Accessible Icon Design
Designing icons with sufficient visual clarity and contrast, paired with a text label or accessible name, rather than relying on an icon alone to communicate its function.
Read moreGlossary Terms
Accessible Name
The accessible name is the text label a browser calculates for an interface element and exposes to assistive technology, drawn from visible text, an aria-label, alt text, or other sources depending on the element type.
Read moreAccessible PDF Tagging
The technical process of adding structural tags, headings, lists, tables, reading order, and alt text, to a PDF so it conforms to the PDF/UA accessibility standard.
Read moreAccessible Typography
Type choices, size, spacing, line length, and font selection, that support readability for people with low vision, dyslexia, and cognitive disabilities.
Read moreACR (Accessibility Conformance Report)
An ACR (Accessibility Conformance Report) is the completed version of a VPAT: a filled-out document reporting exactly how a specific product conforms to accessibility standards, criterion by criterion.
Read moreADA (Americans with Disabilities Act)
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is the 1990 U.S. civil rights law prohibiting discrimination against people with disabilities, applied by courts and regulators to websites and digital services under its Title II and Title III provisions.
Read moreADA Amendments Act
A 2008 US law that broadened the legal definition of disability under the ADA after court rulings had narrowed it, restoring a wider scope of coverage.
Read moreADA Demand Letter
An ADA demand letter is written correspondence, typically from an attorney representing a disabled individual, alleging that a business's website is inaccessible and demanding remediation and often a monetary settlement.
Read moreADA Title II
ADA Title II covers state and local government entities and, as of 2024, carries a formal Department of Justice rule requiring public-facing web content and mobile apps to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA.
Read moreADA Title III
ADA Title III covers privately owned businesses open to the public, including most commercial websites, and is the basis for the large majority of U.S. web accessibility lawsuits.
Read moreAlternative Keyboard
Any keyboard hardware designed differently from a standard layout to accommodate specific physical needs, such as larger keys, one-handed layouts, or reduced key counts.
Read moreAODA (Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act)
AODA (Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act) is Ontario, Canada's accessibility law requiring public-sector organizations and larger private businesses to meet WCAG 2.0 Level AA on their public-facing web content.
Read moreARIA (WAI-ARIA)
ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications, formally WAI-ARIA) is a W3C specification that adds attributes to HTML, letting developers tell assistive technology about roles, states, and properties that plain HTML cannot express on its own.
Read moreARIA Label
An ARIA label (aria-label) is an attribute that provides an invisible text name for an element, used when there is no visible text label a screen reader can read, such as an icon-only button.
Read moreARIA Live Region
An ARIA live region is a part of the page marked with aria-live so that when its content changes dynamically, screen readers announce the update automatically without the user needing to navigate to it manually.
Read morearia-current
An ARIA attribute that marks an element as the current item within a set, most often used to indicate the active page in navigation or the current step in a process.
Read morearia-describedby
An ARIA attribute that points to the ID of another element on the page, supplying that element's text as the accessible description of the control it is attached to.
Read morearia-expanded
An ARIA state attribute set to true or false that tells assistive technology whether a collapsible section, menu, or disclosure control is currently open or closed.
Read morearia-hidden
aria-hidden is an attribute that hides an element and everything inside it from assistive technology, while leaving it fully visible on screen, most often used on purely decorative icons and images.
Read moreAssistive Technology
Assistive technology (AT) is any device, software, or equipment that helps a person with a disability perform tasks they otherwise could not, or could only do with difficulty, including screen readers, switch devices, and voice control software.
Read moreAudio Description
Audio description is a separate narration track added to a video, describing important visual information (actions, scene changes, on-screen text) during natural pauses in dialogue, for blind and low-vision viewers.
Read moreAutomated Accessibility Testing
Automated accessibility testing uses software tools like axe, WAVE, or Lighthouse to scan a page's code and instantly flag a subset of WCAG issues, such as missing alt text or insufficient contrast, without human review.
Read moreaxe DevTools
A free browser extension built by Deque Systems that scans a web page for automated accessibility issues directly inside Chrome or Firefox developer tools.
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