Glossary
Searchable terminology from accessibility, web standards, and related fields.
81 results found in Blindness and Low Vision.
- Clock Technique (Clock Method, Clock Face Direction System)
- An orientation method used in mobility training for blind and visually impaired people in which directions are communicated using the positions on an analogue clock face. The user imagines standing at…
- Emergent Literacy (Early Literacy, Pre-literacy)
- The developmental process through which young children (typically birth through age 5) acquire foundational skills and concepts about reading and writing before formal instruction begins. For sighted …
- EyeMusic
- A visual-to-auditory sensory substitution device that converts images into sound, enabling people who are blind to perceive visual information including shape, location, and color. EyeMusic uses a lef…
- Finger-Worn Camera (Ring camera, Finger-mounted camera, Finger assistive camera)
- A miniature camera attached to a finger, typically via a ring or thimble-like housing, that captures images from the hand rather than from the head or chest. In accessibility contexts, finger-worn cam…
- Fingertip Deflection
- A haptic guidance technique in which a wearable device gently pulls or tilts the fingertip in a chosen direction (abduction, adduction, flexion, or extension) to bias arm motion toward a target during…
- Force Feedback Joystick (Haptic Joystick, Rumble Joystick)
- An input device that combines a traditional joystick with motors or actuators that apply physical resistance, vibration, or directional forces to the user's hand, providing tactile information about t…
- Grasp Aperture (Hand Aperture, Finger Aperture)
- Grasp aperture is the distance between the thumb and opposing finger(s) as the hand opens to receive an object during a reach. It scales with perceived object size, peaks before contact at a value typ…
- HULOP (Human-scale Localization Platform)
- An open-source indoor navigation platform originally developed by IBM Research to support blind navigation using Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacon fingerprinting for localisation plus a topological ma…
- Home Page Reader (IBM Home Page Reader, HPR)
- A talking web browser developed by IBM Japan in the late 1990s, designed specifically for blind and low-vision users. Home Page Reader combined a web rendering engine with the ProTalker text-to-speech…
- Image Description App (Visual assistance app, AI visual description app)
- A smartphone or wearable application that captures an image of the user's surroundings and returns a spoken or textual description of its content, aimed primarily at blind and low-vision users. Early …
- Interpersonal Safety
- Interpersonal safety refers to protection from threats of bodily harm caused by other people, such as assault, harassment, or violence. For people with disabilities, interpersonal safety presents dist…
- JAWS for Windows (JFW)
- JAWS (Job Access With Speech) for Windows is a commercial screen reader from Freedom Scientific (now Vispero) that provides speech and braille output for blind and low-vision users on the Windows oper…
- Last Meter Problem (Last Mile Problem, Final Approach Problem)
- In assistive technology for blind users, the challenge of bridging the gap between knowing an object exists and physically reaching or interacting with it. While object detection apps can identify wha…
- Laterality (Left-Right Discrimination, Lateral Awareness)
- Laterality is the ability to distinguish between left and right sides of the body and to apply this understanding to the surrounding environment for spatial orientation and navigation. Laterality is a…
- Listenability (Auditory Readability, Speech-Output Quality)
- A web-accessibility usability metric that measures how appropriate a page's rendered text is when read aloud by a screen reader or voice browser — complementary to, and distinct from, raw WCAG conform…
- Loss of Obscurity (Loss of anonymity)
- A concept introduced by Thomas J. Carroll in his 1961 book "Blindness: What It Is, What It Does, and How to Live with It," in which he identified twenty distinct losses that accompany the onset of bli…
- Macro-Navigation (Macro Navigation)
- The process of navigating through the broader environment at the level of routes, streets, landmarks, and destinations — knowing where you are in a city, which direction to travel, and how to reach a …
- Micro-Navigation (Micro Navigation)
- The process of navigating the immediate environment — detecting and avoiding obstacles, following the edge of a pavement, identifying surface changes, and maintaining a safe path. For blind and visual…
- Mirror Neuron System (Mirror Neurons)
- The mirror neuron system is a network of brain regions that activate both when a person performs an action and when they observe another person performing the same action. It is implicated in motor si…
- Mixed-Visual Group (Mixed visual ability group, Mixed-visual ability group)
- A group whose members include both blind or low-vision and sighted participants. The term is used in accessibility research on group activities (museum tours, classrooms, family outings, workplace mee…