Glossary

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

29 results found in Multimedia Accessibility.

Affective Captions (Affective Captioning, Emotive Captions)
Captions that convey not only the spoken words but also the emotional qualities of speech — such as valence (positive vs. negative tone) and arousal (intensity) — typically through typographic modulat…
Ambient Audio (Ambient Sound, Environmental Audio, Background Audio)
The background sound of an environment — voices, traffic, water, wind, music, birdsong — captured incidentally rather than as the main focus of a recording. In accessible photography and audiophotogra…
Audio Description (AD, Descriptive Video, Video Description, Described Video)
A narration track added to video content that describes important visual information for people who are blind or have low vision. Audio descriptions are inserted during natural pauses in dialogue and …
Audio Description Script (AD Script, Video Description Script, Described Video Script)
An audio description script is the written text that forms the basis of an audio description track for video content. The script contains narration that describes visual elements — including actions, …
Audio Interference (Audio Conflict, Speech Conflict)
Audio interference in a digital accessibility context is the overlap of two or more sound streams in a user's environment such that one masks another — most commonly, auto-playing media audio on a web…
Audiophotography (Audiophotograph, Audio Photograph, Sound Photograph)
A medium proposed by Frohlich and Tallyn in which a photograph is packaged together with an associated audio recording — typically ambient sound captured at the moment of the shutter, a spoken caption…
Captioning (Captions, Subtitles for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, SDH)
The process of displaying synchronized text on screen that represents spoken dialogue, sound effects, and other audio information in video content. Unlike subtitles, captions are specifically designed…
Extended Audio Description (Extended Description)
A form of audio description in which the video playback is paused to allow time for a description that would not otherwise fit within natural gaps in the audio track. Extended audio descriptions are u…
Facial Avatar (Singing head, Talking head avatar)
A digital, animated representation of a face — typically rendered as a 3D or stylized 2D character from the neck up — driven by audio, video, or data signals to produce expressive facial behavior such…
Frame Rate (Frames Per Second, FPS, Frame Frequency)
Frame rate is the number of still images (frames) displayed or captured per second in a video stream, usually measured in frames per second (fps). Common values include 24 fps (cinema), 30 fps (US bro…
HTML5 Track Element (<track> Element, Track Tag, HTML Track)
The HTML5 <track> element is used to specify timed text tracks for <video> and <audio> elements, providing a standardized way to associate captions, subtitles, descriptions, chapters, and metadata wit…
Media Fragments (Media Fragments URI, Media Fragment Identifier)
Media Fragments is a W3C specification that defines a standard syntax for addressing specific portions of audio and video resources on the web using URI fragment identifiers. It allows users and appli…
Music Visualization (Music visualisers, Visual music)
The representation of musical content — pitch, rhythm, timbre, dynamics, melody, lyrics, or emotion — through visual rather than auditory channels. Visualizations range from abstract mappings of audio…
Narrative Engagement (Story Engagement)
A multidimensional construct used in media studies and HCI research to capture how deeply a viewer is drawn into a story, including narrative understanding, attentional focus, narrative presence (the …
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 …
Quality of Perception (QoP)
An evaluation framework from the multimedia-accessibility research literature for measuring how well a user can understand and use a media presentation, combining objective comprehension metrics (e.g.…
Redundancy Principle
A principle from the Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning stating that people learn better from graphics and narration than from graphics, narration, and on-screen text presenting the same words, b…
SRT (SubRip, SubRip Text, SRT Subtitle Format)
SRT (SubRip Text) is a widely used plain-text subtitle file format originally created by the SubRip software for extracting subtitles from DVDs. An SRT file contains sequentially numbered subtitle ent…
Split Attention Effect (Split Attention)
A cognitive load phenomenon in multimedia learning where learners must divide visual attention between two or more sources of information that should be integrated - for example captions at the bottom…
Streaming Media (Streaming Audio, Streaming Video, Media Streaming)
Streaming media is audio or video content delivered to a user in a continuous flow from a server, played back as it arrives rather than waiting for a complete download. Because streaming content produ…