Glossary

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

192 results found in artificial intelligence.

Automatic Image Captioning (AI-Generated Alt Text, Machine-Generated Description, Auto Alt Text)
The use of computer vision and machine learning algorithms to automatically generate textual descriptions of images without human intervention. Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram deplo…
Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR)
The computational technology and algorithms that automatically convert spoken audio into text transcriptions. ASR systems use acoustic models, language models, and increasingly deep learning approache…
BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers)
A natural language processing model developed by Google that uses bidirectional training to understand context from both directions in a sentence. BERT and its variants like SBERT (Sentence-BERT) are …
Be My AI
An AI-powered feature within the Be My Eyes app that uses GPT-4o to provide on-demand image descriptions for blind and low vision users. Users can take a photo or upload an image and receive a detaile…
Benchmark dataset (Evaluation dataset, Test benchmark)
A standardized dataset used to evaluate and compare the performance of AI models, algorithms, or systems against established baselines. In accessibility, the absence of benchmark datasets that include…
Bias Mitigation (Algorithmic Fairness, Debiasing)
The process of identifying and reducing systematic errors or prejudices in AI systems, datasets, and algorithms that lead to unfair outcomes for particular groups of people. In accessibility, bias mit…
Biometric System (Biometric Technology, Biometric Identification)
A technology system that uses innate human physical or behavioral characteristics — such as facial features, fingerprints, voice patterns, gait, or iris patterns — to identify or verify a person's ide…
CLIP (Contrastive Language-Image Pre-Training)
A vision-language model developed by OpenAI that learns to associate images with natural language descriptions through contrastive learning on large-scale image-text pairs. CLIP can compute similarity…
Cascading classifier (Staged classifier, Multi-stage classifier)
A machine learning architecture that applies progressively more computationally expensive analysis stages, with each stage filtering out easy-to-classify cases so that only ambiguous instances proceed…
Chain-of-Thought Prompting (CoT Prompting)
A technique for improving the reasoning capabilities of large language models by instructing them to break down complex tasks into intermediate reasoning steps before producing a final answer. In acce…
Chatbot (Virtual Assistant, Conversational Agent, Dialog System)
A software application that uses text or speech to conduct conversations with users, simulating human-like dialogue to provide information, perform tasks, or guide users through processes. In accessib…
Circumplex Model of Affect (Russell's Circumplex Model, Valence-Arousal Model)
A psychological framework that represents emotions along two continuous dimensions: valence (pleasure vs. displeasure) and arousal (activation vs. deactivation). Proposed by James Russell in 1980, the…
Clue and Reasoning Prompting (CARP, Clue-and-Reasoning Prompting)
A prompt engineering strategy for large language models that instructs the model to first identify textual clues (keywords, phrases, contextual information) in the input and then perform diagnostic re…
Cognitive Assistance (Cognitive Aid, AI-Powered Assistance, Assisted Cognition)
Technology that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to supplement or expand human cognitive and perceptual abilities. In accessibility contexts, cognitive assistance systems recognise pe…
Computer Vision (CV, Machine Vision)
A field of artificial intelligence that enables computers to interpret, understand, and extract information from visual data including images and videos. Computer vision technologies—such as object de…
Confidence Score (Confidence Rating, Certainty Score)
A numerical measure output by AI systems indicating how certain the system is about a particular result or classification. While confidence scores have been proposed as a way to help users assess AI a…
Content Moderation (Content Filtering, Automated Content Moderation)
The process of monitoring and filtering user-generated content on digital platforms, increasingly performed by AI systems. Content moderation has documented negative effects on people with disabilitie…
Context Retention (Conversational Context, Context Awareness)
The ability of a voice assistant or AI system to maintain awareness of previous interactions and use that information to interpret subsequent commands correctly. In calendar accessibility, context ret…
Contextual Learning (Context-Dependent Learning)
The tendency of both humans and AI systems to learn patterns and behaviours from the surrounding context rather than from abstract rules. In web development, contextual learning means that developers …
Conversational Agent (Chatbot, Virtual Assistant, AI Assistant)
A software system that uses natural language processing to engage in dialogue with users, answering questions and providing information through text or speech. In accessibility contexts, conversationa…