Glossary

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

122 results found in Inclusive Design.

Low-Fidelity Prototype (Low-Fi Prototype, Lo-Fi Prototype, Paper Prototype)
A rough, inexpensive representation of a design - typically paper sketches, cardboard models, or wireframes - used early in the design process to explore concepts without investing in polished artefac…
Mixed-Ability (Mixed-Ability Environment, Mixed-Ability Workplace, Mixed-Ability Setting)
A social environment, workplace, or group where people with and without disabilities interact, collaborate, or share space. In mixed-ability settings, accessibility becomes a social and collaborative …
Mixed-Ability Team (Mixed-Ability Group, Mixed-Abilities Team)
A team or group composed of people with a variety of abilities, including disabled and non-disabled members who may have different sensory, motor, cognitive, or other access needs. Mixed-ability teams…
Music Accessibility (Accessible Music, Musical Accessibility)
The practice of making musical experiences — including listening, performing, composing, and learning — available to people with disabilities. Music accessibility encompasses a wide range of approache…
Mutual Support (Mutual support in HRI, Mutual assistance)
In accessibility and human-robot interaction research, a framing that moves beyond one-way robot-supports-user or user-supervises-robot models toward a bidirectional relationship in which each party c…
Nature Engagement (Engagement with Nature)
The active, lived practice of spending time in and interacting with natural environments - walking in parks, gardening, listening to birdsong, touching plants, sitting by water, and similar embodied e…
Participatory Design (Co-Design, Cooperative Design, PD)
A design methodology that actively involves end users as partners in the design process rather than passive subjects of user testing. In accessibility contexts, participatory design is particularly im…
Participatory Design (PD, Cooperative Design, Scandinavian Design)
A design approach originating in Scandinavian workplace democracy movements that emphasizes the direct involvement of people in the design of technologies and systems that affect them. Participatory d…
Person-Centred Care (Person-Centered Care, Person-Centred Approach)
An approach to care and support that places the individual — their preferences, needs, values, history, and identity — at the centre of all decisions and interactions, rather than focusing primarily o…
Person-Centred Planning (Person-Centered Planning, PCP)
A combination of approaches designed to empower people with disabilities to make their own choices and decisions about the support they receive. In accessibility contexts, person-centred planning shif…
Person-Technology Match (PTM, Matching Person and Technology)
A systematic approach to selecting assistive technology by evaluating the fit between a person's specific abilities, needs, preferences, and environment and the features and demands of available techn…
Persona Design (Design Personas, User Personas)
A user-centered design technique in which designers create fictional but grounded profiles of representative users — demographics, goals, context, pain points — to guide design decisions when direct u…
Personalization (User Personalization, Interface Personalization)
The adaptation of digital content, interfaces, or experiences to individual user preferences, needs, and contexts. In accessibility, personalization is essential because people with the same type of d…
Pervasive Accessible Technology (PAT)
A strategy for integrating accessibility directly into information technology infrastructure rather than retrofitting it after the fact. Proposed by Michael Paciello in 1996, Pervasive Accessible Tech…
Pluggable User Interface (Pluggable UI, Alternative User Interface)
A pluggable user interface is an interchangeable interface component that can be swapped in or out of an application without changing the application's core functionality. In the Universal Remote Cons…
Positive Design (Design for Subjective Well-Being)
A design framework, articulated by Desmet and Pohlmeyer, that explicitly targets human flourishing by attending to three components of subjective well-being: pleasure (positive affect in the moment), …
Prototyping (Prototype)
The iterative creation of tangible, interactive representations of a design - ranging from paper sketches and cardboard mock-ups to functional software builds - used to explore ideas, elicit feedback,…
Retrofit Accessibility (Accessibility Retrofitting, Bolt-On Accessibility)
The practice of adding accessibility features to a product, system, or interface after it has already been designed and built for non-disabled users. Retrofit accessibility often results in suboptimal…
Simplified Interface (Reduced Complexity Interface, Easy Mode)
A user interface design that intentionally reduces the number of features, options, and interaction steps to make a product or service accessible to users who would be overwhelmed by a standard interf…
Simulation Glasses (Cataract Glasses, Vision Simulation Glasses, Low-Vision Simulation Goggles)
Simulation glasses are wearable lenses or goggles that reproduce the functional visual experience of specific eye conditions — cataracts, macular degeneration, glaucoma, hemianopia, and others — by bl…