Glossary
Searchable terminology from accessibility, web standards, and related fields.
840 results found in assistive technology.
- Visual Assistance Technology (VAT, Visual Aid App)
- Mobile applications and devices that take videos or images as input and provide verbal, haptic, or other non-visual output to help blind and low vision people access visual information. VAT can be hum…
- Visual Hallucination (AI hallucination, MLLM hallucination)
- In the context of multimodal AI systems, visual hallucination refers to the generation of descriptions or responses that contain information not grounded in the actual visual input—fabricating non-exi…
- Visual Inertial Odometry (VIO)
- A motion tracking technique that combines camera-based visual tracking with inertial sensor data (gyroscopes and accelerometers) to estimate a device’s position and orientation in 3D space with high a…
- Visual Interpretation Service (VIS, Visual Assistance Service, Remote Sighted Assistance)
- A service that provides visual information to blind and low vision users through human assistants, AI-powered tools, or a combination of both. Traditional visual interpretation services like Aira conn…
- Visual Interpretation Services (VIS, Remote Sighted Assistance, Visual Assistance Services)
- Visual interpretation services are technology platforms that connect blind and low vision users with sighted assistants (either human volunteers or paid professionals) who provide real-time visual des…
- Visual Interpreter (Visual Interpreter Service, Visual Description Service, VIDS, Remote Sighted Assistance)
- A visual interpreter or description service (VIDS) is a technology or human-powered service that provides people who are blind or have low vision with descriptions of their visual surroundings, typica…
- Visual Scene Display (VSD)
- A type of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) layout that uses photographs or images of real-world scenes with embedded interactive hotspots that produce speech output when selected. Unli…
- Visual guidance (Visual cueing, Visual highlighting)
- Assistive techniques that direct a user's visual attention to relevant content through highlights, outlines, magnification, or other visual cues. For people with low vision, visual guidance systems ca…
- Visual question answering (VQA, Visual QA)
- A computer vision and natural language processing task in which a system answers natural language questions about the content of an image or video. In accessibility contexts, VQA enables blind and vis…
- Visual substitution (Sensory substitution, Vision substitution)
- Visual substitution is a design strategy in assistive technology that replaces visual information with output in another sensory modality, such as audio descriptions, haptic feedback, or tactile repre…
- VizWiz
- A mobile application and research platform that allows blind people to take photos with their phones and receive answers to visual questions from human workers or AI systems. VizWiz originated as a re…
- Voice Augmentation (Audio Augmentation, Voice-Based Augmentation)
- A technique for enhancing user interfaces by adding spoken audio feedback to supplement visual information on screen. Voice augmentation provides contextual support through spoken confirmations of use…
- Voice Browser (Voice Web Browser, Audio Browser)
- A voice browser is a type of web browser that presents web content through speech output and accepts voice or keyboard input rather than relying on visual display. Voice browsers convert web page cont…
- Voice Command (Voice Control, Spoken Command)
- An input method where users speak predefined words or phrases to control software or perform actions. In assistive technology, voice commands enable hands-free and eyes-free interaction, allowing user…
- Voice Control (Voice Command, Voice-Activated Control)
- The ability to operate devices, applications, or systems using spoken commands. Voice control is a key accessibility feature in smart home technology, enabling people with mobility impairments, visual…
- Voice Conversion (VC, speech conversion)
- A speech processing technique that transforms one person's voice to sound like another while preserving the linguistic content. In accessibility applications, voice conversion can improve the intellig…
- Voice Input (Voice Control, Voice Command, Speech Input)
- An input modality that allows users to control devices, enter text, or issue commands using spoken language, typically processed through speech recognition technology. Voice input is an essential acce…
- Voice Interaction (Voice User Interface, VUI, Voice-Based Interaction)
- An interaction paradigm where users communicate with technology primarily through spoken commands and receive audio responses, rather than using visual displays, keyboards, or touch screens. Voice int…
- Voice Interface (Speech Interface, Voice User Interface, VUI, Conversational Interface)
- An interface that allows users to interact with a system using spoken natural language commands rather than keyboard, mouse, or touch input. Voice interfaces range from simple command-and-control syst…
- Voice Interface (Voice User Interface, VUI)
- A user interface that accepts spoken language as input and typically provides audio output, enabling hands-free, eyes-free interaction with technology. Voice interfaces are used in voice-activated per…