Glossary
Searchable terminology from accessibility, web standards, and related fields.
899 results found in Assistive Technology.
- Non-visual Display (Nonvisual Display, Non-visual Interface)
- A non-visual display presents information to a user through senses other than vision — most commonly hearing (synthesized speech, earcons, sonification), touch (Braille output, vibrotactile patterns, …
- Nontraditional Assistive Technologies (NTATs, Nontraditional Input Technologies)
- Input technologies that use physiological signals rather than physical movement to control computers, providing access for people who cannot use traditional devices like keyboards, mice, or even eye-t…
- Nonvisual Access (Non-Visual Access, Nonvisual Web Access, Non-Visual Web Access)
- The use of digital content, particularly web pages and applications, through means other than sight. Nonvisual access typically involves screen readers that convert text to speech, braille displays th…
- Nonvisual Programming (Non-Visual Programming, Blind Programming)
- The practice of writing, navigating, debugging, and managing software code without relying on visual display, typically using screen readers, braille displays, and audio cues. Nonvisual programmers fa…
- Note-Taking Accommodation (Note-Taker Service, Classroom Note-Taking Support)
- An educational accommodation that provides students with disabilities access to lecture content they cannot capture independently. Traditional note-taking accommodations include human note-takers (pee…
- Notification Fatigue (Alert Fatigue, Information Overload)
- Notification fatigue is a state in which users become desensitized to or overwhelmed by frequent alerts, notifications, or information delivery from a device or system, causing them to ignore or tune …
- Novint Falcon
- A consumer-grade 3D haptic input device originally marketed for gaming that has been widely adopted in accessibility research for providing force feedback to people with visual impairments. The device…
- OCR (Optical Character Recognition) (OCR, Optical Character Recognition, Text Recognition)
- A computer-vision technology that converts images of printed, handwritten, or on-screen text into machine-readable character data. OCR is foundational to a wide range of accessibility tools: extractin…
- Object recognition (Object detection, Image classification)
- A computer vision task in which a system identifies and labels objects within images or video, often using deep learning models trained on large datasets. For blind and low-vision users, object recogn…
- Occupational Therapist (OT, Occupational Therapy)
- An occupational therapist is a licensed healthcare professional who helps people participate in the 'occupations' of daily life — self-care, work, school, leisure, and community roles — through therap…
- Occupational therapy (OT)
- A healthcare profession focused on enabling people to participate in meaningful daily activities ("occupations") despite physical, cognitive, sensory, or psychosocial challenges. Occupational therapis…
- Off-Screen Model (OSM, Virtual Buffer)
- A data structure maintained by screen readers that represents the content and structure of the visual display in a form that can be navigated non-visually. Traditional screen readers intercept system …
- Omnidirectional wheelchair (Holonomic wheelchair)
- An electric wheelchair capable of moving in any direction — forward, backward, sideways, and diagonally — as well as rotating in place, typically using Mecanum wheels or similar omnidirectional drive …
- On-Body Interaction (Body-centric interaction, Skin input, On-body input)
- An interaction paradigm that uses the surface of the user's own body as an input medium, typically through gestures like taps, swipes, or touches on the skin. On-body interaction leverages tactile and…
- Online Braille (Web Braille, Digital Braille, Electronic Braille)
- Online Braille refers to Braille content that is generated, distributed, or accessed through the Internet or digital platforms, as opposed to traditional embossed paper Braille. This includes web-base…
- Open Sound Control (OSC)
- An open, network-based protocol for communication between computers, sound synthesizers, and other multimedia devices, developed by Matthew Wright and Adrian Freed (1997). OSC sends human-readable add…
- Open-Vocabulary Detection (Open-Vocabulary Object Detection, OVD)
- A class of computer vision object detection models that accept arbitrary text queries at inference time rather than being restricted to a fixed set of pre-trained classes. Instead of only recognizing,…
- OpenSCAD
- An open-source, code-based 3-D computer-aided design (CAD) application that uses a scripting language to define 3-D models through constructive solid geometry operations. Unlike visual modeling tools,…
- Optical Braille Recognition (OBR)
- A technology that uses cameras or optical sensors to detect and interpret embossed Braille characters, converting them into digital text. Optical Braille recognition works by capturing images of Brail…
- Optical Flow
- A computer vision method that estimates the apparent motion of objects between consecutive video frames by tracking pixel displacement patterns. Optical flow calculates velocity vectors showing moveme…