Glossary

This numeronym is being used to abbreviate the term “Accessibility” and is commonly used on the web and social media. There are 11 letters between the A and the Y and it’s pronounced like “alley”. So the A11Y Collective stands for the Accessibility Collective!

When talking about (web) accessibility, we’re talking about ensuring your website or application is accessible for as many users as possible. It really is about putting the user first. This does include people with a permanent disability, but also a temporary, situational or constantly changing disability. So in fact it includes all users!

We all can feel a bit nervous or restless sometimes in our lives. But people with an anxiety disorder experience intense and persistent worries about everyday things. This can hinder them in everyday activities, such as filling in an online form. Give your user all the time they need to fill it in and remove the time pressure.

We all know captioning of a video is important. Subtitles are useful. But what if events happen in the video silently? Events that are important for the understanding of the …

Autism is a cognitive disability that impacts the way people use the web. People with autism often have different behaviors and communication patterns. They also might have different needs when navigating a website.

A braille display is assistive technology which allows a blind (or visually impaired) person to read text from a computer. It’s an electronic device, consisting of pins rising up and lowering down to create different patterns. The patterns spell out letters of the braille alphabet.

When you provide multimedia, you must include captions to make it accessible. Captions are visually and auditory content that are in sync with multimedia.

It’s difficult to identify certain colours. Some colours may look alike, or you can’t see the difference between black, red and green for example. Some people can’t see any colour at all, but only shades of gray.

There are standards for web accessibility when it comes to colour contrast, which are written in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1.

The effects of dementia (loss of cognitive functioning) interfere with the way someone uses the web. People with Dementia and Parkinson’s Dementia need more time to understand information and take longer to complete a task.

Diabetic retinopathy causes abnormalities or damage to the retina, such as seeing black spots (blood clots) in your field of vision. These black spots move with the eye movements, so they dance around while someone is reading.

For a lot of people, the web remains inaccessible or difficult to access. Digital divide describes the gap between people who do and do not have access to forms of information and communication technology.

Episodic disability refers to a type of disability that is characterized by unpredictable and fluctuating symptoms. Individuals experience periods of wellness and periods of illness. The severity and duration of …

When you use a website with a your keyboard, you can see the active element while tabbing. This shows which part of the content is focussed and gives the user guidance.

What is Gestalt Design and why is this principle of proximity so very important? Find out why in our glossary!

Headings are the backbone of the content of a page. A visitor should be able to scan the webpage using headings to get a good impression of its content. Read 3 tips in our glossary item about headings.

Also known as far-sightedness: you can’t see sharp closeby. Your eyes focus better on distant objects than on nearby ones. This can be corrected with glasses, contact lenses and laser treatment.

Impairments can cause someone to interact with a website in a different way than you would expect.

An infographic is a visual representation of information or data, such as a diagram, a graph, or a flow chart. Info in graphics. Providing information in a visual way can be most insightful for your readers. It can help people with dyslexia, readers with a low attention span. Actually it benefits everyone who can see. It’s a fast and efficient way to provide information.

When you decide on how the keyboard focus on your website should behave, make sure you don’t create a keyboard trap. What is a keyboard trap? Read it here!

Macular degeneration (MD) is a serious eye condition that reduces the sharpness of what you see. MD literally means deterioration of the yellow spot, the macula lutea, The yellow spot …

Micro animations can enrich a design, because they can let the user understand better what is going on. However, there are some people that don’t like viewing animations. Read the article on how to create a website that keep this in mind.

Most of the times people with a motor impairment can’t use a mouse of keyboard very well. To create an accessible website, it is important to make sure everything works with keyboard only.

Permanent impairments can cause someone to interact with a website in a different way than you would expect.

What does reflow mean? According to the Oxford Dictionary:Noun: Reflow is the action of rearranging electronic text on a page having varied such features as type size, line length, and …

What does the abbreviation HTML mean? And why is it so important to use semantic HTML5? Find out by checking out our glossary!

With a keyboard you can tab from focusable element to focusable element. Like a link, a button or an input field in a form. Tab brings you to the next …

Temporary impairments can cause someone to interact with a website in a different way than you would expect.

Someone who is visually impaired may have limited vision because of an eye condition. It’s important to keep this in mind when creating an accessible website.

How to measure the accessibility of a web project? What is important, so people using assistive technology can use a web page? And what not to do? To answer these …