Plain-language definitions for the terms that show up in audit reports, VPATs and WCAG conformance work.
15 terms listed
Accessibility Conformance Report
An Accessibility Conformance Report (ACR) is a document that records how a specific product, at a specific version, measures against a defined accessibility standard such as WCAG. It's a criterion-by-criterion record, usually built on the VPAT template, showing which requirements a product meets, partially meets, or doesn't meet at all.
Alternative text (alt text) is a written description of an image, stored in the image's HTML alt attribute. A screen reader announces it instead of showing the image, and a browser displays it if the image fails to load — it's a text equivalent, not a caption or a label.
Assistive technology is any device, software, or piece of equipment that helps a person do something their body or senses can't do unaided — read a screen, hear a conversation, type a message, or move around a room. It changes the path to completing a task, not the task itself, which is why it sits at the center of digital accessibility work.
Closed captioning is text synchronized with a video's audio track, letting a viewer read what's being said and heard instead of relying on sound alone. It includes dialogue, speaker changes, and sound effects — and unlike open captions, the viewer controls whether it's displayed at all.
Cognitive accessibility means designing digital content so a person can perceive, understand, and act on it without being blocked by how much they have to remember, interpret, or piece together along the way. Unlike most accessibility work, it rarely has a single technical fix — it depends on wording, structure, and interaction design spread across the whole product.
Color blindness is a vision condition that affects how people perceive and distinguish certain colors. It usually occurs when the eye's cone cells do not detect specific colors accurately, making some color combinations difficult to tell apart.
Color contrast is the difference in brightness between two colors placed next to each other — most often text against its background. It's measured as a ratio from 1:1 (no contrast) to 21:1 (pure black on white), and WCAG sets specific minimum ratios, commonly 4.5:1 for normal text at Level AA, that text and interface elements need to meet to stay legible.
Deafness is a partial or complete inability to hear sounds, and is considered a more significant form of hearing loss than mild or moderate hearing impairment. Deafness occurs when problems affect the outer ear, middle ear, inner ear, or the auditory pathways that carry sound signals to the brain, and it can influence communication, education, employment, and daily activities.
Hearing impairment is any reduction in a person's ability to detect or process sound, ranging from mild difficulty following speech in noisy rooms to profound deafness with no usable hearing. Digital products create barriers wherever they route information through sound alone — audio-only alerts, uncaptioned video, phone-only support — so accessible design builds a visual or text equivalent for each of those channels.
Keyboard navigation is the ability to move through a website and operate every part of it using only a keyboard — no mouse, no touchscreen, no trackpad. Native HTML elements support it automatically; custom-built components have to reimplement it deliberately, which is where most keyboard accessibility failures come from.
Motor impairment is a reduced ability to control, coordinate, or move muscles, affecting actions like gripping, pressing, typing, or holding a steady position. In a digital context, it changes how precisely, quickly, and consistently someone can operate a mouse, touchscreen, or keyboard — which is why accessible design focuses on target size, keyboard operability, and forgiving interaction patterns rather than any single fix.
Readability measures how easily a reader can follow written text on a first read, based on sentence structure, word choice, and how information is arranged on the page. High readability means a reader moves through the text at normal reading speed without backtracking or rereading.
A screen reader is software that converts on-screen content into speech or braille output, letting people who can't see a screen use a computer, phone, or website. It reads a page's underlying structure — headings, links, buttons, form fields — rather than its visual appearance, and is operated entirely through the keyboard or, on mobile, touch gestures.
The Braille alphabet is a tactile writing system that lets people who are blind or have low vision read through touch, using raised dot patterns — 6 dots when written on paper, 8 dots on Braille displays. It was invented in 1821 by Louis Braille, a French teacher who was himself visually impaired.
WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) is the W3C's technical standard for making web content usable by persons with disabilities. It's organized into testable success criteria across three conformance levels — A, AA, and AAA — with Level AA at the current version, WCAG 2.2, serving as the practical compliance target for most organizations.
Run a quick accessibility check and discover potential barriers on your website. Automated scanning cannot detect every issue.
The accessibility score is based on automated test results. It is not a statement of WCAG or regulatory compliance. A full assessment requires manual testing.
