Glossary
Searchable terminology from accessibility, web standards, and related fields.
49 results found in User Experience.
- Above the Fold (Above-the-fold, First Screen Content)
- Content that is visible on a web page without requiring the user to scroll. The term originates from newspaper publishing where important headlines appeared above the physical fold of the paper. In di…
- Access Friction (Accessibility Friction)
- The effort, frustration, or barriers encountered when attempting to access technology, services, or environments. Access friction can range from minor inconveniences to complete exclusion and may resu…
- Adaptive Disclosure (On-Demand Disclosure, Progressive Disclosure for Accessibility)
- An interface design pattern in which supplementary accessibility content — summaries, keyphrase previews, navigation maps, alternative descriptions — is revealed only when the user requests it rather …
- Adaptive Navigation (Adaptive Navigation Support)
- A technique in which a system dynamically modifies the presentation of navigational elements (such as links, menus, or breadcrumbs) based on user characteristics, behaviour, or context. In accessibili…
- Affective Congruency
- The degree to which a system's sensory outputs, interactions, and feedback align emotionally with the user's current affective state and the emotional meaning the user attaches to the experience. Dist…
- Age-Friendly Design (Design for Aging, Senior-Friendly Design)
- An approach to designing products, services, and environments that accommodates the needs and capabilities of older adults, including those experiencing age-related changes in vision, hearing, cogniti…
- Audience Modelling (Audience Modeling, User Modelling)
- The practice of characterizing and formally describing distinct groups of users and their interaction characteristics to inform the design and evaluation of web interfaces. In accessibility, audience …
- 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…
- Avatar (Virtual Self, Digital Representation, Self-Avatar)
- A graphical representation of a user within a virtual environment or digital platform. Avatars can range from simple icons to fully customizable 3D virtual humans that mirror user movements. In access…
- Calibrated Trust (Appropriate Reliance, Trust Calibration)
- An HCI and human-factors concept, articulated by Lee and See, describing the alignment between a user's trust in an automated or AI system and the system's actual capability in a given context: trusti…
- Calibration-Free Interface (Zero-Shot Interface, Plug-and-Play Interface, Cross-User Model)
- An input system that works for a new user without any per-user training or calibration data, typically by relying on models trained on large multi-user datasets that capture enough physiological and b…
- Communicability
- A quality property of interactive systems proposed by Semiotic Engineering theory, referring to the system's ability to effectively and efficiently convey to users the designer's communicative intenti…
- Conceptual Model (Mental Model)
- A user's internal understanding of how a system works, including what actions are possible, what the current state is, and what the consequences of actions will be. Conceptual models are critical in a…
- Confidence Indicator (Confidence Score, Uncertainty Indicator)
- An interface element that communicates how certain an AI or automated system is about a given output, helping users decide how much to trust the result. In accessibility tools for blind and low-vision…
- Confirmation Message (Positive Feedback, On-track Feedback, Progress Confirmation)
- A system message that reassures users they are performing a task correctly or are on the right path, as opposed to only providing error messages or corrective instructions. In assistive technology and…
- Customization (User Customization)
- Customization is the practice of allowing users to adapt a system's behaviour, output, or presentation to match their individual goals, preferences, and context. In accessibility, customization is ess…
- Decision Confidence
- A reframing of accessibility as whether a user can judge product suitability, transaction risk, and information trustworthiness well enough to act independently — introduced by Ryskeldiev et al. (2026…
- Design Fixation (Fixation Effect)
- A cognitive phenomenon in the design process where exposure to existing examples or initial solutions constrains creative thinking, causing designers to replicate or only minimally modify those exampl…
- E-Commerce Accessibility (Accessible E-Commerce, Online Shopping Accessibility)
- The degree to which online shopping experiences — product discovery, evaluation, checkout, fulfilment, customer support, and (on peer-to-peer platforms) selling — are usable by people with disabilitie…
- Embodied Experience (Embodied Interaction, Embodiment (UX))
- The dimension of user experience that arises from the body's sensory and kinaesthetic encounter with a system or environment — motion, vibration, balance, proprioception, ambient sound, and felt pace …