Glossary

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NIDILRR(also: NIDRR, National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research)

A U.S. federal agency within the Administration for Community Living that funds disability and rehabilitation research, including accessible technology development. Originally named NIDRR (National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research), it was renamed NIDILRR in…

NIMAS(also: National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard)

A technical standard in the United States that defines a consistent file format for producing accessible versions of print instructional materials. NIMAS is based on the DAISY/NISO standard and specifies how publishers must provide source files so they can be converted into…

NVDA(also: NonVisual Desktop Access)

A free, open-source screen reader for Windows developed by NV Access. NVDA provides speech and braille output, enabling blind and low-vision users to interact with the operating system, web browsers, and applications. Since its release in 2006, NVDA has become one of the most…

NVDA(also: NonVisual Desktop Access)

A free, open-source screen reader for Microsoft Windows developed by NV Access. NVDA enables people who are blind or have low vision to use computers by reading on-screen text aloud through a speech synthesizer or outputting to a refreshable Braille display. As open-source…

Named Entity Recognition(also: NER)

A natural language processing technique that identifies and classifies named entities in text into predefined categories such as person names, locations, organizations, quantities, and domain-specific terms. In accessibility applications, NER can be used to extract meaningful…

Naming Practice(also: Confrontation Naming, Naming Therapy, Picture Naming)

A speech-language therapy technique in which individuals with aphasia are shown pictures of familiar objects and asked to produce the corresponding word. Naming practice is one of the most common and well-evidenced interventions for word finding difficulties (anomia) in people…

Narrative Engagement(also: Story Engagement)

A multidimensional construct used in media studies and HCI research to capture how deeply a viewer is drawn into a story, including narrative understanding, attentional focus, narrative presence (the feeling of being inside the story world), and emotional engagement with…

Narrative Immersion(also: Story Immersion, Narrative Presence)

A psychological state in which the audience becomes deeply absorbed in a story world, perceiving the mediated content as if it were an unmediated reality. In accessible media, narrative immersion encompasses spatial presence (feeling present in the story environment), content…

Narrative Prosthesis

A concept from disability studies describing how disability is used as a literary and rhetorical device—a plot driver, metaphor, or character-enriching detail—within narratives that ultimately serve the interests and perspectives of non-disabled people rather than accurately…

Narrative Route Description(also: Verbal Route Guidance, Turn-by-Turn Narrative)

A structured verbal representation of a travel route that guides users through sequential steps using spoken or text-based instructions. Effective narrative descriptions for blind travelers typically follow a consistent format: action to take, distance information, then landmark…

Narrative Skills(also: Narrative Competence, Storytelling Skills)

The ability to recount events — real or imagined — as a coherent, temporally ordered, causally linked story that another person can follow. Narrative skills rest on autobiographical memory retrieval, event sequencing, referential clarity (introducing and tracking characters),…

Narrative Style(also: Descriptive Style, AD Voice)

The distinctive approach a describer takes when writing audio descriptions, encompassing choices about language formality, emotional tone, level of interpretation, detail density, and pacing. Narrative style in audio description ranges from strictly objective and impersonal to…

Narrative-Flip Method(also: Narrative flip)

A qualitative HCI research method in which participants first encounter a technology or artifact without knowing its origins or intent, reflect on it, and only afterwards are told its disability-led, activist, or political context. The deliberate before/after framing surfaces…

Narrator(also: Windows Narrator)

The built-in screen reader included with Microsoft Windows operating systems. Narrator reads aloud text on screen, describes notifications and interface elements, and allows users to navigate Windows and applications using keyboard commands. First introduced in Windows 2000 as a…

Narrow-Deep Interface(also: Narrow-Deep UI, Wizard Interface, Step-by-Step Interface)

A user interface design pattern that presents information across many screens, with only a small amount of content per screen. Users navigate through multiple sequential screens rather than scrolling through dense content. This approach reduces cognitive load by focusing…

Narrowband Audio(also: NB Audio, Standard Definition Voice)

Audio transmission limited to the frequency range of approximately 300-3,400 Hz, which has historically been the standard for telephone networks (PSTN). While sufficient for basic speech intelligibility, narrowband audio excludes higher frequency consonant sounds that aid speech…

National Accessibility Portal(also: NAP, South African National Accessibility Portal)

A South African government-supported web portal developed by the Meraka Institute (CSIR) to provide accessible information sharing for the disability sector. The NAP was designed from inception as an accessible platform, featuring alternative CSS stylesheets for different font…

National Diet Library(also: NDL, NDL Japan)

The national library of Japan, founded in 1948, and a major stakeholder in the production of accessible Japanese digital content. NDL operates large-scale digitisation projects for historical and contemporary Japanese materials, partners with blind-readers' organisations and…

National Federation of the Blind(also: NFB)

The largest membership organization of blind people in the United States, founded in 1940. The NFB advocates for the rights and equality of blind and low vision people through policy work, technology advocacy, education, and community building. The organization frequently…

National Library Service(also: NLS, National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled)

A program of the Library of Congress in the United States that provides Braille and audio materials to eligible borrowers who are blind, have low vision, or have physical disabilities that prevent them from reading standard print. The NLS operates through a network of regional…

National Technical Institute for the Deaf(also: NTID)

The National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID), one of the nine colleges of Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), is the first and largest technical college in the world for students who are deaf or hard of hearing. Established by U.S. federal legislation in 1965, NTID…

National Transition Strategy (NTS)(also: NTS, Web Accessibility National Transition Strategy)

The Australian Government's National Transition Strategy was a formal policy established in June 2010 requiring all federal, state, and territory government websites to conform to WCAG 2.0. It set staged milestones — Level A conformance by December 2012 and Level AA by December…

Native Signer(also: Native Sign Language User, L1 Signer)

A person who acquired a sign language as their first language (L1) during the critical period of language development, typically before age 5. Native signers usually learned sign language from deaf parents or through early immersion in deaf education environments. In…

Natural Language Command(also: Natural Language Input, Conversational Command)

A user input expressed in everyday spoken or written language rather than structured syntax or specific command formats. In accessibility contexts, natural language commands enable BLV users to interact with systems without memorizing precise command structures or navigating…

Natural Language Generation(also: NLG, Text Generation)

A subfield of artificial intelligence and computational linguistics focused on automatically producing human-readable text from structured data or other non-linguistic representations. In accessibility, natural language generation is used to create textual descriptions of visual…

Natural Language Interface(also: NLI, Natural Language User Interface)

A user interface that allows people to interact with technology using everyday language rather than specialized commands, menus, or graphical controls. Natural language interfaces can improve accessibility by reducing the learning curve for technology use, supporting users with…

Natural Language Processing(also: NLP, Computational Linguistics)

A branch of artificial intelligence that enables computers to understand, interpret, and generate human language. In accessibility, NLP powers voice-based assistive technologies, automatic captioning, text simplification for cognitive accessibility, and natural language query…

Natural Language Query(also: NLQ, Conversational Query, Natural Language Search)

An interaction paradigm where users pose questions or issue commands in everyday language rather than using structured search syntax, predefined filters, or navigation controls. In accessibility contexts, natural language querying is particularly valuable for screen reader users…

Natural Language Understanding(also: NLU, Intent Recognition, Language Understanding)

A branch of artificial intelligence that enables computers to interpret the meaning and intent behind human language input, rather than requiring exact predetermined phrases or commands. In accessibility contexts, NLU is valuable for voice-controlled interfaces because it allows…

Natural Speech Output(also: Recorded Speech, Digitized Speech)

Speech output produced from digital recordings of actual human speakers, as opposed to artificially generated synthetic speech. Natural speech output preserves the prosody, intonation, emotion, and vocal quality of the original speaker, making it generally more pleasant and…

Natural User Interface(also: NUI)

A user interface designed to feel intuitive and invisible, allowing users to interact with technology through natural behaviors such as gestures, voice, touch, or body movement rather than learned conventions like mouse clicks or keyboard commands. NUIs are particularly valuable…

Nature Engagement(also: Engagement with Nature)

The active, lived practice of spending time in and interacting with natural environments - walking in parks, gardening, listening to birdsong, touching plants, sitting by water, and similar embodied encounters. Nature engagement extends beyond physical presence to multisensory,…

Nature Relatedness(also: Nature Relatedness Scale, NRS, Nature Connectedness)

A psychological construct describing the strength of a person's affective, cognitive, and experiential connection to the natural world. It is most often measured with the 21-item Nature Relatedness Scale (NRS) developed by Nisbet, Zelenski, and Murphy, which yields three…

NavCog(also: Navigational Cognitive Assistant)

A Bluetooth beacon-based navigation system developed at Carnegie Mellon University that provides indoor turn-by-turn navigation assistance and environmental information to blind and visually impaired users via smartphone. NavCog works by detecting BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy)…

NavTap

A navigational text-entry method designed for blind mobile phone users that reduces the cognitive load associated with inputting text without visual feedback. NavTap organizes the alphabet into five rows beginning with vowels and allows users to navigate between letters using…

Navigability(also: Ease of Navigation, Web Navigability)

The ease and efficiency with which a user can move through a web page, application, or document to reach their intended content. For accessibility practice, navigability is a primary determinant of whether a screen-reader, voice-browser, or keyboard-only user can actually…

Navigation

The task of moving through an environment to reach a destination, encompassing route planning, mode selection, real-time decision-making, and responding to obstacles. In accessibility research, navigation is often paired with wayfinding (the embodied, situated practice of…

Navigation Axis(also: Multi-Axial Navigation, Axis-Based Navigation)

A navigation axis is a concept from screen reader research describing a specific linear serialization of a subset of web page elements that represents one navigation strategy. Rather than forcing blind users through a single reading order (the DOM order), a multi-axial…

Navigation Granularity(also: Text Navigation Level, Granularity Level)

The unit of text movement when navigating through content—typically character, word, sentence, line, or paragraph level. Screen reader users must select their desired navigation granularity before moving through text, and the choice significantly affects editing efficiency.…

Navigation Order(also: Focus Order, Tab Order, Reading Order)

The sequence in which a user encounters interface elements when navigating with assistive technology, a keyboard, or other non-visual means. A logical navigation order follows the visual layout and semantic structure of the page, typically moving left-to-right and top-to-bottom…

Navigation Robot(also: Guide Robot, Autonomous Navigation Robot)

A robotic system designed to guide users through physical spaces, providing wayfinding assistance and contextual information. In museum contexts, navigation robots can lead visually impaired visitors between exhibits, reduce the cognitive load of independent navigation, and…

Navilens

A navigation and information system that uses specially designed colorful QR-like codes that can be detected by a smartphone camera from long distances and wide angles, without requiring precise aiming. Originally developed for people with visual impairments, Navilens codes can…

Near Visual Acuity(also: NVA, Near Acuity)

A measure of the eye's ability to resolve fine detail at a close distance, typically tested at 40 centimetres. Near visual acuity is particularly important for tasks involving reading, handheld device use, and close-up work. It is commonly measured using Snellen notation (e.g.,…

Near-Duplicate Pages(also: ND Pages, Near-Duplicate Web Pages)

Near-duplicate pages are web pages that belong to the same functional state from a testing perspective but exhibit low visual or structural similarity due to dynamic content differences. Common causes include dynamically loaded data, dynamically generated HTML attributes such as…

Near-Miss Detection(also: Near-Miss Interaction)

A strategy for identifying when a user almost but not quite succeeds at a device interaction, suggesting they might benefit from an accessibility accommodation. For example, if a user repeatedly attempts a double-click but falls just outside the required timing threshold, the…

Neck Range of Motion(also: Cervical Range of Motion, Neck ROM)

The extent to which a person can move their head and neck through three planes of rotation: flexion and extension (nodding forward and backward), axial rotation (turning left and right), and lateral bending (tilting ear toward shoulder). Normal active neck range of motion varies…

Need-Finding Interview(also: Need-Finding Study, Needs Assessment Interview)

A qualitative research method conducted early in the design process to understand users' current practices, challenges, unmet needs, and desires for future solutions. Need-finding interviews typically use open-ended questions and semi-structured formats to elicit rich…

Negativity bias in online communities(also: Online negativity bias)

The tendency for negative experiences and opinions to be disproportionately represented in online discussion forums and social media communities compared to the broader population's experiences. In disability-related online spaces, negativity bias can result from several…

Negotiated Agency

A dynamic model of creative control in collaborative content creation where individuals with disabilities fluidly shift between the roles of director, collaborator, and editor in response to the task at hand, their personal preferences for privacy and autonomy, and the…

Nemeth Braille(also: Nemeth Code, Nemeth Braille Code for Mathematics)

A specialized Braille code designed for representing mathematical and scientific notation, developed by Abraham Nemeth and adopted by the Library of Congress. Unlike literary Braille, Nemeth Braille has unique symbols for numbers, operators, fractions, radicals, Greek letters,…