Glossary

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IAAP(also: International Association of Accessibility Professionals)

A professional membership organisation founded in 2014 that defines, promotes, and certifies accessibility professionals worldwide. IAAP offers certification programs including the Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies (CPACC) for foundational knowledge and…

IAccessible2(also: IA2)

An open accessibility API specification originally developed by IBM and donated to the Linux Foundation. IAccessible2 extends Microsoft Active Accessibility (MSAA) to support the richer semantic information needed by Web 2.0 applications, including WAI-ARIA roles, states, and…

IBM Home Page Reader(also: Home Page Reader, HPR)

IBM Home Page Reader (HPR) was a pioneering voice browser developed by IBM that provided audio-based web browsing for people with visual disabilities. Unlike screen readers that operate as an overlay on top of a visual browser, Home Page Reader was a self-contained browser that…

IC2D(also: Integrated Communication 2 Draw)

A drawing application developed at UC Berkeley that enables blind and visually impaired users to create, explore, and label graphical images using a keyboard-operated grid-based auditory interface. IC2D uses a recursive 3x3 grid mapped to the telephone numpad for spatial…

ICADD(also: International Committee on Accessible Document Design)

A non-profit organization that developed techniques for making structured electronic documents accessible to people with print disabilities. ICADD created the SDA (SGML Document Access) mechanism — a set of attributes that map complex document type definitions to a simplified…

ICCHP(also: International Conference on Computers Helping People with Special Needs)

A biennial research conference on technology for people with disabilities, held in Europe since 1989. ICCHP provides a peer-reviewed academic venue for accessibility research with a strong European perspective, complementing the ASSETS conference. Topics span assistive…

ICF(also: International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health)

A framework developed by the World Health Organization (WHO) and endorsed by all 191 member states in 2001 for describing and measuring health and disability. The ICF takes a biopsychosocial approach, classifying functioning and disability across four components: body functions…

ICT Accessibility(also: Information and Communication Technology Accessibility)

The design and development of information and communication technology products and services so they can be used by people with the widest range of abilities, including those with visual, hearing, motor, and cognitive disabilities. ICT accessibility encompasses hardware,…

ICT4D(also: Information and Communication Technologies for Development, ICTD)

A field of research and practice focused on how information and communication technologies can be designed, deployed, and used to support social and economic development, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. ICT4D examines the unique social, cultural, and…

ICTD(also: Information and Communication Technologies and Development, ICT4D)

A research field and practice area focused on designing, deploying, and evaluating information and communication technologies to improve socio-economic outcomes in low-resource and developing contexts. ICTD research addresses challenges such as limited infrastructure,…

IDE(also: Integrated Development Environment)

A software application that provides a comprehensive environment for writing, testing, and debugging code. Common IDEs include Visual Studio Code, IntelliJ IDEA, and Xcode. In accessibility contexts, IDEs are important because they can host plugins and extensions that help…

IDE Accessibility(also: Accessible IDE, Development Environment Accessibility)

IDE accessibility refers to making integrated development environments — the software applications used for writing, testing, and debugging code — usable by developers with disabilities. IDEs like Visual Studio Code, IntelliJ, and Eclipse present significant accessibility…

IDEA(also: Individuals with Disabilities Education Act)

A United States federal law enacted in 1990 (reauthorized in 2004) that guarantees students with disabilities the right to a free appropriate public education (FAPE) in the least restrictive environment. IDEA requires schools to develop Individualized Education Programs (IEPs)…

IDEIA(also: Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act, IDEA 2004)

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004, which reauthorized and amended the original IDEA legislation. IDEIA strengthened requirements for highly qualified special education teachers, expanded early intervention services, and updated provisions for…

IEP(also: Individualized Education Program, Individualized Education Plan)

A legally mandated written plan in the United States, developed annually by a team including parents, teachers, and specialists, that sets out the specific educational goals, services, accommodations, and assistive technologies required for a student aged 3–21 with a qualifying…

IIIF(also: International Image Interoperability Framework, Triple-I-F)

The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) is a set of open, community-developed technical specifications and APIs that enable cultural heritage institutions to share, access, and reuse digital image collections in a standardised way. IIIF provides an Image API…

IMS AccessForAll(also: AccLIP, IMS Accessibility for LIP, AccessForAll)

A specification from IMS Global Learning Consortium that defines how to describe learner accessibility preferences and match them with appropriate learning resources. IMS AccessForAll extends the IMS Learner Information Package (LIP) with detailed accessibility preference…

IMS Content Packaging(also: IMS CP, Content Package)

IMS Content Packaging is a specification from the IMS Global Learning Consortium that defines a standard way to bundle and exchange digital learning content between different learning management systems and educational platforms. A content package consists of a manifest file…

IMSLP(also: International Music Score Library Project, Petrucci Music Library)

A free online repository of public domain music scores, also known as the Petrucci Music Library. IMSLP hosts hundreds of thousands of scores primarily in PDF format, making it one of the largest collections of freely available music notation. While an invaluable resource for…

ISCII(also: Indian Script Code for Information Interchange)

A character encoding standard developed by the Government of India for representing Indian language text in digital systems. ISCII uses a single encoding scheme that can represent characters from all major Indian scripts by exploiting their common phonetic structure — each…

ISO 24751(also: ISO/IEC 24751, Individualized Adaptability and Accessibility in E-Learning)

ISO 24751 (Individualized Adaptability and Accessibility in E-Learning, Education and Training) is an international standard for matching the accessibility features of digital learning resources and environments to the needs and preferences of individual learners. Published in…

ISO 9241(also: ISO 9241-171, Ergonomics of Human-System Interaction)

An international standard from the International Organization for Standardization covering the ergonomics of human-system interaction. Part 171 (ISO 9241-171:2008) specifically addresses accessibility guidance for software, providing requirements and recommendations for making…

ISO 9241-210(also: Human-Centred Design Standard, Ergonomics of Human-System Interaction — Part 210)

An international standard specifying the principles and activities of human-centred design (HCD) for interactive systems. It defines a six-step iterative process — understanding context of use, specifying user requirements, producing design solutions, and evaluating against…

Iceberg Theory of Stuttering(also: Sheehan's iceberg)

A model proposed by Joseph Sheehan (1970) describing stuttering as an iceberg whose visible behaviours - blocks, repetitions, prolongations - are only a small fraction above the waterline. The much larger hidden portion comprises cognitive and affective reactions: avoidance,…

Icon(also: Icons, UI Icon)

A small graphical symbol used in graphical user interfaces (GUIs) to represent an application, file, function, or object. Icons rely on visual recognition rather than text reading, which can be both an advantage and a barrier for users with visual impairments depending on…

Icon Size(also: Target Size, Touch Target Size)

The physical or rendered dimensions of graphical interface elements such as icons, buttons, and interactive controls. Research consistently shows that larger icon sizes improve interaction performance for users with low vision and motor impairments. WCAG 2.1 Success Criterion…

Icon-Based Communication(also: Symbol-Based Communication, Picture-Based Communication)

Icon-based communication is a form of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) in which users select graphic symbols or icons representing words, phrases, or concepts to construct messages. These systems are commonly used by individuals with severe speech impairments who…

Iconicity(also: Iconic Motivation, Sign Iconicity)

A property of a linguistic sign in which its form resembles or is motivated by its meaning, rather than being arbitrary. In sign languages, iconicity is pervasive: many signs visually depict an action, shape, or spatial relationship associated with the referent (for example,…

Iconography(also: Icon Design, Icon System)

The design and systematic use of visual symbols to convey meaning in an interface. Good iconography balances recognisability, consistency, and cultural appropriateness so that users can interpret symbols quickly without reading text. For accessibility, icons alone are rarely…

Ideational Convergence(also: Creative Homogenization)

A phenomenon where the use of generative AI tools leads to a narrowing of creative diversity, as multiple users producing content with the same AI system tend to converge on similar outputs. In audio description, ideational convergence risks flattening the variety of descriptive…

Identity Management

The ongoing process of controlling how one presents aspects of their identity—including disability, health conditions, gender, sexuality, occupation, and other characteristics—across different social contexts and to different stakeholders. In accessibility and disability…

Identity Model of Disability(also: Affirmation Model)

A model of disability in which individuals claim disability as a positive aspect of their identity, similar to how other marginalized groups have reclaimed their identities. Unlike the medical model (which views disability as a deficiency to be fixed) or the social model (which…

Identity Obfuscation

The deliberate concealment or misrepresentation of aspects of one's identity to avoid discrimination, harm, or negative consequences from adversarial stakeholders. In disability and accessibility contexts, identity obfuscation may involve hiding a disability from employers,…

Identity Wallet(also: Digital Identity Wallet, EUDI Wallet)

A smartphone app that stores digitally signed credentials representing attributes of a person's identity — such as name, date of birth, government-issued ID number, student enrolment, or professional qualification — and lets the holder selectively disclose only the attributes…

Identity-First Language(also: IFL)

Language that places the disability or condition before the person (e.g., "autistic person," "deaf person," "disabled person"), in contrast to person-first language ("person with autism," "person with a disability"). Many autistic self-advocates prefer identity-first language…

Ideographic Characters(also: Ideographs, Logograms, CJK Characters)

Ideographic characters are written symbols that represent a word, morpheme, or concept rather than an individual sound, as used in Chinese (Hanzi), Japanese (Kanji), and historically Korean (Hanja). Because a single writing system can include thousands of distinct characters —…

Idiosyncratic Gesture(also: Personalised Gesture, Idiosyncratic Movement)

A body-based communicative movement whose form and meaning are specific to one individual (and often to one communication partner), rather than drawn from a shared vocabulary like American Sign Language. Idiosyncratic gestures are central to unaided AAC for many people with…

Illiteracy(also: Functional Illiteracy, Low Literacy)

The inability to read or write, or having reading and writing skills below a functional level needed for everyday tasks. In the context of digital accessibility, illiteracy and low literacy present significant barriers to using text-based interfaces, navigating websites,…

Illness Narrative(also: Disease Narrative)

An illness narrative is the story a person and their significant others construct to give coherence to the disruptive experience of illness or diagnosis and its effects on the family system. In the context of cognitive impairment and dementia, the illness narrative typically…

Image Accessibility(also: Visual Content Accessibility)

The practice of making images perceivable and understandable to people who cannot see them, primarily through alternative text descriptions. Image accessibility is a foundational requirement of WCAG (Success Criterion 1.1.1) and involves providing text alternatives that convey…

Image Captioning(also: Automatic Image Description, AI Image Description)

A computer vision task in which an AI model generates a natural language description of the content of an image. In accessibility contexts, image captioning technology enables visually impaired users to understand visual content by converting images into text that can be read…

Image Classification(also: Visual Classification, Photo Classification)

A computer vision task where a machine learning model assigns a category label to an input image based on its visual content. Image classifiers are trained on labeled example images and learn to recognize patterns associated with each category. In accessibility applications,…

Image Description(also: Image Caption, Visual Description)

A textual representation of the content of an image, providing information about objects, people, scenes, text, colors, spatial relationships, and other visual elements. Image descriptions serve as a primary means for blind and low vision users to access visual content. They can…

Image Description App(also: Visual assistance app, AI visual description app)

A smartphone or wearable application that captures an image of the user's surroundings and returns a spoken or textual description of its content, aimed primarily at blind and low-vision users. Early crowdsourced systems such as VizWiz (2010) relied on remote human workers;…

Image Editing Accessibility(also: Accessible Image Editing, Accessible Photo Editing)

The design of image editing tools and workflows that are usable by people with disabilities, particularly blind and low vision users who rely on screen readers. Key challenges include making spatial editing operations (cropping, positioning overlays) accessible without visual…

Image Enhancement(also: Image Pre-Compensation, Visual Enhancement)

Image enhancement in the context of accessibility refers to techniques that modify digital images or on-screen content to improve their visibility and usability for people with visual impairments. Methods include contrast adjustment, edge highlighting, color remapping,…

Image Map(also: Clickable Map, Imagemap)

An HTML feature that allows different regions of a single image to be designated as separate hyperlinks, each pointing to a different URL. Image maps can be client-side (coordinates and links defined in HTML MAP and AREA elements) or server-side (click coordinates sent to the…

Image Obfuscation(also: Image Masking, Visual Privacy Protection)

Techniques applied to images to obscure or remove sensitive visual information before sharing or processing, such as blurring, pixelation, edge filtering, or masking regions of an image. In accessibility contexts, image obfuscation is important for privacy-preserving assistive…

Image Processing(also: Digital Image Processing)

The use of computational algorithms to analyze, enhance, transform, or extract information from digital images. In accessibility, image processing techniques are applied to convert visual content into accessible formats for blind and visually impaired users, including generating…

Image Recognition(also: Image Classification, Computer Vision Recognition)

The use of computer vision algorithms to identify and classify objects, text, faces, scenes, and other visual content in images or video. In accessibility applications, image recognition enables tools that describe visual content to blind and low vision users, such as smartphone…