Glossary
Searchable terminology from accessibility, web standards, and related fields.
6660 terms — page 232 of 333
- Proxemic Interaction (Proximity-Based Interaction, Proxemics)
- An interaction design approach that uses the spatial relationship between users, devices, and objects in the environment — including distance, orientation, and movement — to trigger contextual actions…
- Proxemics (Interpersonal distance, Personal space)
- The study of how people use and perceive physical space in social interactions, originally defined by anthropologist Edward T. Hall in 1966. Hall identified four distance zones: intimate (0–45 cm), pe…
- Proximity Detection (Proximity Sensing, Proximity-Based Localization)
- A method of determining a user's approximate location by measuring their closeness to known reference points, such as BLE beacons or Wi-Fi access points, based on signal strength. In accessible indoor…
- Proxy (Support Person, Intermediary User)
- In accessibility contexts, a person who assists someone with a disability in using technology or accessing services. Proxies may include family members, caregivers, support workers, or friends who hel…
- Proxy Account (Delegate Account)
- A formal mechanism within a digital system that allows an authorized person to perform tasks on behalf of another user with defined permissions and accountability. In financial technology, proxy accou…
- Proxy Feedback (Proxy User Testing, Surrogate Feedback)
- A user research method in which feedback on designs or prototypes is gathered from people who are close to the target users — such as carers, therapists, family members, or support workers — rather th…
- Proxy Interface (Accessibility Proxy, Alternative Interface)
- An intermediary user interface that sits between the user and the original content, re-presenting information in a more accessible format without modifying the underlying source. In accessibility cont…
- Proxy User (Proxy Participant, Surrogate User)
- A person without a disability who participates in research or usability testing as a stand-in for the intended end user with a disability. Proxies are commonly used in AAC and assistive technology res…
- Proxy stakeholder (Proxy informant, Proxy respondent)
- In requirements engineering and participatory design, a proxy stakeholder is a person—such as a caregiver, support worker, family member, or healthcare professional—who actively mediates, interprets, …
- Pseudo-Attraction Force
- A haptic illusion technique that creates the sensation of being pulled or pushed in a specific direction by exploiting the nonlinear relationship between physical and perceived acceleration. The techn…
- Pseudo-participation (Pseudo-participation by Design)
- A term coined by Palacin et al. (2020) to describe forms of user involvement in design that appear participatory on the surface but grant participants limited power to shape outcomes. In accessibility…
- Pseudobulbar Affect (PBA, Emotional Incontinence, Involuntary Emotional Expression Disorder)
- A neurological condition characterized by episodes of involuntary, exaggerated, or inappropriate emotional expression — such as uncontrollable laughing or crying — that may not match the person's actu…
- Pseudonymization (Pseudonymisation, De-identification)
- A privacy technique in which personally identifying fields are replaced with artificial identifiers — typically hashes, tokens, or randomly assigned IDs — so that the data can no longer be attributed …
- Psychoacoustics
- The branch of perceptual psychology that studies how humans subjectively perceive sound - loudness, pitch, timbre, spatial location, foreground/background segregation, and masking. Psychoacoustic prin…
- Psychoeducation
- The process of providing education about a mental health condition, its symptoms, treatment options, and management strategies to individuals with the condition and their support networks. For OCD, ps…
- Psycholinguistics
- The scientific study of the cognitive and neural processes that underlie the production, comprehension, and acquisition of language. Psycholinguistic research measures phenomena such as reading and si…
- Psychological Accessibility
- A dimension of accessibility concerned with whether users find a product or service useful, appropriate, and satisfying, beyond being merely technically operable. Psychological accessibility addresses…
- Psychometric Evaluation (Psychometric Validation, Psychometric Analysis)
- The process of assessing whether a measurement instrument (such as a questionnaire or survey) possesses desirable statistical properties including validity, reliability, and consistency. In accessibil…
- Psychometric Test (Psychometric Assessment, Psychometric Evaluation)
- A standardised measurement instrument designed to assess an individual's cognitive abilities, motor skills, perceptual speed, or other psychological attributes. In accessibility research and usability…
- Psychometric validation (Psychometric evaluation, Instrument validation)
- The process of establishing that a measurement instrument (such as a questionnaire or scale) possesses adequate reliability (consistency of measurement), criterion validity (correlation with establish…