Glossary

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Emotional Mediation Hypothesis

A theoretical account, originating in work by Palmer and colleagues, that explains cross-modal associations between sensory attributes (such as colors and musical timbres) as being mediated by shared emotional meaning rather than by direct perceptual mapping. For example, people…

Emotional Regulation(also: Emotion Regulation, Affect Regulation)

The ability to manage, modify, and respond to emotional experiences in ways that are situationally appropriate and aligned with one's goals. Emotional regulation is a significant challenge for people with ADHD, who may experience heightened emotional reactivity, difficulty…

Emotional Safety(also: Psychological Safety)

A condition in which individuals feel secure enough to participate, take risks, and make mistakes without fear of embarrassment, judgment, or social stigma. In accessible learning environments, emotional safety is critical for people with disabilities who may feel self-conscious…

Emotional regulation(also: Emotion regulation, Affect regulation, Self-regulation)

The ability to monitor, evaluate, and modify emotional responses to meet situational demands and personal goals. Emotional regulation is often challenging for people with ADHD, autism, anxiety, and other neurodivergent or mental health conditions. Assistive strategies and…

Empathetic technical support(also: Humanizing tech support)

Technical assistance that combines practical problem-solving with emotional attunement to the user's affective state, particularly important when supporting disabled users who may experience frustration, anxiety, or overwhelm from technology difficulties. In educational…

Empathy(also: Empathic design, User empathy)

In the context of human-centered design and accessibility, empathy refers to the capacity to understand and share the experiences, needs, emotions, and challenges of users who differ from the designer in ability, age, background, or context. Empathy is a foundational competency…

Empathy Lab(also: Accessibility Lab, Assistive Technology Lab, AT Lab)

A dedicated physical or virtual space where designers, developers, and other team members can experience digital products using assistive technologies and simulations of various disabilities. Empathy labs typically include screen readers, switch devices, eye-tracking systems,…

Empathy Simulation(also: Disability Simulation, Impairment Simulation)

A design technique where non-disabled people temporarily simulate a disability experience — such as wearing a blindfold, using a wheelchair, or restricting hand movement — to develop empathy and understanding for people with disabilities. While widely used in design education…

Empathy Tools(also: Empathy Aids, Empathy-building Tools, Age Suits)

Empathy tools are physical or digital artefacts designed to give non-disabled designers a limited first-hand experience of specific impairments or ageing effects — cataract-simulating goggles, blurring film overlays, age suits that add weight and restrict joint movement,…

Empathy in Design(also: Design Empathy, Empathic Design)

Empathy in design refers to the ability and practice of understanding and sharing the feelings, perspectives, and experiences of the people who will use a product or service. In accessibility contexts, empathy involves recognizing the challenges faced by people with disabilities…

Employee Onboarding Accessibility(also: Accessible Onboarding, Inclusive Onboarding)

The practice of ensuring that the employee onboarding process — including signing contracts, completing HR forms, accessing web portals, and orientation activities — is fully accessible to people with disabilities. Inaccessible onboarding systems frequently use mouse-dependent…

Employment Accessibility(also: Workplace Accessibility, Job Accessibility, Accessible Employment)

The broad concept of ensuring that all aspects of finding, applying for, interviewing for, and performing a job are accessible to people with disabilities. Employment accessibility encompasses accessible job postings, application systems, interview accommodations, pre-employment…

Employment Discrimination(also: Workplace Discrimination, Hiring Discrimination)

Unjust or unequal treatment of workers or job seekers on the basis of protected characteristics including disability, age, race, gender, religion, national origin, or sexual orientation. In the United States, disability-based employment discrimination is covered by the Americans…

Empowerment

A process through which individuals with disabilities gain control over their own lives, make informed decisions, and develop the skills, knowledge, and confidence to advocate for themselves. In accessibility and disability contexts, empowerment involves shifting power dynamics…

Emulated Empathy

Emulated empathy is the design strategy, central to AI companion systems, of producing interactional cues - attentive language, affective mirroring, memory of previously shared information - that simulate an empathic relationship without the system possessing any subjective…

End Effector(also: Haptic Stylus, Haptic Pen)

The physical component of a haptic device that the user directly touches or manipulates to interact with a virtual environment. In assistive technology contexts, end effectors translate digital information into tactile sensations — the device applies forces, vibrations, or…

End-User Auditing(also: User-Led Auditing, End User Audits)

An approach to AI auditing in which everyday users — rather than professional evaluators — identify problems, biases, or harms in AI outputs based on their lived experience. End-user auditing is particularly valuable for surfacing harms against minoritised communities (including…

End-User Customization(also: User Customization, Personalisation)

The ability for users to modify the presentation or behaviour of a digital interface according to their individual preferences and needs. In accessibility, end-user customization is particularly important because there is no universal profile for many disability groups — people…

End-User Elicitation(also: Elicitation Study, User-Defined Gestures)

A participatory research method where end users are asked to propose or create their own interaction techniques, gestures, or commands for a given system function, rather than having researchers prescribe interactions in advance. In accessibility research, elicitation studies…

End-User Programming(also: EUP, End-User Development, EUD)

A design approach that enables people without formal programming training to create, modify, or combine software behaviors to suit their own needs. Typical end-user programming systems expose computational building blocks through accessible interfaces such as visual block…

End-to-End Verifiability(also: E2E Verifiability, E2EV)

End-to-end verifiability (E2EV) is a property of voting systems that allows voters to independently verify that their ballot was cast as intended, recorded as cast, and counted as recorded — without relying on trust in any single authority or system component. It is composed of…

End-to-End Verifiable Voting(also: E2E-V, End-to-End Verifiable Election System)

A class of voting systems designed so that each voter can independently verify their vote was cast as intended, recorded as cast, and counted as recorded, while preserving ballot secrecy. Examples include Helios, Belenios, Scantegrity, Pret-a-Voter, and newer wallet-based…

Endangered Sign Language(also: Minority Sign Language, Under-Documented Sign Language)

A sign language at risk of falling out of use, typically because the Deaf community that uses it is small, geographically isolated, or under pressure to adopt a dominant sign language. Most of the world's estimated 300+ sign languages are poorly documented, with African sign…

EndeavorRx(also: Endeavor Rx, EndeavorRx DTx)

The first FDA-cleared prescription digital therapeutic for children with ADHD, cleared in June 2020. EndeavorRx is a mobile video game designed to improve attention function in children aged 8-12 with ADHD by targeting neural systems associated with attention through sensory…

Endpoint Detection(also: Voice Activity Detection, VAD)

The process by which a speech-recognition system decides when a user has finished speaking, so the system can stop listening and send the captured audio for recognition. Off-the-shelf voice assistants typically use a silence threshold of 500ms-1s, which cuts off users who pause,…

Energy Conservation(also: Energy management)

Energy conservation refers to a set of self-management strategies designed to help people with chronic conditions, fatigue-related disabilities, or fluctuating energy levels maintain function and independence by using their available energy efficiently. Core techniques include…

Enforced Trust(also: Compelled Trust)

A dynamic in which blind people are required to trust technologies, sighted individuals, and systems without having independent means to verify the information or outputs provided to them. Enforced trust arises from the knowledge imbalance where blind users cannot directly…

Engagement Detection(also: Engagement Monitoring, Engagement Recognition)

The use of sensors, computer vision, or other technologies to automatically assess whether a person is actively engaged with a task, device, or activity. Engagement detection systems typically monitor observable behaviours such as gaze direction, touch interaction patterns,…

English Literacy(also: Reading Literacy, English Reading Literacy)

The ability to read, write, and comprehend written English. In the context of deaf and hard-of-hearing accessibility, English literacy is a significant consideration because many DHH individuals — particularly those who are native ASL users — may have lower levels of English…

English as a Second Language(also: ESL, ENL, ELL)

English as a Second Language (ESL) refers to the teaching and learning of English by speakers of other languages. In accessibility contexts, language barriers are recognized as a significant form of exclusion, affecting over 1.5 billion English learners worldwide who may…

Enhanced Activities of Daily Living(also: EADLs, EADL (gerontology), Advanced Activities of Daily Living)

In gerontology and human-robot interaction research, the highest tier of everyday activities — higher-order social, recreational, and civic pursuits that enable full participation in society, such as using computers and the internet, volunteering, engaging in hobbies, pursuing…

Enhanced Area Touch(also: Area Touch, Expanded Touch Area)

A touchscreen interaction technique that enlarges the effective touch point from a single pixel to a larger circular area, expanding both the motor space (the physical area the user needs to target) and the visual space (the on-screen representation of targets). When multiple…

Entity Density(also: Entity-Density Features)

A discourse-level readability feature measuring how many distinct entities — named entities (people, places, organisations) and general nouns — a text introduces per sentence or document. High entity density increases working-memory load on readers because each new entity must…

Entity Grid(also: Entity-Grid Model)

A model of local text coherence proposed by Barzilay and Lapata (2008) that represents a document as a two-dimensional grid: rows are sentences, columns are salient entities, and each cell records the grammatical role of that entity in that sentence (subject, object, other, or…

Entity-Relationship Diagram(also: ER Diagram, ERD)

A type of relational diagram used in software engineering and database design to model the conceptual structure of a system by representing entities (objects or concepts), their attributes (properties), and the relationships between them. ER diagrams are widely used by system…

Environmental Awareness(also: Situational Awareness, Environmental Sound Awareness)

The perception and understanding of what is happening in one's physical surroundings, particularly through auditory cues. For Deaf and hard of hearing individuals, environmental awareness is often reduced because many everyday signals — appliance timers, doorbells, approaching…

Environmental Control(also: Environmental Control Unit, ECU, Smart Home Control)

Technology that enables people with severe physical disabilities to independently control aspects of their environment such as lights, doors, temperature, televisions, phones, and other electronic devices. Environmental control systems can be operated through various access…

Environmental Control System(also: ECS, Electronic Aids to Daily Living, EADL)

An environmental control system (ECS) is an assistive technology that enables people with physical disabilities to independently control devices and features in their environment, such as lights, doors, televisions, phones, and computers. ECS devices accept input through various…

Environmental Flow(also: Optic Flow, Sensory Flow)

The ordered changes in a pedestrian's distances and directions to surrounding objects that occur while walking, providing continuous feedback about spatial position and movement through the environment. For sighted people, environmental flow is primarily visual (optic flow), but…

Environmental Legibility(also: Legibility of the Environment, Spatial Legibility)

The ease with which people can perceive, understand, and form mental maps of a physical environment in order to orient themselves and navigate through it. Coined by urban planner Kevin Lynch, legibility refers to the visual clarity of a cityscape or built environment — how…

Environmental Sound(also: Ambient Sound, Non-Speech Audio)

Any auditory information in a person's surroundings that is not speech, including sounds from appliances, alarms, animals, doorbells, traffic, weather, and other environmental sources. For deaf and hard of hearing people, awareness of environmental sounds is a significant…

Envision AI(also: Envision)

An AI-powered visual assistance technology available as a smartphone app and as smart glasses that provides scene descriptions, text reading, and object identification for blind and low vision users. Envision uses computer vision and large language models to describe visual…

Epilepsy(also: Seizure Disorder)

A chronic neurological condition characterized by recurrent, unprovoked seizures caused by abnormal electrical activity in the brain. Epilepsy affects roughly 1% of the population globally and spans a wide range of seizure types and severities, with some people experiencing…

Episodic Disability

A disability characterized by periods of illness or impairment interspersed with periods of wellness or relative health. Unlike fluctuating disability where severity varies continuously, episodic disability involves distinct episodes that may be unpredictable in timing,…

Episodic Memory(also: Autobiographical Memory, Personal Experience Memory)

The memory of specific personal experiences and events, including details about what happened, where and when it occurred, and the emotions associated with it. Episodic memory allows people to mentally "travel back in time" to re-experience past events from a first-person…

Episodic Productivity(also: Nonlinear Productivity, Burst Productivity)

A work pattern characterized by fluctuating cycles of high and low engagement rather than consistent, steady output. Common among people with ADHD and other neurodivergent conditions, episodic productivity involves periods of intense focus and high output alternating with…

Epistemic Barrier(also: Knowledge Barrier, Epistemic Divide)

A barrier to collaboration or understanding that arises from fundamental differences in knowledge systems, expertise, values, and ways of knowing between groups. In the context of sign language AI development, epistemic barriers exist between machine learning practitioners (who…

Epistemic Contingency

A concept from disability studies scholar Rod Michalko describing the start of acquiring a visual disability as an ongoing negotiation of ways of knowing. Blind epistemology — ways of knowing as a blind person — is fluid and relational, shaped by objects, environments, memories,…

Epistemic Injustice(also: Knowledge Injustice)

A form of injustice that occurs when someone is wronged in their capacity as a knower — either by having their testimony dismissed or undervalued (testimonial injustice) or by lacking the conceptual resources to understand their own experience (hermeneutical injustice). In…

Epistemic Violence(also: Epistemic Injustice)

The systematic marginalization, dismissal, or overriding of certain groups' knowledge, experiences, and ways of understanding the world. In disability contexts, epistemic violence occurs when non-disabled researchers, clinicians, or companies claim authority over disabled…