams. Composite figures present a significant…

Compound Controls(also: Composite Widgets, Complex Controls)

User interface components that combine multiple interactive elements into a single logical control, such as a group of radio buttons, a set of checkboxes with a shared label, a combobox (combining a text input with a dropdown list), or a date picker with multiple fields.…

Compound Document(also: Compound Web Document, Multi-format Document)

A compound document is a single deliverable that seamlessly combines content in multiple formats — for example, an HTML page that embeds a Flash movie, an SVG graphic, an MathML expression, and a video player — each with its own internal document object model. Compound documents…

Compound Sign(also: Compound Word)

A sign formed by combining two or more existing signs into a single, unified sign with its own distinct meaning. In American Sign Language and other sign languages, compound signs undergo phonological changes where the component signs may be shortened, blended, or modified when…

Comprehensibility(also: Comprehension, Intelligibility)

The degree to which users can understand and retain the key elements of content, including events, characters, actions, settings, and narrative progression. In audio-described media for visually impaired users, comprehensibility measures how effectively the audio presentation…

Comprehensive Attention Test(also: CAT)

A computer-based, clinically validated battery for assessing multiple attention capacities in children and adolescents. It measures sub-components including visual and auditory selective attention, sustained attention, inhibition-sustained attention, and interference-selective…

Compromised Agency

A concept from science and technology studies describing situations where an individual's capacity to make meaningful choices is structurally constrained by systemic forces beyond their control, even as they retain some degree of decision-making power. In assistive technology…

Compulsion(also: Compulsive Behavior, Ritual)

Repetitive behaviors or mental acts that a person feels driven to perform in response to an obsession or according to rigid rules, aimed at reducing anxiety or preventing a feared outcome. Compulsions can be overt physical behaviors (hand washing, checking locks, ordering…

Compulsory Able-Bodiedness(also: Compulsory Ableness)

A concept from disability studies scholar Robert McRuer describing the pervasive social assumption that all people should aspire to and perform able-bodiedness as the default, desirable state. Like compulsory heterosexuality, compulsory able-bodiedness operates as an invisible…

Computational Notebook(also: Jupyter Notebook, Data Science Notebook, IPython Notebook)

A computational notebook is an interactive document that combines executable code, rich text, data visualizations, and narrative explanations in a single shareable format. Widely used in data science, research, and education through platforms like Jupyter, Google Colab, and…

Computational Thinking(also: Algorithmic Thinking)

A problem-solving approach that involves breaking complex problems into smaller steps, identifying patterns, abstracting details, and designing step-by-step solutions—similar to how a computer processes instructions. In the context of smart home accessibility, computational…

Computer Anxiety(also: Technophobia, Computer Phobia, Technology Anxiety)

Negative emotions and cognition processes — including fear, intimidation, apprehension, and hostility — evoked during actual or imagined interaction with computer-based technology. Computer Anxiety is a significant accessibility barrier particularly prevalent among older adults…