Glossary

Searchable terminology from accessibility, web standards, and related fields.

20 results found in Auditory Interface.

Algebra Earcon (Mathematical Earcon, Math Sound)
A non-speech auditory cue designed to represent the structural components of mathematical expressions, allowing blind users to perceive the overall shape and nesting of an expression without relying s…
Audio CAPTCHA (Audio HIP, Audio Human Interaction Proof)
An auditory alternative to visual CAPTCHAs, typically presenting distorted spoken letters, numbers, or words that users must transcribe. While intended as an accessible alternative for blind users, re…
Audio-Based Interface (Audio Interface, Auditory Interface)
A computer interface that uses sound as the primary means of conveying information and supporting interaction, rather than visual display. Audio-based interfaces are essential for blind and visually i…
Audio-Based Navigation (Audio Navigation, Auditory Navigation)
A navigation approach that uses audio output — typically synthesised speech, spatial audio cues, or sonification — as the primary means of providing wayfinding information to users. Audio-based naviga…
Auditory Menu (Audio Menu, Speaking Menu)
A user interface menu that conveys its content and structure through audio rather than visual display. Auditory menus typically use text-to-speech to read menu item names and may incorporate non-speec…
Auditory Scrollbar (Audio Scrollbar, Sonic Scrollbar)
A non-speech audio cue that conveys a user's position within a list or menu, functioning as an auditory analogue to a visual scrollbar. Auditory scrollbars use variations in pitch, tone patterns, or g…
Auditory User Interface (AUI, Audio User Interface)
A user interface that relies primarily on audio output — including synthesised speech, earcons, auditory icons, and sonification — to convey information and enable interaction. Auditory user interface…
Aural Rendering (Auralization, Audio Rendering)
The process of converting visual or textual information into a spoken or auditory representation. In programming accessibility, aural rendering transforms source code into speech output that conveys n…
Hearcon (3D Earcon)
An extension of the earcon concept that adds three-dimensional spatial audio properties to non-speech audio cues used in computer interfaces. While earcons are abstract synthesized sounds that represe…
Non-Speech Audio (Non-Verbal Audio, Non-Speech Sound)
Auditory output that conveys information through sounds other than spoken words — for example tones, clicks, earcons, auditory icons, musical motifs, or vowel-like timbres. Non-speech audio is widely …
Pitch Polarity (Pitch Mapping Direction)
The direction in which pitch changes correspond to navigation direction in an auditory interface — specifically, whether pitch increases (ascending polarity) or decreases (descending polarity) as a us…
Reference Sonification (Audio reference tone, Origin tone)
A sonification design pattern in which a fixed, recognisable audio tone represents a known landmark - typically the origin of a coordinate system or another anchor point - and can be re-played on dema…
Spatialized Sound (Spatial Audio, 3D Audio, Spatialized Audio)
Audio that is rendered with positional information so that it appears to originate from a specific location in three-dimensional space around the listener. Spatialized sound uses techniques like head-…
Speech Dialogue Design (Speech Interface Design, Auditory Dialogue Design)
The practice of designing the structure, content, ordering, and delivery of information presented through synthetic speech in computer interfaces. Effective speech dialogue design considers psycholing…
Spindex (Speech Index)
An auditory navigation technique that uses the first letter of each word (spoken or synthesized) as an index to speed up list navigation. When scrolling through alphabetically ordered lists like conta…
Stereo Panning (Audio Panning, Pan)
The technique of distributing a mono sound signal between the left and right channels of a stereo output to create the perception that the sound originates from a specific horizontal position in space…
Structured Audio (Structured Digital Audio)
Structured audio refers to digital audio content that has been encoded with hierarchical markers and metadata, allowing non-sequential access to specific segments such as chapters, sections, paragraph…
Synthesized Speech (Synthetic Speech, Speech Synthesis, TTS Output)
Computer-generated speech produced by text-to-speech (TTS) engines that convert written text into spoken audio output. Synthesized speech is the primary means by which screen readers convey on-screen …
Unit Selection Synthesis (Concatenative Unit Selection, Unit Selection TTS)
A text-to-speech synthesis approach that generates speech by selecting and concatenating variable-length segments of pre-recorded human speech from a large database to match the input text. Unit selec…
Virtual Acoustic Environment (Audio Virtual Environment, Acoustic Virtual Environment)
A computer-generated environment that uses audio as the primary medium for representing spaces, objects, and interactions, enabling users to navigate and interact with a virtual world through sound. V…