Glossary

Search results

AChecker(also: IDI Web Accessibility Checker)

An open-source web accessibility evaluation tool that checks HTML content against accessibility standards including WCAG 2.0. AChecker identifies three types of issues: known problems (definite violations detectable by rule), likely problems (probable violations requiring human…

Accessibility Linter(also: A11y Linter, Accessibility Lint)

A static analysis tool that scans source code — typically HTML, CSS, and related web technologies — for accessibility violations against standards such as WCAG. Accessibility linters can be integrated into code editors, build pipelines, or run as standalone tools to flag issues…

Accessibility Overlay(also: A11y Overlay, Accessibility Widget, Accessibility Plugin)

A third-party software product that applies a layer of JavaScript over a website claiming to automatically fix accessibility issues, typically through a toolbar widget offering features like text resizing, color contrast adjustment, and screen reader optimization. Despite…

ArUco Marker(also: ArUco Fiducial)

A square fiducial marker composed of a black border and an inner binary pattern that encodes a unique ID, designed for fast, robust pose estimation from a single camera image. ArUco markers are widely supported by OpenCV and are used in augmented reality, robotics, and research…

Authoring Tool(also: Web Authoring Tool, Content Authoring Tool)

An authoring tool is any software application used to create or modify web content, ranging from code editors and content management systems (CMS) to visual page builders and social media platforms. The W3C's Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) address two aspects of…

Automated Accessibility Testing(also: Automated Testing, Accessibility Scanning, A11y Testing)

The use of software tools to programmatically check web content against accessibility guidelines such as WCAG, identifying issues like missing alternative text, insufficient color contrast, empty links, and missing form labels. While automated tools such as WAVE, axe, and…

Automated Evaluation Tool(also: AET, Automated Testing Tool, Accessibility Checker)

Software that automatically scans websites, applications, or documents to detect accessibility violations against standards such as WCAG or Section 508. Common examples include WAVE, axe, AChecker, and Lighthouse. While these tools can efficiently identify many technical…

Axe(also: axe-core, Deque Axe)

An open-source accessibility testing engine developed by Deque Systems that checks web content against WCAG and other accessibility standards. Axe can be integrated into browsers (via browser extensions), development workflows (via axe-core library), and testing frameworks (via…

BETSIE(also: BBC Education Text to Speech Internet Enhancer)

BETSIE (BBC Education Text to Speech Internet Enhancer) was an early web accessibility tool developed by the BBC as a CGI Perl script that produced text-only versions of web pages optimized for users of text-to-speech systems. BETSIE handled frames by serializing them,…

Bobby(also: Bobby Worldwide, Watchfire Bobby)

Bobby was one of the earliest and most widely used automated web accessibility testing tools, developed by the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST) and later acquired by Watchfire (subsequently IBM). Launched in the mid-1990s, Bobby checked web pages against WCAG 1.0…

Breadboard(also: Solderless Breadboard, Protoboard)

A reusable plastic board with a grid of interconnected holes used for building temporary electronic circuits without soldering. Components are inserted into the holes and connected by internal metal strips. Breadboards are essential tools in electronics education and…

Code Editor(also: Source Code Editor, Text Editor)

A software application designed specifically for editing source code, offering features like syntax highlighting, code completion, bracket matching, and indentation management. Code editors range from lightweight tools like Notepad++ and Vim to full-featured editors like Visual…

Digital Whiteboard(also: Online whiteboard, Virtual whiteboard, Collaborative whiteboard)

A web- or app-based collaborative canvas (e.g., Miro, FigJam, Mural, Google Jamboard) that lets multiple users co-create content on an effectively boundless surface using sticky notes, sketches, shapes, images, and connectors. Digital whiteboards have become central to remote…

F-Droid

A catalogue and package repository for free and open-source Android applications, used as an alternative to Google Play, with every app built and signed from publicly auditable source code. Accessibility researchers frequently use F-Droid as a target ecosystem for studies and…

Functional Web Accessibility Evaluator(also: FAE, Functional Accessibility Evaluator)

A web accessibility testing tool developed by the University of Illinois that evaluates websites based on coding techniques and best practices rather than simply checking for the presence or absence of specific HTML attributes. Unlike traditional tools that might only verify…

Git Diff(also: Code Diff, Diff View)

A comparison view that shows the differences between two versions of a file or set of files in a version control system. Git diff displays additions, deletions, and modifications using visual markers such as color coding (green for additions, red for deletions) and plus/minus…

GitHub Copilot(also: Copilot)

An AI code assistant developed by GitHub and Microsoft, integrated into editors such as Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio, and JetBrains IDEs. Copilot offers inline code completion, conversational chat (Ask, Edit, and Agent modes), and an Accessible View designed to present…

Integrated Development Environment(also: IDE)

A software application that provides comprehensive facilities for programming, typically combining a source code editor, build automation tools, a debugger, and often version control integration in a single interface. IDEs like Visual Studio Code, Eclipse, and IntelliJ IDEA are…

Laser Cutter(also: CO2 Laser Cutter)

A digital fabrication machine that uses a focused laser beam to cut or engrave flat materials such as wood, acrylic, cardboard, leather, and some plastics. Along with 3D printers and CNC routers, laser cutters are a core tool in makerspaces and community fabrication labs, and…

Librosa

An open-source Python library for audio and music signal analysis, widely used in music-information retrieval and accessibility research to extract low-level acoustic features such as tempo, RMS energy, spectral centroid, zero-crossing rate, chroma, and mel-frequency cepstral…

Prolific

An online participant recruitment platform used in academic research that allows researchers to screen and recruit participants based on demographic criteria including disability status. Prolific and similar platforms (such as Amazon Mechanical Turk) have been increasingly used…

Prompt Engineering(also: Prompt Design, Prompt Crafting)

The practice of designing and structuring input prompts to guide large language models (LLMs) toward producing more accurate, relevant, and useful outputs. In accessibility contexts, prompt engineering techniques such as role-play prompting (assigning expert personas),…

QualWeb(also: QualWeb Evaluator)

An open-source automated web accessibility evaluation tool developed at the University of Lisbon that tests web pages against WCAG success criteria and ACT Rules. QualWeb is notable for being among the first accessibility evaluation tools to incorporate semantic analysis…

RAVEN(also: Rule-based Accessibility Validation Environment)

An accessibility testing tool developed by IBM as a set of Eclipse IDE plug-ins for verifying the accessibility of graphical user interface applications. RAVEN uses aspect-oriented programming techniques to provide non-invasive, automatic to semi-automatic accessibility…

Suno(also: Suno AI, Suno v3.5)

A commercial generative AI platform that produces full songs — lyrics, vocals, instrumentation — from short natural-language prompts specifying genre, mood, tempo, and lyrical content. Suno is widely adopted in HCI research on music co-creation, journaling, and therapy because…

WAVE(also: WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool)

A suite of web accessibility evaluation tools developed by WebAIM (Web Accessibility In Mind) that identifies accessibility and WCAG errors in web pages. WAVE provides visual feedback by injecting icons and indicators directly into the page to show accessibility issues, making…

Web Crawling(also: Web Spidering, Web Scraping)

The automated process of systematically browsing and indexing web pages by following hyperlinks from a starting URL. In accessibility evaluation, web crawlers are used to discover and catalogue pages across a website for audit purposes. Two primary traversal strategies exist:…

YOLO (You Only Look Once)(also: YOLO, YOLOv8, YOLO Object Detector)

A family of real-time object detection neural networks that predict bounding boxes and class labels in a single forward pass over an image, rather than using a two-stage propose-then-classify pipeline. YOLO has become a workhorse detector for accessibility research and assistive…

28 results.