Glossary
Searchable terminology from accessibility, web standards, and related fields.
81 results found in Blindness and Low Vision.
- 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 r…
- Non-Visual Drawing (Blind Drawing, Drawing Without Sight)
- The practice of creating graphical representations — such as diagrams, shapes, charts, or illustrations — without relying on visual feedback. Non-visual drawing can be accomplished through tactile met…
- ORBIT Dataset (Object Recognition for Blind Image Training)
- A disability-first machine learning dataset for teachable object recognition, contributed by people who are blind or have low vision. The original ORBIT dataset (Massiceti et al., 2021) contains 3,822…
- Omakase (Omakase mode, I leave it to you)
- A Japanese word — literally 'I leave it to you' — adopted in human-robot interaction and assistive-AI research to describe a mode of user involvement in which the person defers all decisions to the sy…
- 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…
- PVI (People with Visual Impairments, Person with Visual Impairment, Persons with Visual Impairments)
- An abbreviation widely used in HCI and accessibility research for "people with visual impairments," a person-first umbrella term that includes people who are blind, legally blind, or have low vision. …
- Page Fragmentation (Visual Fragmentation, Content Fragmentation)
- A web accessibility problem where different types of content on a web page (news articles, advertisements, navigation menus, related links) are visually grouped using colours, spacing, images, and lay…
- Parents with Visual Impairments (PVI, Blind Parents, Visually Impaired Parents)
- Parents with visual impairments (PVI) are blind or low-vision adults raising children, who are often sighted. PVI face distinctive parenting challenges that go beyond individual functional compensatio…
- Peripersonal Space (Near space, Reaching space)
- The area immediately surrounding the body that is within arm's reach, typically extending about 60-70 cm from the body. Peripersonal space is significant in accessibility because blind and visually im…
- Personal Safety Management (PSM)
- Personal Safety Management refers to the informed, agential, and proactive participation of an individual in maintaining their own physical safety. Coined in accessibility research by Branham et al. (…
- Personalized Object Recognition (Teachable Object Recognition)
- A class of computer vision systems that allow an individual user — typically someone who is blind or has low vision — to train their device to recognize a small set of personally relevant objects (a s…
- Photo Sharing (Photograph Sharing, Image Sharing)
- The activity of showing, distributing, or discussing photographs with others — in person, via email, or through social-networking platforms. As a social practice it conveys memories, experiences, and …
- RGBD Camera (RGB-D Camera, Depth Camera, Stereo Camera)
- A camera that captures both a colour (RGB) image and a per-pixel depth (D) measurement of the scene, yielding a 3D representation of the environment. Depth can be produced by stereo vision, structured…
- Raised-Line Drawing (Raised-Line Picture, Tactile Line Drawing, Embossed Line Drawing)
- A raised-line drawing is a tactile representation of a visual image created by producing elevated lines on a surface that can be felt by touch, enabling blind and visually impaired people to perceive …
- Refreshable Braille Display (Refreshable Braille, Dynamic Braille Display, Electronic Braille Display)
- An electromechanical device that renders Braille characters by raising and lowering pins dynamically, allowing blind users to read digital text through touch. Conventional refreshable Braille displays…
- Route Learning (Route Familiarization)
- The process by which a traveler — particularly a blind or low-vision person — acquires a mental representation of a specific path through an environment, including its turns, landmarks, distances, sur…
- Route Planning (Journey Planning, Pre-Journey Planning)
- The process of determining a path from an origin to a destination before travel begins, including selecting roads or paths, identifying landmarks and decision points, and considering factors such as s…
- Scanning Navigation (Non-Visual Scanning, Auditory Scanning)
- A non-visual navigation strategy in which a screen-reader or voice-browser user steps rapidly through a page one fragment at a time — line by line, item by item, or in fixed jumps (e.g. page-down keys…
- Social Interaction (Social Communication, Interpersonal Interaction)
- The process by which people act and react in relation to one another, including verbal conversation, non-verbal communication, and physical proximity. For people with disabilities, social interactions…
- 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-…