Glossary
Searchable terminology from accessibility, web standards, and related fields.
13 results found in accessibility theory.
- Access Differential (Accessibility Gap, Access Gap)
- Access differential is the gap between the access that nondisabled people experience and the access that people with disabilities experience when using the same technologies, services, or environments…
- Accessibility-in-Use (Accessibility in Use)
- A concept describing how well accessibility metrics predict the actual effects that real accessibility problems will have on the quality of interaction as perceived by real users when interacting with…
- Communicational Accessibility (Communicative Accessibility)
- An approach to accessible design that goes beyond providing access to raw content (content accessibility) to preserving the designer's intended communicative strategy across all modalities and for all…
- Critical Technical Practice (CTP)
- A research stance, articulated by Philip Agre in 1997, in which technologists reflect critically on the assumptions built into their own systems while continuing to build. Critical technical practice …
- Crosscutting Concern (Cross-Cutting Concern)
- In software engineering, a crosscutting concern is a requirement or feature that affects multiple modules of a system and cannot be cleanly decomposed into a single component. Accessibility is a class…
- Dynamic Disability (Fluctuating Disability, Variable Disability)
- A disability or impairment whose severity, manifestation, or impact varies over time — sometimes rapidly — rather than remaining constant. Dynamic disabilities are common in many health conditions suc…
- Editorial Enunciation (Visual Enunciation)
- A semiotic concept describing how the visual layout and organisation of an interface communicates meaning beyond the content it contains. Editorial enunciation encompasses the spatial arrangement, siz…
- Health-Related Impairment and Disability (HIID, Health-Related Impairments and Disabilities)
- A category of impairments that arise as a consequence of health conditions, both chronic and acute, rather than from a traditionally defined disability. HIIDs are characterized by four properties: the…
- Implicit User (Model User, Implied User)
- A concept from semiotic engineering describing the hypothetical user that a designer envisions when creating an interface — encompassing assumptions about the user's behaviour, experience, competence,…
- Inequitable Access (Inadequate Accommodation)
- Inequitable access describes the situation where accommodations or accessibility measures are provided but fail to adequately address the underlying inaccessibility, leaving people with disabilities w…
- Phonocentrism
- The ideological privileging of spoken language as the default and superior mode of communication, with corresponding devaluation of signed, typed, symbolic, or augmentative forms. In accessibility, ph…
- Semiotic Engineering (Semiotics of HCI)
- A theoretical framework developed by Clarisse Siqueira de Souza that views human-computer interaction as a form of designer-to-user communication mediated by the interface. In this model, the interfac…
- Situationally Induced Impairment (SIID, Situational Impairment, Situational Disability)
- A temporary functional limitation caused by environmental or contextual factors rather than a permanent health condition or disability. Examples include difficulty using a phone while walking (reduced…