Glossary
Searchable terminology from accessibility, web standards, and related fields.
192 results found in artificial intelligence.
- Prompt Chaining (Chained Prompting, Sequential Prompting)
- A technique for interacting with large language models where multiple prompts are issued in sequence, with each prompt building on the output of the previous one to achieve a more refined or accurate …
- Prompt Engineering (Prompt Design, Prompt Crafting)
- The practice of designing and structuring input prompts to guide large language models (LLMs) toward producing more accurate, relevant, and useful outputs. In accessibility contexts, prompt engineerin…
- Provenance Indicator (Source Attribution)
- Information that identifies which AI model, trial, or prompt produced a particular piece of content in a multi-model comparison. Provenance indicators help users understand which models generate which…
- Reinforcement Learning (RL)
- A type of machine learning where a system learns to make decisions by performing actions in an environment and receiving rewards or penalties based on the outcomes. Unlike supervised learning, which l…
- Representational harm (Representational bias)
- A category of harm caused by AI systems that perpetuate or amplify negative stereotypes, demeaning portrayals, or erasure of particular social groups, distinct from allocative harms that deny resource…
- Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
- An AI technique that enhances the responses of large language models (LLMs) by first retrieving relevant information from an external knowledge base or document collection, then providing that informa…
- Seeing AI
- A free AI-powered app developed by Microsoft for blind and low vision users that uses computer vision and AI to describe the visual world. Features include reading short text, documents, and handwriti…
- Self-Debiasing (Model Self-Debiasing, Autonomous Debiasing)
- A class of techniques where AI systems, particularly large language models, are prompted or configured to identify and reduce their own biased outputs without external model modification or retraining…
- Semantic Analysis (Semantic Content Analysis, Semantic Similarity)
- The computational process of determining meaning and relationships within text, images, or other content by analyzing their semantic properties rather than just surface-level features. In accessibilit…
- Semantic Data Extraction (Structured Data Extraction, Information Extraction)
- The process of extracting structured, meaningful data from unstructured or semi-structured sources such as images, documents, web pages, or natural language text, preserving the semantic relationships…
- Sensory augmentation (Sensory substitution system, Sensory augmentation technology)
- Technology that provides information from one sensory channel through an alternative modality accessible to the user, such as converting visual scenes to audio descriptions for blind users or translat…
- Sentiment Analysis (Opinion Mining)
- A natural language processing technique that identifies and extracts subjective information from text, classifying it as positive, negative, or neutral. In accessibility research, sentiment analysis c…
- SigLIP (Sigmoid Loss for Language Image Pre-Training)
- A vision-language model that uses sigmoid loss instead of contrastive loss for aligning images with text descriptions. SigLIP improves upon CLIP by using a more efficient training objective that compu…
- Sign Language Processing (SLP, Sign Language Technology)
- A field of artificial intelligence and computer science focused on developing computational systems that can understand, generate, and translate sign languages. Sign language processing encompasses si…
- Sign Language Recognition (SLR, Automatic Sign Recognition)
- A computer vision and machine learning task focused on automatically detecting and classifying signs from video input. Sign language recognition ranges from isolated sign recognition (identifying indi…
- Sign Language Translation (SLT, Sign-to-Text Translation, Sign-to-Speech Translation)
- The task of converting between a sign language and a spoken or written language, in either direction. Sign-to-spoken/written translation (e.g., ASL to English) involves recognizing signs from video an…
- Sign language avatar (Signing avatar, Virtual signer)
- A computer-generated animated character that produces sign language from text or speech input. While sign language avatars hold potential for scaling deaf accessibility, their premature deployment rai…
- Sound Event Detection (Audio Tagging, Automatic Sound Recognition)
- A machine learning technique that automatically identifies and classifies sounds within an audio stream, such as music, applause, laughter, environmental noises, and other non-speech audio events. In …
- Sound awareness (Sound recognition, Environmental sound detection)
- Technology that detects and identifies sounds in the user's environment and conveys that information through alternative modalities such as visual notifications or haptic alerts. For deaf and hard-of-…
- Speaker-dependent speech recognition (User-adapted ASR, Personalized speech recognition)
- A speech recognition approach that trains or adapts its acoustic models to a specific individual's voice characteristics, rather than relying solely on general population models. For people with cogni…