Glossary
Searchable terminology from accessibility, web standards, and related fields.
27 results found in Ethics.
- ACM Code of Ethics (ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct)
- A statement of professional ethics maintained by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) that sets out the moral and professional responsibilities of computing practitioners. Significantly revis…
- AI Bias (Algorithmic Bias, Machine Learning Bias)
- Systematic and unfair discrimination in AI system outputs that arises from biased training data, flawed model design, or unrepresentative assumptions embedded in the development process. In accessibil…
- AI contestability (Algorithmic contestability, AI contestation)
- The principle that users should be able to challenge, question, and seek recourse against decisions or outputs made by AI systems. In accessibility contexts, contestability is particularly important f…
- Affirmative Consent (Yes Means Yes)
- A consent model that requires explicit, active agreement to an action - typically framed as 'yes means yes' rather than the absence of refusal. Originating in sexual-violence prevention and adopted in…
- Aftercare (Post-Interaction Care)
- Reflective or supportive activity following an intimate, intense, or sensitive interaction, in which participants check in on each other's wellbeing, discuss the experience, and address any needs that…
- Agentive Amplifier
- A framing of technical artefacts, proposed by Oosterlaken and Van Den Hoven, as things that create possibilities a person would not otherwise have — extending, not replacing, the user's own agency. Un…
- Automation Confusion
- A phenomenon, well documented in human–automation literature and observed in partially automated video games, in which the user struggles to distinguish the outcomes of their own actions from those pe…
- Consent (Informed Consent)
- Voluntary, informed, and revocable agreement by a person to a particular action or interaction involving them - whether that is sexual activity, data collection, medical treatment, research participat…
- Consent Model (Consent Framework)
- A prescriptive framework specifying how consent should be requested, given, sustained, and revoked in a particular interaction context. Examples include affirmative consent (explicit verbal agreement)…
- Critical Computing
- An umbrella term for HCI and computer-science scholarship that interrogates the values, power relations, and social consequences of computing technologies rather than taking their benefits as given. C…
- Dark Pattern (Deceptive Pattern, Manipulative Design)
- A user interface design deliberately crafted to trick, manipulate, or coerce users into making unintended choices that benefit the service provider rather than the user. Dark patterns include hidden c…
- Dataset Bias (Training Data Bias, Data Representation Bias, Sampling Bias)
- A systematic skew in the composition of training data used to build machine learning models, resulting in models that perform well for overrepresented groups but poorly for underrepresented ones. In a…
- Dataveillance
- Surveillance conducted through the systematic collection, aggregation, and analysis of personal digital data — clicks, location traces, physiological signals, text, voice, facial data — rather than th…
- Doll Therapy
- A nonpharmacological intervention used in dementia care in which a person is given a lifelike doll to hold, dress, and care for. For some people with advanced dementia, engaging with the doll can redu…
- Emulated Empathy
- Emulated empathy is the design strategy, central to AI companion systems, of producing interactional cues - attentive language, affective mirroring, memory of previously shared information - that simu…
- Griefbot (Deadbot)
- A griefbot (sometimes 'deadbot') is an AI chatbot trained on the written, voice or video communications of a deceased person, intended to let bereaved loved ones continue a simulated dialogue with the…
- Guardianship (Legal Guardianship, Guardian, Caregiver Guardianship)
- A legal arrangement in which a person (the guardian) is appointed to make decisions on behalf of another person who is deemed unable to make certain decisions independently, often due to intellectual …
- Human-AI Alignment (AI Alignment, Value Alignment)
- The design and training of AI systems to exhibit behaviours consistent with human values, intentions, and goals. In accessibility, human-AI alignment requires that AI systems accurately represent and …
- Inclusive Thinking
- A design and problem-solving mindset that treats the needs of people with diverse abilities as a core consideration from the outset of a project, rather than as an afterthought or accommodation added …
- Personally Identifying Information (PII, Personal Data, Personally Identifiable Information)
- Any data that can be used to identify a specific individual, including names, addresses, photographs, financial details, and biometric data. In accessibility contexts, PII is a significant concern whe…