Glossary

Search results

Feedback Design(also: System Feedback, User Feedback Design)

The design of system responses that communicate to users what is happening, what the system understood, and what actions are needed. Effective feedback design is critical in assistive technology, where users may have limited sensory, motor, or cognitive channels for receiving…

Feedforward(also: Anticipatory Feedback)

Design information that tells users what to expect before they take an action, guiding them toward intended functionality by communicating expected results. Unlike feedback (which confirms what happened after an action), feedforward helps users form correct expectations and make…

Finger Reading(also: Touch Scanning, Tactile Scanning)

A touch interaction technique used on accessible touchscreen interfaces where users continuously pan or slide their finger across the screen to explore content, receiving feedback for every position touched without encountering blank or unresponsive areas. In accessible data…

Fisheye View(also: Fisheye Lens, Graphical Fisheye)

A focus+context visualization technique, introduced by Furnas, that magnifies a region of interest while progressively compressing surrounding context — analogous to a fisheye camera lens. Used in tree visualizations, menus, and graphs to help users see detail and structure…

Fitts' Law(also: Fitts Law)

A predictive model of human movement in human-computer interaction that states the time required to move to a target area is a function of the distance to the target and the size of the target. Specifically, larger and closer targets are faster to acquire than smaller and more…

Fitts' Law(also: Fitts Law)

A predictive model of human movement that describes the time required to move to a target as a function of the target's size and distance from the starting point. Formulated by Paul Fitts in 1954, the law states that smaller and more distant targets take longer to acquire. In…

Fitts's Law(also: Fitts Law, Fitts' Law)

A predictive model of human movement that describes the time required to rapidly move to a target area as a function of the distance to the target and the target's size. Smaller and more distant targets take longer to reach and are more prone to errors. In accessibility, Fitts's…

Fluid Traversal(also: Fluid Navigation)

A navigation design principle for screen reader interfaces that aims to mirror the flexibility of sighted visual attention. Fluid traversal has two key properties: it should be concise (requiring minimal key presses or actions to move between parts of a representation) and…

Focus Management(also: Focus Control, Programmatic Focus)

The practice of controlling which element on a web page or application receives keyboard focus, and ensuring that focus moves in a logical and predictable manner as users interact with the interface. Focus management is one of the most challenging aspects of web accessibility…

Focus and Context(also: Focus+Context, Detail in Context)

An information visualization and interaction design principle that simultaneously presents detailed information about a specific item of interest (focus) alongside an overview of the surrounding structure or environment (context). In accessibility, the focus+context approach is…

Focus+Context(also: Focus plus Context, Focus and Context)

A visualization interaction paradigm that integrates a detailed focus region and its surrounding context into a single unified view, rather than separating them. Techniques include fisheye views, semantic zooming, and lenses that distort or overlay content so users can see fine…

Foot-Based Interaction(also: Foot Input, Foot Gesture Interaction)

An interaction technique that uses foot movements and gestures as input for controlling digital devices. Foot-based interaction is particularly relevant for people with upper body motor impairments who have functional lower limbs but cannot use their hands, including people with…

Force Field(also: Haptic Force Field, Virtual Force Field)

In haptic interface design, a computational model that defines attractive or repulsive forces at each point in a two-dimensional workspace, used to represent graphical user interface elements as tactile objects. When a user moves a haptic pointing device through a force field,…

Free-Roam Locomotion(also: Room-Scale VR, Physical Locomotion)

A VR locomotion method where the user's real-world physical movement is directly mapped to movement in the virtual environment—walking forward in the real room moves the user forward in VR. While free-roam provides the most natural and immersive movement experience, it presents…

Frequency mapping(also: Pitch mapping, Frequency-position mapping)

A sonification technique that encodes spatial position or data values as changes in audio frequency (pitch), creating an intuitive correspondence between vertical position and pitch height — low positions produce low-frequency sounds and high positions produce high-frequency…

Functional Colour(also: Functional Color)

Functional colour is a design technique for auditory interfaces where visual colour distinctions are replaced with alternative identifiers — typically numbers or mnemonic labels — that convey the same categorical or grouping information through non-visual channels. For example,…

16 results.