Glossary

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Cognitive Assessment(also: Neuropsychological assessment, Cognitive testing)

Structured evaluation of cognitive abilities — attention, memory, executive function, language, visuospatial processing, and more — using standardized tasks, questionnaires, or interactive assessments. Cognitive assessments support clinical diagnosis, screening for decline or…

Cognitive Interviewing

A qualitative research technique used to explore how survey respondents understand and mentally process assessment questions. Cognitive interviewing involves asking participants to think aloud as they interpret and answer questions, revealing misunderstandings, ambiguities, and…

Cognitive Walkthrough(also: Expert Walkthrough)

An accessibility and usability evaluation method in which one or more experts step through a series of tasks from the perspective of a target user, identifying potential barriers and difficulties at each step. In accessibility evaluations, cognitive walkthroughs often involve…

Cohen's Kappa(also: Kappa Statistic, Kappa Coefficient)

A statistical measure of inter-rater reliability that accounts for agreement occurring by chance, used to assess the consistency between two or more raters coding qualitative data. Values range from -1 to 1, where 1 indicates perfect agreement, 0 indicates agreement no better…

Collaborative Design(also: Collaborative Design Session)

A design approach where multiple participants work together to create shared design solutions, building on each other's ideas and negotiating design decisions collectively. In accessible design workshops with blind participants, collaborative design requires specific…

Communication Privacy Management Theory(also: CPM, CPM Theory)

A communication theory developed by Sandra Petronio that treats private information as something people own and collectively manage through negotiated rules about boundaries, co-ownership, and turbulence (boundary violations). CPM is widely used to analyse online…

Community Based Participatory Research(also: CBPR, Participatory Action Research)

A research methodology that creates equitable partnerships between researchers and community members throughout the entire research process, from defining research questions to disseminating findings. CBPR aims to reduce health and social disparities by ensuring that the people…

Community Sustainability(also: Research Sustainability)

The principle that research practices should not deplete, harm, or overburden the communities from which participants are recruited. In accessibility research, community sustainability requires considering the cumulative impact of multiple studies drawing from the same…

Community-Based Design(also: Community-Based Participatory Design, CBPD)

A design approach that situates the design process within a specific community, engaging community members as active participants and co-creators rather than passive research subjects. Unlike lab-based user research, community-based design takes place in the community's own…

Community-Based Participatory Research(also: CBPR, Community-based participatory design)

A research orientation in which academic researchers and community members collaborate as equal partners throughout the full research cycle — problem definition, design, data collection, analysis, and dissemination — to address issues of shared concern and produce outcomes that…

Community-Based Research(also: Community-Based Participatory Research, CBPR)

A research approach that centers the knowledge, priorities, and participation of the community being studied, treating community members as equal partners rather than research subjects. In disability and accessibility research, community-based approaches recognize that disabled…

Confederate(also: Research Confederate, Study Confederate)

A person who plays a scripted role in a research study while appearing to participants as a naive participant, bystander, or user. Confederates allow researchers to observe how true participants behave in realistic social situations — for example, how a blind user interacts with…

Confusion Matrix(also: Error Matrix)

A table used to characterize the accuracy of an input system by showing the probability that an intended signal will be correctly recognized versus misinterpreted as a different signal. In assistive technology, confusion matrices are used to map the error patterns of alternative…

Constructivist Grounded Theory(also: CGT)

A qualitative research methodology developed by Kathy Charmaz that adapts classic grounded theory by acknowledging that the researcher's theoretical commitments and lived experience shape the categories that emerge from the data. Rather than claiming a neutral "view from…

Content Analysis

A systematic research methodology used to analyze and categorize communication artifacts such as text, video, images, or audio recordings. In accessibility research, content analysis is frequently applied to study how people with disabilities interact with technology or perform…

Contextual Inquiry(also: CI, Contextual Interview)

A user research method in which a researcher observes and interviews a participant in their natural work or living environment while they perform their typical tasks. The researcher adopts an apprentice role, watching the participant work and asking questions to understand their…

Convenience Sampling(also: Availability Sampling, Accidental Sampling)

A non-probability sampling method in which participants are selected based on their availability and willingness to participate rather than through systematic selection criteria. In accessibility research, convenience sampling often results in recruiting participants from the…

Conversation Analysis(also: CA)

A qualitative research methodology that studies the sequential organization and interactional dynamics of naturally occurring talk and social interaction. Conversation analysis examines fine-grained details such as turn-taking, pauses, overlapping speech, gaze direction,…

Cooperative Evaluation(also: Cooperative Usability Evaluation, Modified Think-Aloud)

A usability evaluation method in which the researcher and participant work together as collaborators rather than following a strict observer-subject protocol. Unlike standard controlled experiments, cooperative evaluation allows participants to think aloud, ask questions, and…

Cooperative Inquiry(also: Co-Inquiry)

A participatory design methodology that involves children as full design partners throughout the technology development process, from initial brainstorming through prototyping and evaluation. Developed by Allison Druin and colleagues, cooperative inquiry treats children not…

Corpus(also: Language Corpus, Text Corpus, British National Corpus)

A corpus is a large, structured collection of texts used to train, tune, or evaluate language-processing systems. Representative examples include the British National Corpus (BNC, 100 million words of British English), the Penn Treebank, and more recently Common Crawl and…

Counternarratives(also: Counter-storytelling, Critical Counter-narrative)

A qualitative research and pedagogical technique, rooted in critical race theory and education research (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002), in which members of marginalized groups write and share their own stories to challenge dominant, “flat” narratives about their identities. In…

Crip Epistemology(also: Cripistemology)

A framework for understanding how disability produces distinct forms of knowledge that challenge dominant, ableist ways of knowing. Rooted in crip theory and disability studies, crip epistemologies recognize that disabled bodyminds generate situated, embodied knowledge through…

Cripepistemology(also: Crip knowledge, Disabled knowledge)

A framework recognizing that disability itself is a valuable way of knowing about the world — that disabled people acquire deep, embodied knowledge from their experiences navigating inaccessible environments, using assistive technologies, and perceiving the world differently.…

Criterion Validity

A psychometric property indicating whether an instrument's scores relate to some external measurable criterion. In practice, this is assessed by comparing the instrument's results with scores from another established measurement tool administered concurrently. For example, when…

Critical Autoethnography

A qualitative research method that combines personal narrative with critical analysis of systems of power, privilege, and oppression. Unlike traditional autoethnography, the critical variant explicitly interrogates how institutional, political, and cultural structures shape…

Critical Design(also: Critical Design Framework, Design Through Critique)

A research through design methodology that foregrounds the ethics of design practice, reveals potentially hidden agendas and values, and explores alternative design values. In accessibility research, critical design is used to create provocative prototypes not primarily intended…

Critical Disability Theory(also: Critical Disability Studies, CDT)

An interdisciplinary theoretical framework that examines disability as a social, political, and cultural phenomenon rather than solely a medical condition. Critical disability theory draws on disability studies, critical theory, and intersectional analysis to challenge dominant…

Critical Discourse Analysis(also: CDA)

An interdisciplinary research methodology that examines how language and texts both reflect and shape power structures, ideologies, and social practices. Originating from the work of Michel Foucault, CDA uses abductive reasoning — moving between theory-driven deductive analysis…

Critical Incident Questionnaire(also: CIQ)

A short, open-ended reflective tool developed by Stephen Brookfield for teaching and learning contexts, typically consisting of five questions asking participants to recall moments from a recent experience that were most engaging, surprising, confusing, distancing, or affirming.…

Critical Race Theory(also: CRT)

Critical Race Theory is a scholarly framework originating in legal studies that examines how laws, policies, and institutions perpetuate racial inequality, even in the absence of overt individual racism. It positions race as a social construct embedded in systems of power rather…

Cross-Ability Collaboration(also: Mixed-Ability Collaboration, Cross-Disability Collaboration)

Collaboration between people with different abilities, typically involving a person with a disability working alongside someone without that disability. In accessibility research, cross-ability collaboration often refers to partnerships between blind and sighted individuals,…

Cross-Cultural Adaptation Theory(also: CCAT, Kim's Cross-Cultural Adaptation Theory)

A communication theory, developed principally by Young Yun Kim, that describes how individuals adjust to an unfamiliar cultural environment over time through cycles of stress, adaptation, and growth. The theory emphasises that adaptation is mediated by host communication…

Cross-Disability

A research, advocacy, or design orientation that deliberately engages multiple disability communities at once rather than treating disability as a single-axis category or focusing on a single impairment group. Cross-disability work surfaces shared structural barriers (ableism,…

Cross-Disability Perspective(also: Cross-Disability Approach, Pan-Disability Research)

A research or design approach that examines accessibility across multiple disability types rather than focusing on a single condition. Cross-disability perspectives recognize that people with different disabilities may have overlapping needs, divergent requirements, or…

Cross-Validation(also: K-Fold Cross-Validation, Stratified Cross-Validation)

A statistical method for evaluating machine learning models by splitting data into multiple subsets (folds), training the model on some folds and testing on the remaining ones, then rotating through all combinations. Stratified cross-validation ensures each fold maintains the…

Cross-language Research(also: Cross-linguistic Research, Multilingual Research)

Research conducted across different languages, requiring translation and interpretation to bridge communication between researchers and participants who do not share a common language. In accessibility research with sign language users, cross-language challenges are particularly…

Cross-syndrome comparison(also: Cross-disability comparison)

A research methodology that evaluates a technology or intervention with participants from multiple disability groups to determine whether findings and design principles generalize across conditions. Cross-syndrome comparisons are important because assistive technologies designed…

Cultural Probes(also: Design Probes, Probes)

A design research technique in which participants are given a kit of open-ended, often playful artefacts - such as disposable cameras, diaries, maps, or prompts - to document aspects of their daily life over time. The returned materials surface experiences, values, and contexts…

Cumulative Link Mixed Model(also: CLMM, Ordinal Mixed Model)

A statistical model for analysing ordinal outcome data (such as Likert-scale ratings) that includes both fixed effects (experimental conditions) and random effects (participants, stimuli). CLMMs use a link function — commonly logit — to relate ordered categorical responses to…

DBSCAN(also: Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise)

A density-based clustering algorithm introduced by Ester, Kriegel, Sander, and Xu (1996) that groups data points located in dense neighbourhoods and labels sparse points as noise. Unlike k-means, DBSCAN does not require the user to specify the number of clusters in advance and…

Data Annotation(also: Data labeling, AI labeling)

The process of attaching labels, transcriptions, bounding boxes, or other structured metadata to raw data so that it can be used to train, evaluate, or benchmark machine-learning models. Annotation is typically performed by human workers - in-house experts, clinicians,…

Data Feminism

A framework developed by Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren Klein that applies intersectional feminist thought to the practice of working with data, offering seven principles including examining power, challenging power, elevating emotion and embodiment, rethinking binaries,…

Data Mining(also: Knowledge Discovery, KDD, Knowledge Discovery in Databases)

Data mining is the computational process of discovering patterns, rules, and relationships in large datasets, drawing on techniques from statistics, machine learning, and database systems. Common tasks include classification, clustering, association-rule mining, anomaly…

Data Sharing(also: Open Data, Data Dissemination)

The practice of making research data available to other researchers or the public for reuse, replication, and further analysis. In accessibility research, data sharing presents unique tensions: datasets sourced from people with disabilities are essential for building inclusive…

Data Stewardship(also: Dataset Stewardship, Data Governance)

The responsible management of data throughout its lifecycle, including decisions about collection, storage, access, sharing, and disposal. In accessibility research, participatory data stewardship involves disabled data contributors in decisions about how their data is used,…

Dataset Collection(also: Data Collection Protocol)

The process of gathering, curating, and documenting data used to train, evaluate, or benchmark machine learning systems. In accessibility contexts, dataset collection decisions — who contributes, what objects or scenarios are captured, how quality is assessed, how privacy is…

Deaf Epistemology(also: Deaf Ways of Knowing)

A body of theory and practice that recognizes Deaf communities as producers of distinct knowledge grounded in visual-spatial modalities, embodied interaction, sign language, and community experience. Deaf epistemologies foreground visual primacy, sightlines, and shared cultural…

Decision Tree(also: Classification Tree, Regression Tree, C4.5)

A decision tree is a supervised machine-learning model that represents a classification or regression decision as a tree of yes/no tests on input features, with predictions at the leaves. Well-known algorithms include ID3, C4.5, CART, and Random Forests. Decision trees are…

Decolonial Computing(also: Decolonial AI)

An evolution of postcolonial computing that moves beyond critique to explore practices and pedagogies that center the voices, knowledge, and experiences of marginalized communities in technology design and research. Decolonial computing actively seeks to dismantle power…