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Glossary

Terms used in accessibility research and practice. Each entry has a definition, common aliases, and category tags.

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ARIA Live Region(also: Live Region, ARIA Live)
An ARIA live region is a section of a web page marked with the aria-live attribute that announces dynamic content changes to assistive technologies without requiring user focus to move to the updated area. Live regions are essential for making real-time updates — such as status…
ARIA Live Regions(also: Live Regions, aria-live)
ARIA live regions are areas of a web page that dynamically update with new content and use WAI-ARIA attributes to communicate those changes to assistive technologies. The aria-live attribute (with values of off, polite, or assertive) tells screen readers how urgently to announce…
Accessible Name(also: Accessible Label, Acc Name)
The text string that assistive technologies such as screen readers use to identify and announce a user interface element. The accessible name is computed by browsers following the W3C's Accessible Name and Description Computation algorithm, which checks a priority-ordered…
Accessible Role(also: ARIA Role, Role)
An accessible role is a property that defines the type and expected behavior of a user interface element as exposed to assistive technologies through the accessibility tree. Roles communicate what an element is (e.g., button, link, heading, list, table, dialog) so that assistive…
Accordion Interface(also: Accordion Widget, Collapsible Sections, Disclosure Widget)
A user interface pattern that presents content in vertically stacked sections, each with a header that can be expanded or collapsed to show or hide the associated content. Accordions are particularly useful for accessibility because they allow users to navigate a hierarchical…
Compound Controls(also: Composite Widgets, Complex Controls)
User interface components that combine multiple interactive elements into a single logical control, such as a group of radio buttons, a set of checkboxes with a shared label, a combobox (combining a text input with a dropdown list), or a date picker with multiple fields.…
Landmarks(also: ARIA Landmarks, Page Landmarks, Landmark Regions)
Designated regions of a web page that provide structural navigation points for assistive technology users. ARIA landmark roles include banner, navigation, main, complementary, contentinfo, search, form, and region. Screen reader users can jump between landmarks using keyboard…
Logical Navigation(also: Structural Navigation, Semantic Navigation)
A non-visual navigation strategy in which a user moves through a web page by its semantic structure — jumping between heading levels, ARIA landmarks, skip links, form fields, or other role-tagged regions — rather than reading the content sequentially or sampling fragments by…
Page Landmarks(also: ARIA Landmarks, Landmark Regions, Landmark Roles)
Named regions of a web page that identify its high-level structure — for example banner, navigation, main, complementary, search, form, contentinfo — so that assistive technology can expose them as jump targets. Landmarks are typically declared with semantic HTML elements…
Progress Bar(also: Progress Indicator)
A UI element that visually communicates the proportion of a task, process, or timeline that has been completed. In media players it indicates playback position; in forms and wizards it signals completion across steps; in file transfers it shows elapsed progress. Accessibility…
Widget Role(also: ARIA Role, Component Role)
A property that identifies the type and purpose of a user interface element to assistive technologies. Widget roles communicate what a component is (such as a button, checkbox, slider, or tab) so that screen readers and other assistive tools can announce the element correctly…
Widget accessibility(also: ARIA widget roles, Custom control accessibility)
The practice of ensuring that interactive user interface components — such as drop-down menus, tab panels, accordions, modal dialogs, and sliders — are operable and perceivable by users of assistive technologies. Widget accessibility requires correct implementation of WAI-ARIA…
tabindex
An HTML attribute that controls whether an element can receive keyboard focus and its position in the tab order. A tabindex of 0 places an element in the natural tab order, a positive value sets a specific order position, and a negative value (typically -1) allows programmatic…

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