Glossary
Searchable terminology from accessibility, web standards, and related fields.
6660 terms — page 17 of 333
- Activities of daily living (ADLs, Daily living activities)
- The fundamental self-care tasks that a person performs routinely each day, including feeding, bathing, dressing, grooming, toileting, and mobility. Originally proposed by Sidney Katz in the 1950s, ADL…
- Activity Monitoring (Activity Recognition, Activity Tracking)
- The use of sensors, algorithms, and computational models to automatically detect and track a person's actions and behaviours within an environment. In assistive technology contexts, activity monitorin…
- Activity Pacing (Pacing, Energy pacing)
- Activity pacing is a self-management strategy used by people with chronic conditions such as Multiple Sclerosis, fibromyalgia, and chronic fatigue syndrome to manage limited energy and prevent symptom…
- Activity Prompting (Skill Prompting)
- A structured approach to encouraging skill development through customized, playful prompts that guide individuals through specific activities. In the context of disability and education, activity prom…
- Activity Theory
- A conceptual framework originating in Soviet psychology (Vygotsky, Leont'ev) and widely applied in HCI, which analyses human action as goal-directed activity mediated by tools, rules, community, and d…
- Activity Tracker (Fitness Tracker, Step Counter, Fitness Band)
- An activity tracker is a wearable device or smartphone application that monitors and records physical activity data such as steps taken, distance traveled, calories burned, heart rate, and sleep patte…
- Activity schedule (Visual schedule, Picture schedule)
- A visual support tool that breaks down tasks or routines into sequential steps represented by photographs, pictograms, or text, enabling individuals with autism spectrum disorder, intellectual disabil…
- Acts of Assistance
- A framework for designing human-machine interactions in cognitive assistive systems, drawing on speech acts theory from linguistics. Each act of assistance is a structured communication from the syste…
- Ad Blocker (Adblocker, Content Blocker)
- A browser extension or built-in feature that prevents advertisements, trackers, and other unwanted content from loading on web pages, typically by matching requests against blocklists such as EasyList…
- Ad-Hoc Customization (On-the-Fly Customization, Real-Time Adjustment)
- Making customization changes during content consumption rather than configuring all settings beforehand. For ADHD video viewers, ad-hoc customization was preferred by 75% of participants because it al…
- Adaptable system
- A system that can be configured using prior knowledge before use, as opposed to an adaptive system which changes dynamically during use. In accessibility, adaptable systems allow users or administrato…
- Adapted Curriculum (Adapted Computer Curriculum, Modified Curriculum, Curriculum Adaptation)
- An adapted curriculum is an educational programme that has been modified to accommodate the learning needs, styles, and abilities of students with disabilities while maintaining the core learning obje…
- Adaptive Assistive Technology (AAT, Adaptive AT)
- Assistive technology that monitors a user's current and past performance and automatically adjusts its functionality to match their changing needs. Unlike static assistive technologies with fixed sett…
- Adaptive Behavior (Adaptive Skills, Adaptive Functioning)
- The collection of conceptual, social, and practical skills that people learn and perform in everyday life. Conceptual skills include language, literacy, and self-direction; social skills encompass int…
- Adaptive Boosting (AdaBoost)
- A machine learning ensemble method that combines multiple weak classifiers to create a strong classifier, with each successive classifier focusing on the examples that previous classifiers misclassifi…
- Adaptive Cursor (Adaptive Navigation Cursor)
- A cursor or navigation pointer whose speed, sensitivity, or behavior dynamically adjusts based on context such as the amount of content, the current navigation granularity, or user preferences. In tex…
- 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 Environment (Adaptive System, Responsive Environment)
- A physical or digital space that automatically adjusts its properties and behaviours in response to the people within it. Adaptive environments use sensors, machine learning, and actuators to modify l…
- Adaptive Gameplay (Adaptive Difficulty, Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment)
- A game design approach in which the system automatically adjusts difficulty, pacing, or content based on the player's real-time performance and behaviour. In accessibility and therapeutic contexts, ad…
- Adaptive Hypermedia (AH, Adaptive Hypermedia Systems, AHS)
- Interactive systems that build a model of each user's goals, knowledge, preferences, and context, then use this model to automatically adapt the content, presentation, and navigation of hypermedia doc…