Glossary

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Corrective feedback(also: Error correction feedback, Instructional feedback)

Specific information provided to a user after an action that identifies what was done incorrectly and how to improve on the next attempt. In accessible interaction design, corrective feedback for blind users is typically delivered through text-to-speech (e.g., "make it longer,"…

Correctness(also: Precision, Validity)

In the context of accessibility evaluation, correctness (also called precision) is the proportion of reported accessibility problems that are true problems — that is, issues that genuinely affect users with disabilities rather than false positives. A high correctness rate means…

Cortical Plasticity(also: Brain Plasticity, Neural Plasticity, Cortical Reorganization)

The brain's ability to reorganize its neural connections and functional organization in response to injury, learning, or environmental changes. In the context of disability and rehabilitation, cortical plasticity is the mechanism by which undamaged brain areas can assume…

Cortical visual impairment(also: CVI, Cerebral visual impairment)

A neurological form of visual impairment caused by damage or atypical structures in the visual pathways and visual processing centres of the brain, rather than in the eyes themselves. CVI is now the most common cause of visual impairment in children in developed countries.…

Cosmesis(also: Cosmetic Cover, Prosthetic Cosmesis)

A covering applied to a prosthetic device that is designed to make the prosthesis look more natural or socially acceptable, and sometimes to improve grip or functionality. Cosmeses are available in a limited range of skin tones, which raises significant equity concerns—people…

Counteractive Frictions(also: Counteractive Friction)

A concept introduced by Ly et al. for the deliberate, strategically produced disruptions that marginalised communities generate to contest hegemonic infrastructures — petitions, protests, Human Rights Tribunal filings, targeted social-media campaigns, guerrilla postering.…

Counterbalancing(also: Latin Square Design)

A research methodology technique used to control for order effects by systematically varying the sequence of conditions across participants. In accessibility research comparing multiple interface designs or assistive technology configurations, counterbalancing ensures that…

Counterfactual Explanation(also: Counterfactual XAI)

An explanation technique that communicates what minimal change to the input would have produced a different output from an AI model, for example 'if the applicant's income had been $5,000 higher, the loan would have been approved'. Counterfactual explanations are legally…

Counterfactual Prompting(also: Counterfactual Debiasing, Counterfactual Data Augmentation)

A bias mitigation technique that involves modifying prompts or training examples by swapping identity-related attributes (such as disability status, gender, or race) while keeping all other context identical, in order to expose and counteract biased associations in language…

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…

Counterventions(also: Countervention)

A concept introduced by Rua Williams, Louanne Boyd, and Juan Gilbert for reflexive interventions in HCI and design that unsettle ableist norms by shifting focus from individual deficit to exclusionary sociotechnical systems. Counterventions call for disabled people to be…

Course Management System(also: CMS, Learning Management System, LMS)

A software platform used by educational institutions to create, manage, and deliver course content, track student performance, and facilitate communication between instructors and students. Examples include Blackboard, Canvas, and Moodle. Course management systems present…

Cozmo(also: Cozmo Robot)

A small, toy-like robot originally developed by Anki, featuring tracked wheels, a lift arm with a fork, and a screen face that displays animated eyes and emotive behaviours. Cozmo includes face recognition, name memory, and programmable games, and is often used in accessibility…

Crafting(also: Craftwork, Handcraft)

The practice of making objects by hand using traditional techniques, materials, and tools. In accessibility research, crafting—including weaving, knitting, woodworking, and pottery—represents a form of making distinct from high-tech fabrication (3D printing, laser cutting).…

Craftivism(also: Craft Activism)

Craftivism is the practice of using craft as a form of activism and political engagement. The term combines "craft" and "activism" to describe how makers use traditional crafts like knitting, sewing, and embroidery to raise awareness, build community, and advocate for social…

Creative Agency(also: Creative Autonomy, Creative Control)

The ability of an individual to make independent creative decisions, express personal aesthetic preferences, and maintain ownership over the creative process and its outcomes. For blind individuals, creative agency in visual media is often limited by inaccessible tools, reliance…

Creativity Support Tool(also: CST, Creative Tool)

Software designed to enhance, facilitate, or augment human creative processes such as drawing, writing, music composition, photography, and design. Creativity support tools range from simple drawing applications to complex AI-powered systems that generate content or provide…

Creativity Support Tools(also: CST, Creative Support Software)

Creativity support tools (CSTs) are software applications and systems designed to help people engage in creative activities such as writing, drawing, music production, photography, video editing, graphic design, and programming. In the context of accessibility, CSTs present…

Criminalization

The process by which behaviors, identities, or survival strategies are defined as criminal, disproportionately affecting marginalized communities including disabled people. In accessibility contexts, criminalization creates access barriers when disabled people's survival…

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…

Crip HCI

An orientation within human-computer interaction that brings crip theory and crip technoscience into the methods, design practices, and evaluation frameworks of computing research. Rather than asking how technology can accommodate disabled users within existing normative…

Crip Spacetime

A concept developed by disability-studies scholar Margaret Price to describe the material-discursive reality in which disabled people live according to temporalities and spatialities that remain invisible to privileged groups. Crip spacetime names the significant extra effort…

Crip Technoscience(also: Critical Disability Technoscience)

A framework articulated by Aimi Hamraie and Kelly Fritsch that examines how disabled people engage with, repurpose, and create technologies from their own embodied knowledge and political standpoints. The Crip Technoscience Manifesto advocates for technology research and design…

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

A theoretical framework that reclaims the word "crip" (from "cripple") as a positive identity and analytical lens for challenging normative assumptions about bodies, ability, and disability. Rooted in disability studies and informed by queer theory, crip theory critiques…

Crip Theory(also: Crip, Crip Technoscience)

An academic and activist framework that reclaims "crip" as a positive identity term, challenging normative assumptions about disability, ability, and bodily difference. Emerging from queer theory and disability studies, crip theory questions compulsory able-bodiedness and…

Crip Time

A concept from disability studies and culture that recognizes disabled people often operate on different timescales than those imposed by ableist societal norms. Crip time encompasses the need for more time to complete tasks, the recognition that productivity fluctuates based on…

Crip World-Making

Crip world-making, articulated by Robert McRuer and related disability theorists, describes the generative practices through which disabled people make hostile environments liveable - hacking, repurposing and reconfiguring tools, spaces and social norms to fit their bodyminds…

Crip technoscience(also: Crip tech, Critical disability technoscience)

A framework from disability studies, articulated by Aimi Hamraie and Kelly Fritsch, that positions disabled people as expert knowledge-makers and innovative technologists rather than passive recipients of assistive solutions designed by non-disabled professionals. Crip…

Crip time(also: Crip temporality)

A disability studies concept, developed by scholar Alison Kafer, that recognizes how disabled and chronically ill people experience and navigate time differently due to bodily, cognitive, or systemic factors. Rather than forcing conformity to linear, clock-based productivity…

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.…

Cripping(also: Crip practices)

Practices or actions taken by disabled people to disrupt the status quo, flip ableist norms, and work toward a more accessible and just world. Cripping can involve material changes (hacking environments and technologies), social changes (challenging assumptions about what…

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 Computing

An umbrella term for HCI and computer-science scholarship that interrogates the values, power relations, and social consequences of computing technologies rather than taking their benefits as given. Critical computing draws on disability studies, science and technology studies…

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 Studies(also: CDS)

An interdisciplinary academic field that examines disability as a social, cultural, and political phenomenon rather than solely a medical condition. Critical disability studies analyzes how disability is constructed through language, institutions, power relations, and cultural…

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 Gerontology

An interdisciplinary approach to the study of aging that critiques the dominant biomedical framing of later life and foregrounds structural, political, and cultural influences on older people's experiences. Critical gerontology rejects the "discourse of decline" in which aging…

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 Listening(also: Analytical Listening, Active Listening)

Critical listening is the skill of analytically evaluating audio content to identify specific qualities such as tonal balance, clarity, spatial positioning, dynamic range, and technical flaws like distortion or noise. In audio production, critical listening is a core…

Critical Period(also: Critical Period Hypothesis, Sensitive Period)

A developmental window during early childhood when the brain is especially receptive to acquiring language. If sufficient language input is not received during this period, language development may be significantly and permanently impaired. The critical period is particularly…

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…

Critical Realism(also: Transcendental Realism, Critical Naturalism)

A philosophy of science developed by Roy Bhaskar that offers a middle position between positivism (reality is only what can be empirically observed) and radical constructivism (reality is entirely socially constructed). Critical realism holds that reality exists independently of…

Critical Technical Practice(also: CTP)

A research stance, articulated by Philip Agre in 1997, in which technologists reflect critically on the assumptions built into their own systems while continuing to build. Critical technical practice argues that technologies embody theory—every design choice encodes a…

Cross Stitch

An embroidery technique that creates X-shaped stitches, typically arranged in a grid pattern. Cross stitch produces a distinctive tactile texture with a repetitive, regular pattern that is relatively easy to distinguish from smoother stitch types. In tactile graphic design,…

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-Border Accessibility Research(also: International Accessibility Research, Transnational Accessibility Research)

Research collaborations that span national, cultural, and economic boundaries to address accessibility challenges that affect disabled people worldwide. Cross-border accessibility research aims to bridge the gap between well-resourced research institutions in the Global North…

Cross-Checking(also: Cross-Verification, Multi-Tool Verification)

A verification strategy used by blind and low vision people to assess the reliability of AI-generated image descriptions by comparing outputs from multiple AI tools, taking photos from different angles, using non-visual senses, or consulting sighted individuals. BLV users have…

Cross-Cultural Accessibility(also: Culturally Responsive Accessibility, Internationalized Accessibility)

The practice of designing accessible technologies and content that account for cultural, linguistic, and regional differences in how people perceive and interact with information. Rather than assuming universal accessibility needs, cross-cultural accessibility recognizes that…