Glossary

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Touch Screen Accessibility(also: Touchscreen Accessibility, Touch Input Accessibility)

The design and implementation of touch-based interfaces so they can be effectively used by people with various disabilities, including those with motor impairments, low vision, or blindness. Touch screen accessibility challenges include the requirement for precise finger…

Touch Target(also: Tap Target, Hit Area, Target Size)

A touch target is the area on a touchscreen interface that responds to a user's tap or touch input. Accessibility guidelines recommend minimum touch target sizes to ensure that people with motor impairments, limited dexterity, or larger fingers can reliably activate interactive…

Touch target(also: Tap target, Touch target size, Target size)

The interactive area on a touchscreen or pen-based display that responds to user input when tapped or pressed. Touch target size is a critical accessibility consideration because targets that are too small or too closely spaced cause selection errors, particularly for older…

Touch-to-Explore(also: Touch Exploration, Explore by Touch)

An interaction mode used by touchscreen screen readers (such as VoiceOver on iOS and TalkBack on Android) where users drag their finger across the screen to discover and hear descriptions of interface elements beneath their fingertip. As the user's finger passes over buttons,…

Touchscreen(also: Touch Screen, Touch Display)

An input and display device that detects touch gestures directly on its surface, allowing users to interact with content by tapping, swiping, pinching, or dragging. While touchscreens enable intuitive direct manipulation, they present accessibility challenges for users with…

Touchscreen Accessibility(also: Touch Interface Accessibility)

Touchscreen accessibility refers to the design principles, techniques, and assistive technologies that make touchscreen devices usable by people with disabilities. This includes screen reader gestures (such as VoiceOver on iOS and TalkBack on Android), which allow blind users to…

Touchscreen text entry(also: Mobile typing, Virtual keyboard input)

The process of entering text on a touchscreen device using a virtual keyboard, which presents significant accessibility challenges for blind and visually impaired users who cannot see key boundaries or visual feedback. Screen reader users typically employ an explore-then-lift…

Transportation Accessibility(also: Accessible Transportation, Mobility Accessibility)

The design and provision of transportation systems, services, and infrastructure that are usable by people with disabilities. Transportation accessibility encompasses physical access to vehicles and transit stops, accessible information systems (route planning, real-time…

UAProf(also: User Agent Profile)

A specification from the Open Mobile Alliance that extends the CC/PP (Composite Capability/Preference Profiles) framework to describe mobile device capabilities in a standardized RDF-based format. UAProf profiles contain information about a device's hardware platform, software…

UI Detection(also: User Interface Detection, GUI Element Detection)

The use of computer vision and machine learning to automatically identify and classify user interface elements (buttons, text fields, icons, toggles, etc.) from screenshots or screen pixels. In accessibility contexts, UI detection enables systems to generate accessibility…

VBraille(also: V-Braille, Vibration Braille)

A method for representing Braille characters on a smartphone touchscreen using vibration feedback. The screen is divided into a 3-row by 2-column grid matching a standard Braille cell layout, and the phone vibrates when the user touches regions corresponding to raised dots in…

View Hierarchy(also: UI Hierarchy, Accessibility Hierarchy, DOM Tree)

The tree-structured representation of how user interface elements are organized and nested within an application. The view hierarchy defines parent-child relationships between UI components, specifying which elements are contained within others and how they are grouped. This…

Visual Assistance Technology(also: VAT, Visual Aid App)

Mobile applications and devices that take videos or images as input and provide verbal, haptic, or other non-visual output to help blind and low vision people access visual information. VAT can be human-enabled (e.g., Be My Eyes, Aira) where remote sighted volunteers or agents…

Voice User Interface(also: VUI, Voice Command Interface, Voice Interface)

An interface that allows users to interact with a device or application through spoken language commands rather than touch, mouse, or keyboard input. Voice user interfaces use automated speech recognition (ASR) to convert speech to text and natural language understanding (NLU)…

Voicemail(also: Voice Mail, Voice Messaging)

Voicemail is a telecommunications service that records an audio message from a caller when the called party is unavailable, for later retrieval by the recipient. Accessibility considerations include: reliance on hearing to listen to messages (a barrier for Deaf and…

WAP(also: Wireless Application Protocol)

A suite of protocols and specifications designed to enable mobile devices to access internet content and services. WAP defined standards for how mobile devices communicate with web servers, including markup languages (WML, XHTML-MP) optimized for small screens and limited…

WURFL(also: Wireless Universal Resource File)

An open-source device description repository that catalogs the capabilities of mobile devices in a large XML file. WURFL collects information about device features such as screen size, image format support, CSS support, and pointing device availability, enabling developers and…

Wi-Fi Fingerprinting(also: WiFi Fingerprinting, Wi-Fi Positioning)

An indoor localization technique that estimates a device's position by comparing the signal strengths of nearby Wi-Fi access points against a pre-collected database of "fingerprints" — measurements taken at known reference points across a building. Because Wi-Fi access points…

contentDescription(also: content description, android:contentDescription)

An Android accessibility attribute that provides a text description for UI elements, particularly those without visible text such as ImageButtons and ImageViews. When set, TalkBack and other Android screen readers announce this description to users. For elements that rely solely…

mobileOK(also: mobileOK Basic Tests, W3C mobileOK)

A set of machine-automatable tests published by the W3C to verify conformance with Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0. The mobileOK Basic Tests define a subset of best practices that can be unambiguously evaluated by automated tools, checking for issues such as unsupported image…