Inclusive Design Glossary

Contents

Foundational Terms

Accessibility

Accessibility is the ability of all people to participate in an environment and use a service or product regardless of their disability. Accessibility is intended to mitigate the results of disability within environments not originally designed with disabled people’s needs in mind.

Agency

Agency is the capacity of a person to make choices, take actions, and shape their own environment and experience.

Affordance

Affordance refers to the interaction between a person and a physical or digital interface. An affordance is an attribute indicating how something is used and what actions can be taken. In the context of inclusive design and accessibility, an affordance is a feature, function, or digital asset that facilitates access to the experience.

Cognitive Load

Cognitive load refers to the amount of mental effort required for a user to process, understand, and interact with information or tasks.

Disability

Disability is the result of a variance that may be physical, cognitive, mental, sensory, emotional, developmental, or some combination of these. When discussing disability, two models are most often discussed: the medical model and the social model of disability.

Medical Model of Disability

In the medical model of disability, if someone has a disability, it is treated as something to be fixed or healed. When the perceived impairment cannot be fixed, society treats the individual as being broken, as having the impairment, as being different or “the other.” This puts the burden on the individual because the individual is viewed as the problem.

Social Model of Disability

The social, or environmental, model of disability considers the environment disabling, rather than the individual as being the problem. This model places the responsibility on society, instead of the individual, to design and create environments and systems where disabled people can participate fully.

Inclusive Design

Inclusive design is a design process that centers the understanding that people interact with the world in a variety of ways. Individual people, with their own lived experience, prior knowledge, and variances, will interact with what we make and put into the world, so we relax our assumptions about the abilities of the user and design with compassion, flexibility, and inclusion at the heart of our practice.

Othering

Othering is any act that makes a person, or group of people, feel different. Often, othering is not the intention of a design, however, if that is the outcome, the impact must be addressed regardless of the original intention.

Modality

A particular manner in which something is experienced or expressed. Interpretive, instructional, and directional information can be delivered through a variety of modalities that can be visual or auditory, passive or active, and physical or digital.

Multisensory

Multisensory design uses multiple senses in an attempt to foster engagement and immersion. Multisensory does not imply multimodal.

Multimodal

Having or involving several modalities of doing or experiencing something. Multimodal design utilizes multisensory affordances and design tactics to surface interpretive, instructional, and directional information via audio, tactile, visual, and other modalities. Multimodal design requires redundancies across modalities so that if someone is unable to access one modality, they are still able to participate through another one.

Surfacing

Surfacing refers to how an affordance is going to be provided, or surfaced, to the user.

Wayfinding

Wayfinding refers to the process of orienting oneself and navigating a built environment or experience and the set of design elements that aid in such a process.

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Built Environment

Built environment refers to the physical and constructed aspects of space or experience. It encompasses the tangible elements that are designed, fabricated, and installed to create the overall environment.

Accessible Viewing Zone

The accessible viewing zone is a volume of space where all the primary content is displayed so that everyone, including those of short stature or in a seated position, can comfortably view it.

Edge Detection

Edge detection is the ability to perceive and detect edges in the built environment. Edge detection in inclusive design requires the careful consideration of color, finishes, and material selections to ensure high contrast between floors and walls as well as furniture, including podia, cases, kiosks, benches, and their environments.

Object and Shape Detection

Object and shape detection refers to how easy it is to identify and recognize shapes and objects within an environment.

Comfortable Reach

The zone for comfortable reach is a volume of space that ensures anything a user is expected to interact with sits within a physical range that is comfortably reachable by anyone in a standing or seated position.

Roll Under Access

Roll Under Clearance

Roll under clearance (also known as knee clearance) is a volume of open clear space beneath a surface that allows a mobility device user to comfortably roll under and engage from a forward approach.

Toe Kick

A toe kick is a recessed area built into furniture or walls that allows for roll under access for a mobility device user’s footrest.

Interruption Lines

Interruption lines are lines that disrupt or interfere with a user’s viewing angle.

People Mover

People mover refers to infrastructure that influences how people move through vertical space, including stairs, ramps, escalators, and passenger lifts.

Passenger Lifts

A passenger lift is a transportation device designed specifically to carry people and objects across multiple floors, levels, or elevations.

Elevators or Large Capacity Lifts

An elevator, or large capacity lift, is a type of passenger lift designed to move multiple people and objects between multiple floors or levels of a building. The car is often fully enclosed within a vertical shaft.

Platform Lifts

A platform lift is a type of passenger lift designed to move a single person between different elevations or levels, typically over short distances. A platform lift can be fully enclosed, partially enclosed, or have an open platform.

Vertical Platform Lifts

A vertical platform lift is fully enclosed and can only travel between two to three elevations or levels.

Inclined Platform Lifts

An inclined platform lift travels across inclines and stairways. An inclined platform lift is not fully enclosed, instead it often uses partial barriers or railings to secure the passenger.

Portable Wheelchair Lifts

A portable wheelchair lift is a type of platform lift that can be moved and set up temporarily, ideal for situations where permanent installation is not possible.

Chair Lifts

A chair lift is a type of passenger lift designed to move one to two people between different elevations, typically over short distances. Unlike a platform lift, a chair lift uses a chair or seat as the means of moving people through space.

Sensory Room

A sensory room is a space that offers a customizable and controllable experience for sensory sensitive visitors by offering opportunities for self-regulation and encouraging personalized sensory processing.

Tactile Vocabulary

A tactile vocabulary is a standardized set of tactilely discernible textures, patterns, symbols, icons, touch objects, and Braille conventions embedded in an environment to guide navigation and convey information through touch.

Tactile Affordance

A tactile affordance is a feature, asset, or component that facilitates access through touch. A tactile affordance provides spatial, interpretive, instructional, or wayfinding information through touch.

Touch Object

A touch object is an object that offers access to an artifact, collection object, or artwork through touch.

Tactile Alternative

Tactile alternatives are touchable representations, but not full reproductions, of a piece of source media.

Viewing Distance and Angles

Viewing distance and angle refers to the expected distance and position a visitor will be in relation to the displayed content.

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Content Design and Development

Inclusive Language

In order for language to be inclusive, we must recognize that language is historical, cultural, regional, contextual, and ever changing. Inclusive language demonstrates a level of care, investment, and knowledge about a community. To write with inclusive language within a disability context, one must understand what current terms are most preferred by specific communities. A good starting point is the style guide published by the National Center on Disability and Journalism.

Plain Language

Plain language is a style of writing that focuses on clear and straightforward communication. This includes using common, everyday words, active voice, and easy to follow layout.

Semantics

The meaning and interpretation of words, signs, and sentence structure.

Semantic Structure

Semantic structure refers to the organization and categorization of meaning and information. In inclusive design, it is important to consider how that structure is developed and mapped to digital and physical environments to account for the numerous ways people receive and perceive information.

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Graphic Design and Information Systems

Glyph Distinction

Glyph distinction is the ability to clearly understand visual differences among individual characters or symbols within a typeface.

Color Usage

The following terms must be understood within the context of how they are employed in inclusive design.

Hue

Hue is the attribute of color that defines its position on the color spectrum, such as red, blue, yellow, or green. It is the basic distinction that allows us to identify and categorize colors as different from one another.

Saturation

Saturation means the intensity of a color, determining its vividness or dullness.

Tonal Value

Tonal Value refers to the brightness of a color. This spectrum ranges from pure white to pure black, with varying shades and tones in between.

Color Contrast

Color contrast is the comparison of the tonal value of two colors. Sharp contrast means there is a significant difference between light and dark areas, while low contrast means there is trivial difference.

Light Reflective Value

Light reflective value (LRV) is the measurement of contrast in the built environment expressed as a percentage (0% = absolute black, 100% = pure white). LRV is determined through specific testing that measures the amount of visible light reflected from the surface and is influenced by the application of color, finish, and materiality.

Relative Luminance Value

Relative luminance value is the measurement of contrast in a digital display expressed as a ratio. Relative luminance value is determined by calculating the brightness of a color in relation to the brightness of a reference white light.

Tactile Graphic Design

Tactile graphic design is the design of information that can be understood, interpreted, and navigated by touch. It uses raised lines, shapes, patterns, textures, Braille, and tactile letters to convey information.

Tactile Fidelity

Tactile fidelity is the degree to which information conveyed in a tactile representation is understandable through touch. It requires clarity of information communicated through shape, size, texture, softness or hardness, warmth or coolness, and any movement or vibration.

Visual Hierarchies

Visual hierarchies refer to the arrangement, organization, and prioritization of visual elements within a design to guide the viewer’s attention. Systematically creating strong visual hierarchies facilitates panning, scanning, and reading, lessening cognitive burden when approaching large volumes of content.

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Interface Design

Interface design refers to any way a user will interact with a designed experience.

Digital User Interface

A digital user interface is the point of interaction between a user and a digital device or system.

Tangible User Interface

A tangible user interface is the point of interaction between a user and physical object.

Haptics

Haptics refers to the science and technology of touch in any system or interface that communicates through tactile sensations, such as pressure, vibration, or motion. It is how devices simulate the feeling of interacting with physical objects.

Vibrotactile Feedback

Vibrotactile feedback is a specific type of haptic feedback that uses vibration to convey information or simulate touch sensations, often found in smartphones, game controllers, and wearable devices to alert or guide users through vibration patterns.

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Software Design and Development

Access Technology

Access technology is an additional affordance, mode of operation, or other accommodation to a system that enhances the experience to ensure inclusiveness and accessibility.

The below-defined concepts of screen reader, zoom, and high-contrast mode are all access technologies.

Assistive Listening Systems (ALS)

Assistive Listening Systems are technologies designed to improve sound access for individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing. These systems work by capturing sound at its source and transmitting it directly to a listener’s ear, hearing aid, or cochlear implant, minimizing background noise and distance-related sound degradation. ALS can include FM systems, infrared systems, induction (hearing) loops, and Bluetooth-enabled devices, and are commonly used in theaters, museums, classrooms, and public venues.

Induction Loop

An induction loop, also known as a hearing loop, T-loop, or audio frequency induction loop (AFIL), is an assistive listening system that transmits audio signals directly to hearing aids or cochlear implants equipped with telecoils (T-coils). It takes a sound source and delivers it wirelessly to the listener without background noise, interference, or acoustic distortion

Neck Loop

Neck loops are a type of wearable induction loop that work with hearing aids and cochlear implants equipped with telecoils, or “T-coils.”

Refreshable Braille Display

A refreshable Braille display is a device that presents digital text into Braille. It typically consists of a series of small, movable pins that can be raised and lowered to form Braille characters.

Screen Reader

A screen reader is an application, which often runs with elevated privileges, on a platform. It keeps track of the user’s focus, or point of regard, and announces, via synthetic speech and braille, what the user is currently interacting with, what can be done from this point, and how to perform any desired actions.

Text To Speech

Text to Speech (TTS) refers to the mechanism by which any digital system uses synthetic speech to speak text.

Speech To Text

Speech to text is the process or system that transcribes audible speech into digital text.

Brightness Control

Brightness control allows a user to change the brightness of a screen.

Invert Colors

Invert colors means to reverse the colors in an image or display so that each color is replaced with its opposite on the color spectrum. For example, black becomes white, blue becomes orange, and green becomes magenta. The result is a visual “negative” of the original image, often used to improve contrast or reduce eye strain.

Speed Control

Speed control allows a user to set the speed of the text to speech.

Volume Control

Volume control allows a user to set their own preferred volume.

Zoom

Zoom refers to the ability to magnify the visual content on a display. It can apply to the entire interface, including both text and images, or to specific elements.

Optical zoom

Optical zoom magnifies an entire interface, which can include user interface controls, text, and images.

Text-Based Zoom

Text-based zoom (sometimes called “font scaling” or “text zoom”) increases only the size of text elements while leaving images and layout proportions unchanged, improving readability without altering overall interface composition.

Focus Highlight

A focus highlight, or focus rectangle, visually indicates which element or area of the interface is currently active or being explored. It typically features a transparent interior—so the underlying content remains visible—and an opaque outline that defines its boundaries. A subtle outer glow may also be added to enhance visibility and provide additional visual feedback.

Key-Based Input

The ability of an interface to receive keyed input such as from a keyboard, keypad, or other similar peripheral.

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Media Design and Production

Audio Ducking

Audio ducking is the process of lowering (“ducking”) a program’s main soundtrack or effects track whenever a secondary voice track, such as an audio-description narration, plays, then restoring the original volume when that narration pauses, ensuring both remain clear and intelligible.

Parent Asset

The parent asset is the original object or source media such as a 3D or 2D object, video, film, image, or animation.

Child Asset

A child asset is a component, or affordance, created from the parent asset to provide access such as Captions, Signed Language Interpretation, a Transcript, and Audio Description.

Earcon

Earcon is a term derived from the combination of “ear” and “icon.” It refers to an auditory cue used in user interfaces to convey information, provide feedback, or signal an event to the user.

Deaf Interpretation

Deaf interpretation, also known as Deaf translation or Sign Talent, is performed by Deaf specialists trained in interpreting and translating spoken or written text into signed languages and other visual communication for D/deaf, hard of hearing, and D/deafblind folks.

Note on D/deaf or “the big D little d discussion.” The letter “D” is capitalized when referring to people who identify culturally as part of the Deaf community and not capitalized when referring to people who do not identify with cultural Deafness. When referring to both groups of people, it is common to write D/deaf.

Sign Language Interpretation

Sign language interpretation is the use of a signed language to convey auditory information. It uses a range of visual communication to convey meaning between hearing and D/deaf and hard of hearing people.

Sign Languages

Sign languages use the visual-manual modality to convey meaning. Sign languages are expressed through manual articulations in combination with non-manual elements.

Sign languages are fully formed languages with their own grammar, syntax, idiomatic expressions, and all other elements that make up a language. Sign languages are not tied to spoken languages and have their own history of linguistic development.

American Sign Language (ASL)

The primary sign language for the signing Deaf community in the United States and English-speaking parts of Canada is American Sign Language (ASL).

Black American Sign Language (BASL)

Black American Sign Language (BASL) is a dialect of ASL and is used by some Deaf Black Americans in the United States.

Protactile

Protactile is a form of language used by deafblind folks and is oriented towards communication based in touch on the body.

Sonification

Sonification is the use of non-speech-based audio to convey spatial information such as a tone being played at different frequencies to convey the contents of a graph.

Media

Static Media

Static media is analogue or digital media with no time component. Static media includes images, photographs, paintings, non-moving projections, and more.

Visual Description

Visual description is a textual representation of static media or objects most commonly intended for those who may not be able to see the media or objects but benefit all people.

Short Description

A short description provides a very brief and general sense of the content of an image or object. The length of a short description should be up to 60 words. short descriptions are most commonly used on the web or in other electronic formats and are mapped to alt text fields.

Long Description

A long description should comprehensively describe the most essential elements of an image augmented by a few prioritized details. The length can range from one to multiple paragraphs depending on the complexity of the image and the context.

Guided Tactile Description

Guided tactile description includes elements of a visual description and assumes that the consumer of the description is touching the thing that is being described. The guided tactile description includes information on how something feels and tactile landmarks to facilitate wayfinding.

Linear Or Time-Based Media

Linear or time-based media refers to any media that has a non-zero duration such as animated gifs, audio, video, animations, and more).

Audio Description

Audio description is a narrated visual description of time-based media. It is an additional audio track, often presented as an additional language track, and is in the same language as the source media.

Extended Audio Description

Extended audio description is used when the required audio description is longer than the source media requiring the video to be paused in order for the description to fit. This is typically not recommended outside of specialized use cases.

Sound Description

A sound description uses written text to describe the contents of sounds such as an audio track.

Captions

Captions are the real-time textual representation of spoken language and any non-speech sound in a piece of media or live setting. Captions are displayed in the same language as the language of the media and are not subtitles.

Closed Captions

Closed captions are not burned into a video, rather they are stored digitally as text, either in a separate file from the source media or as part of a container format.

Open Captions

Open captions are captions that are burned into a video. They are not stored as text, but as pixels that comprise the frames of the media.

Subtitles

On-screen text that translates spoken dialogue into another language.

Transcripts

Transcripts are the concatenation of the captions of a piece of media.

Enhanced Transcripts

An enhanced transcript is similar to a transcript with the addition that it also includes the text of the audio description.

Navigable media refers to media, static or time-based, that can be interacted with or navigated in any way. This is typically interactive software.

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Fabrication And Installation

Fabrication involves the physical construction or creation of the components that will be part of the experience. This can include building structures, crafting displays, and creating any physical, visual, and tactile elements needed for the area.

Material Selection

Material selection is the careful and strategic choice of materials used in the built environment.

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Pre-Visit Materials and Accommodations

Pre-visit materials refers to all materials and interactions a visitor may encounter prior to their onsite visit. This includes a website, ticketing, social media, advertising, mobile apps, and any other form of communication between staff and visitors.

Touch Kit

A touch kit is a collection of objects and materials that offer opportunity for hands on learning and creating moments of curiosity, discovery, and engagement for all visitors through touch.

Sensory Kit

A sensory kit is a collection of materials and tools offered to enhance the visitor experience.

Social Stories

Social stories explain what a typical visit will be like and what social interactions a person can expect.

Sensory Map

A sensory map is a physical or digital map or diagram that shows where and how many things like touch, sound, temperature, or smell are present in a place or experience.

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Programs And Events

The following programs are intentionally not broken down by disability but by modality so as not to restrict or limit the audience.

Live Description

Live description is any form of description that is delivered in real time.

Dementia Programs

Dementia programs focus on close and slow looking that prioritizes engagement and storytelling from participants and are built with an understanding of how dementia affects cognitive processing, learning, and meaning making.

Visually Described Programs

Visually described programs center descriptions of all visual elements by fully integrating them into the program. They are primarily designed for blind audiences but benefit many.

Relaxed Performances

Relaxed performances are designed to welcome and encourage a wide range of behaviors, engagement, and enrichment that are not usually considered “appropriate” at performances. They are primarily designed for neurodivergent, autistic, and intellectually disabled people but are enjoyed by many.

Sign Language Programs

Sign language programs are created and offered in sign language by Deaf docents and educators trained in the content which offers a richer, more culturally nuanced experience than simply offering sign language interpretation.

Sensory Friendly Programs

Sensory friendly programs are designed primarily for visitors who are sensitive to sensory input and may seek or avoid certain sensory experiences.

Touch Programs

Touch programs are designed with touch as the primary form of interaction.

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Prototyping And Testing

Mockups

A mockup is a scaled or full-sized model of an experience used for design evaluation.

Prototypes

A prototype is an early sample, model, or release of a product or experience built to evaluate a concept or process.

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