Glossary
Searchable terminology from accessibility, web standards, and related fields.
899 results found in Assistive Technology.
- Well-being Monitoring (Health Monitoring, Remote Health Monitoring, Ambient Assisted Living)
- The use of sensors, devices, and software systems to track and report on an individual's health and daily living indicators — such as mobility, sleep patterns, eating and drinking habits, personal hyg…
- Wheelchair Seating (Wheelchair Positioning)
- The configuration and customization of a wheelchair's seating components to provide appropriate support, comfort, and functional positioning for the user. Proper wheelchair seating considers trunk sup…
- Wi-Fi Fingerprinting (WiFi Fingerprinting, Wi-Fi Positioning)
- An indoor localization technique that estimates a device's position by comparing the signal strengths of nearby Wi-Fi access points against a pre-collected database of "fingerprints" — measurements ta…
- Wideband Audio (HD Voice, High-Definition Audio)
- Audio transmission that captures a broader range of frequencies (typically 50-7000 Hz or higher) compared to narrowband telephony (300-3400 Hz), resulting in clearer and more natural-sounding speech. …
- Widget Role (ARIA Role, Component Role)
- A property that identifies the type and purpose of a user interface element to assistive technologies. Widget roles communicate what a component is (such as a button, checkbox, slider, or tab) so that…
- Window-Eyes
- A commercial screen reader for Microsoft Windows developed by GW Micro that was one of the leading assistive technologies for blind computer users from the 1990s through the 2010s. Window-Eyes provide…
- Windowless Mode (Flash wmode transparent, wmode=transparent)
- Windowless mode is a legacy Adobe Flash rendering option (wmode=transparent or wmode=opaque) in which the Flash player drew into the browser's graphics surface directly rather than into its own dedica…
- Wireless Sensor Network (WSN, Sensor Network)
- A distributed network of small, autonomous sensor devices that monitor physical or environmental conditions and wirelessly transmit data to a central system for processing. In assistive technology app…
- Word Prediction (Predictive Text, Word Completion)
- A text input feature that suggests complete words based on the characters already typed, using language models to anticipate the most likely intended word. In assistive technology, word prediction is …
- Wrapper (Web Wrapper, Data Wrapper)
- In web accessibility and data extraction contexts, a reusable program that maps the visual layout of a web page to its underlying structured dataset by identifying records and fields within the HTML. …
- Wrapping (Focus Wrapping, Cursor Wrapping)
- An interface navigation technique where the focus or cursor automatically returns to the beginning of a line, list, or group of elements when it reaches the end, or vice versa. In accessible interface…
- Xbox Adaptive Controller (XAC)
- A Microsoft-manufactured game controller designed for players with limited mobility. It provides a large flat-surface form factor with two oversized programmable buttons and 19 external 3.5 mm jacks p…
- Xbox Controller Assist (Xbox Copilot)
- A Microsoft software feature (formerly called Xbox Copilot) available on Xbox consoles and Windows PCs that links two physical controllers so they behave as a single controller — any input from either…
- Zipf's Law
- A statistical observation that in any natural language corpus, the frequency of a word is inversely proportional to its rank in the frequency table. The most common word occurs roughly twice as often …
- Zoom Interface (Zoom Screen, Zoomable User Interface, ZUI)
- A user interface technique that allows users to magnify a portion of the screen to increase the effective size of interface elements, making them easier to select with low-precision pointing devices s…
- ZoomText
- A commercial screen magnification and screen reading software for Windows, developed by Freedom Scientific (formerly Ai Squared). ZoomText provides up to 60x magnification along with features like smo…
- aDesigner
- aDesigner is an accessibility evaluation tool for web designers, originally released by IBM in the mid-2000s. It combined automated WCAG checking with simulations of low vision (contrast loss, blur, c…
- e-NABLE (Enabling the Future)
- A global volunteer network founded in 2013 that uses 3D printing to produce free, customizable upper-limb prosthetic devices — primarily for children with limb differences who outgrow conventional pro…
- ePub (Electronic Publication, EPUB)
- An open standard file format for digital publications and documents, maintained by the W3C. ePub is significant for accessibility because it supports reflowable content that adapts to different screen…