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WAI (Printable) Glossary

Internal Working Draft, 1 March 2003

 

Latest version:
http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/Glossary/printable
Last Updated: $Date: 2003/03/07 15:41:51 $
Editors:
Katie Haritos-Shea, CESSI Accessible Solutions
Charles McCathieNevile, W3C

 


1. Status Of This Document

This document is an internal working draft published for review and comment, specifically for several WAI working groups. It was originally created by Harvey Bingham and is currently being worked on as a proposed glossary for use in future versions of the Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines [ATAG10], Techniques for Authoring Tool Accessibility [ATAG10-TECH] User Agent Accessibility Guidelines [UAAG10], Techniques for User Agent Accessibility Guidelines [UAAG10-TECHS], XML Accessibility Guidelines [XAG10], as well as for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 [WCAG20].

The purpose of this combined glossary is to allow comparison of definitions, and potentially to provide a single glossary for all the accessibility guidelines. The various WAI working groups and individual readers of more than one guideline will benefit from a consistent use of terms.

Comments on this document are welcomed and should be sent to wai-xtech@w3.org - list archives are available at http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/wai-xtech for review.

This is a draft document and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use W3C Working Drafts as reference material or to cite them as other than "work in progress". A list of current W3C Recommendations and other technical documents is available.

Publication of this document does not imply endorsement by the W3C, any of its member organisations or working groups.

Translations of this document or of drafts may be available. Further translations are welcome, but prospective translators should ensure that they are familiar with W3C copyright and translation policy.


2. Contents

  1. Status Of This Document
  2. Contents
  3. Introduction
  4. How This Glossary Is Organized
  5. Alphabetical Links (A to Z)
  6. Glossary
  7. Abbreviations / Acronyms
  8. References


3. Introduction


4. How This Glossary Is Organized

In the glossary terms that follow, the suffix to each term -- one of [WCAG10], [WCAG10-TECHS] [WCAG20], [ATAG10], [ATAG10-TECHS], [ATAG-Wombat], [UAAG10], [SVG10], [SMIL10], [SMIL20], [CC-PP], [CSS10], [CSS20], [XHTML10], [DIP], [DOM2HTML], [DOM2CORE], [DOM2STYLE], [HTML40], [HTML401], [XML], [XSLT10], [PWD-Use-Web] , [P3P10], [PDF-TECHS], [SSML10], [WEAVING], [WS-GLOSSARY], [XAG10] or [XFORMS10] -- indicates the W3C source guideline for the following definition. Text of the definition may indicate that that definition applies for the purpose of the document from which it was extracted.


The following external sources were also used:
[Access Board], [AT1998], [DAISY], [Dublin-Core], [HFES], [High-Tech], [iCAN], [IMS], [RFC2046], [RFC2119], [RFC2396], [RFC2616], [RFC2828], [RFC3023], [UNICODE], [WHO]


5. Alphabetical Links

A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z


 


 

6. Glossary

A

Access [WS-GLOSSARY] 2003-03-02
To interact with a system entity in order to manipulate, use, gain knowledge of, and/or obtain a representation of some or all of a system entity's resources.

Accessibility [WEAVING] GENERIC
The art of ensuring that, to as large an extent as possible, facilities (such as, for example, Web access) are available to people whether or not they have impairments of one sort or another.

Accessibility [ATAG10]
See also: Accessible [ATAG10]
Within these guidelines, "accessible Web content" and "accessible authoring tool" mean that the content and tool can be used by people regardless of disability.
To understand the accessibility issues relevant to authoring tool design, consider that many authors may be creating content in contexts very different from your own:

Accessible design will benefit people in these different authoring scenarios and also many people who do not have a physical disability but who have similar needs.

Example: Someone may be working in a noisy environment and thus require an alternative re of audio information. Similarly, someone may be working in an eyes-busy environment and thus require an audio equivalent to information they cannot view. Users of small mobile devices (with small screens, no keyboard, and no mouse) have similar functional needs as some users with disabilities.


Accessibility [HFES] 2001-11-13
The set of properties that allows a product, service, or facility to be used by people with a wide range of capabilities, either directly or in conjunction with assistive technologies. Although the term "accessibility" typically addresses users who have a disability, the concept is not limited to disability issues.

Accessibility Awareness [ATAG10] 2001-01-12
An "accessibility-aware" application is one that has been designed to account for authors' differing needs, abilities, and technologies. In the case of authoring tools, this means that (1) care has been taken to ensure that the content produced by user-authors is accessible and (2) that the user interface has been designed to be usable with a variety of display and control technologies.

Accessibility Information [ATAG10]
"Accessibility information" is content, including information and markup, that is used to improve the accessibility of a document. Accessibility information includes, but is not limited to, equivalent alternative information.

Accessibility Permission [PDF-TECH] 2001-01-08
A PDF file can be encrypted (PDF 1.1) to protect its contents from unauthorized access. PDF's standard security handler defines a set of access privileges for a document, including privileges such as modifying the document's contents, copying text and graphics from the document, and printing the document. In PDF 1.4, this set includes accessibility permission, which controls whether the contents of the document are available via standard accessibility APIs to screen readers and other assistive technology.

Accessibility Problem [ATAG10] (Also: Inaccessible Markup [ATAG10])
See also: Inaccessible Markup [ATAG10]
Inaccessible Web content or authoring tools cannot be used by some people with disabilities. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 WCAG 1.0 describes how to create accessible Web content.

Accessible [WCAG10] [WCAG20] 2002-03-18 ISSUE
Content is accessible when it may be used by someone with a disability.

Accessible [ATAG10]
See Accessibility [ATAG10].

Accessible Authoring Practice [ATAG10]
"Accessible authoring practices" improve the accessibility of Web content. Both authors and tools engage in accessible authoring practices.

Example:, authors write clearly, structure their content, and provide navigation aids. Tools automatically generate valid markup and assist authors in providing and managing appropriate equivalent alternatives.


Access Key (s) [HFES] 2001-11-13
See also Mnemonic, Modifier Key
The portion of an option name or control label used for keyboard selection. Also called mnemonic, implicit designator, or menu mnemonic. See implicit designator.

Acronym [WCAG10] [WCAG20] 2002-12-13
An identifier formed from some of the letters (often the initials) of a phrase and used as an abbreviation.

Activate [UAAG10]  (Normative)  2003-03-01
In this document, the verb "to activate" means (depending on context) either:

The effect of activation depends on the type of enabled element or user interface control. For instance, when a link is activated, the user agent generally retrieves the linked Web resource. When a form control is activated, it may change state (e.g., check boxes) or may take user input (e.g., a text entry field).



Active Element [SVG10] 2001-01-12
An active element is an element with behaviors that may be activated (or "triggered") either through the user interface or through scripts. Which elements are active depends on the document language and whether the features are supported by the user agent. In SVG documents, for example active elements include links and element instances with scripts (event handlers) explicitly associated with them.

Example: Through the various "on" attributes: onactivate etc. Most systems use the content focus to navigate active elements and identify which is to be activated. An active element's behavior may be triggered through any number of mechanisms, including the mouse, keyboard, an Application Programming Interface (API), etc. The effect of activation depends on the element. For instance, when a link is activated, the user agent generally retrieves the linked resource.



Active Element [UAAG10]
An active element is an element with behaviors that may be activated (or "triggered") either through the user interface or through an API (e.g., by using scripts). Some element instances may be active at times but not at others (e.g., they may be "deactivated" through scripts, or they are only active for a period of time determined by the author). Which elements are active depends on the document language and whether the features are supported by the user agent. In HTML 4.01 HTML4.01 documents, for example, active elements include links, image maps, form controls, element instances with a value for the "longdesc" attribute, and element instances with scripts (event handlers) explicitly associated with them (e.g., through the various "on" attributes). Most systems use the content focus to navigate active elements and identify which is to be activated. An active element's behavior may be triggered through any number of mechanisms, including the mouse, keyboard, an API, etc. The effect of activation depends on the element. For instance, when a link is activated, the user agent generally retrieves the linked web resources. When a form control is activated, it may change state (e.g., check boxes) or may take user input (e.g., a text field). Refer also to the definition of event handler
Accessible design will benefit people in these different authoring scenarios and also many people who do not have a physical disability but who have similar needs.

Example: Someone may be working in a noisy environment and thus require an alternative re of audio information. Similarly, someone may be working in an eyes-busy environment and thus require an audio equivalent to information they cannot view. Users of small mobile devices (with small screens, no keyboard, and no mouse) have similar functional needs as some users with disabilities.



Active Element [UA Draft] 2001-02-03
An active element is a piece of content with behaviors that may be activated (or "triggered") either through the user interface or through an API (e.g., by using scripts).

What constitutes an active element depends on the content . In HTML 4 [HTML4] documents, for example, active elements include links, image maps, form controls, element instances with a value for the "longdesc" attribute, and element instances with scripts (event handlers) explicitly associated with them (e.g., through the various "on" attributes). The requirements of this document refer only to active elements that may be recognized through markup (and not, for example, through scripts or style sheets). Some element instances may be active at times but not at others (e.g., they may be "deactivated" through scripts, or they may only be active for a period of time determined by the author).

Potential user interaction with a piece of content does not imply that the content constitutes an active element.



Example: The user may select text an copy it to the clipboard, but the selected text is not (necessarily) an active element, because the selection is a functionality provided by the user agent. For the purposes of this document, markup languages determine which elements are potentially active elements.

The effect of activation depends on the element. For instance, when a link is activated, the user agent generally retrieves the linked Web resource. When a form control is activated, it may change state (e.g., check boxes) or may take user input (e.g., a text entry field). See also the definition of event handler.

Most systems use the content focus to indicate which active element will be activated on user demand.



ActualText Value [PDF-TECH]2001-01-08
Sometimes characters are rendered by graphics commands other than showstring. For instance, an illuminated character may be rendered by an image or a series of graphics commands. In this situations, the Actual Text property is used to identify the character being rendered. This character may be concantentated with adjoining text to form a word.

Adobe Glyph Name [PDF-TECH] 2001-01-11
The name of a character in the Adobe standard character encodings, in Appendix D of the PDF 1.3 Reference Manual. The encodings list characters, character names, and character codes used in platform standard encodings.

Afford, Affordance [HFES] 2001-04-13 Human Factors & HCI, Al Gilman
An affordance is an effective service delivery; one that makes it into user space where the user can actually use it. Or the effect of the service delivery as observed within user space.

Aging-Related Conditions [PWD-Use-Web] 2001-03-18
Changes in people's functional ability due to aging can include subtle and/or gradual changes in abilities or a combination of abilities including vision, hearing, dexterity and memory. Any one of these limitations can affect an individual's ability to access Web content.

Alert [ATAG10] 2001-01-12
An "alert" draws the author's attention to an event or situation. It may require a response from the author. An alert warns the author that there are problems that need to be addressed. Attracting the author's attention artfully can be challenging, since author perceptions of alerts, prompts, and warnings can influence opinions of the tool and even of accessible authoring.


An Unintrusive Alert is an alert such as an icon, underlining, or gentle sound that can be presented to the author without necessitating immediate action.

Example: In some word processors misspelled text is highlighted without forcing the author to make immediate corrections. These alerts allow authors to continue editing with the knowledge that problems will be easy to identify at a later time. However, authors may become annoyed at the extra formatting or may choose to ignore the alerts altogether.


An Interruptive Alert is an informative message that interrupts the editing process for the author.

Example: Interruptive alerts are often presented when an author's action could cause a loss of data. Interruptive alerts allow problems to be brought to the author's attention immediately. However, authors may resent the constant delays and forced actions. Many people prefer to finish expressing an idea before returning to edit its format.



Alert [UAAG10]  (Normative)  2003-03-01
To "alert" means to make the user aware of some event, without requiring acknowledgement.

Example: The user agent may alert the user that new content is available on the server by displaying a text message in the user agent's status bar.



Alternative Equivalents for Content [UAAG10] 2001-02-03
Since rendered content in some forms is not always accessible to users with disabilities, authors must supply alternative equivalents for content. In the context of this document, the equivalent must fulfill essentially the same function for the person with a disability (at least insofar as is feasible, given the nature of the disability and the state of technology), as the "primary" content does for the person without any disability.

Example: The text "The Full Moon" might convey the same information as an image of a full moon when presented to users.

Note: That equivalent information focuses on fulfilling the same function. If the image is part of a link and understanding the image is crucial to guessing the link target, an equivalent must also give users an idea of the link target. User agents must make the alternative equivalent content available to users or software that require it (in place of and/or in addition to the "primary" content). Alternative representations include text equivalents (long and short, synchronized and unsynchronized) and non-text equivalents (e.g., captions, auditory descriptions, a visual track that shows sign language translation of a written text, etc.).



Alternative Information [ATAG10]
(Also: Equivalent Alternative [ATAG10] & Text equivalent WC)
Content is "equivalent" to other content when both fulfill essentially the same function or purpose upon presentation to the user. Equivalent alternatives play an important role in accessible authoring practices since certain types of content may not be accessible to all users (e.g., video, images, audio, etc.). Authors are encouraged to provide text equivalents for non-text content since text may be rendered as synthesized speech for individuals who have visual or learning disabilities, as braille for individuals who are blind, or as graphical text for individuals who are deaf or do not have a disability. For more information about equivalent alternatives, please refer to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines WCAG 1.0 WCAG 1.0.

Alternative Keyboards or Switches [PWD-Use-Web] 2001-03-18
Alternate keyboards or switches are hardware or software devices used by people with physical disabilities, that provide an alternate way of creating keystrokes that appear to come from the standard keyboard.

Examples: Include keyboard with extra-small or extra-large key spacing, keyguards that only allow pressing one key at a time, on-screen keyboards, eyegaze keyboards, and sip-and-puff switches. Web-based applications that can be operated entirely from the keyboard, with no mouse required, support a wide range of alternative modes of input.



Animation [WCAG10-TECH] 2001-03-10
In this document, the term "animation" refers to any visual movement effect created automatically (i.e., without manual user interaction). This definition of animation includes video and animated images. Animation techniques include:



Animation [UAAG10]  (Normative)  2003-01-03
In this document, an "animation" refers to content that, when rendered, creates a visual movement effect automatically (i.e., without manual user interaction). This definition of animation includes video and animated images. Animation techniques include:



Anonymity [WS-GLOSSARY] 2003-03-02
The quality or state of being anonymous, which is the condition of having a name or identity that is unknown or concealed.

Annotation 2001-05-07 Annotation Glossary
A Web object (i.e. an object with a URI) about which there exist some [RDF] statements using an annotation vocabulary. The annotation vocabulary will typically describe a relationship between the annotation and one or more other Web resources to which the annotation is attached.

Annotation Service 2001-05-07 Annotation Glossary
A URI for an HTTP service that supports reading and writing of chunks of RDF. A single HTTP server (e.g. http://www.w3.org:80/) may support multiple annotation servers, each with its own branch of the URI space; e.g. http://www.w3.org/Team/Annotation/ is logically a distinct annotation service from http://www.w3.org/Member/Annotation/.

Annotea 2001-05-07 Annotation Glossary
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Anonymization [CC-PP] 2001-04-23
Hiding the identity of the User as a security precaution.

Applet [WCAG10] [WCAG20] 2001-01-11
A Java program inserted into a Web page that relies on a browser to provide the environment in which it can run. Applets are essentially guests of the browser. The browser takes care of their welfare and provides and manages access to the platform specific services.

Applet [UAAG10] (Normative)  2003-01-03
An applet is a program (generally written in the Java programming language) that is part of content, and that the user agent executes.

Application Programming Interface (API), conventional input / output device [UAAG10]  (Normative)  2003-03-01
An application programming interface (API) defines how communication may take place between applications.

Implementing APIs that are independent of a particular operating environment (as are the W3C DOM Level 2 specifications) may reduce implementation costs for multi-platform user agents and promote the development of multi-platform assistive technologies. Implementing conventional APIs for a particular operating environment may reduce implementation costs for assistive technology developers who wish to interoperate with more than one piece of software running on that operating environment.

A "device API" defines how communication may take place with an input or output device such as a keyboard, mouse, or video card.

In this document, an "input/output API" defines how applications or devices communicate with a user agent. As used in this document, input and output APIs include, but are not limited to, device APIs. Input and output APIs also include more abstract communication interfaces than those specified by device APIs. A "conventional input/output API" is one that is expected to be implemented by software running on a particular operating environment.

Example: The conventional input APIs of the target user agent are for the mouse and keyboard. For touch screen devices or mobile devices, conventional input APIs may include stylus, buttons, and voice. The graphical display and sound card are considered conventional output devices for a graphical desktop computer environment, and each has an associated API.



API's [WCAG10] [WCAG20] 2001-01-11
An application programming interface (API) defines how communication may take place between applications.
A device API defines how communication may take place with an input or output device such as a keyboard, mouse, video card, etc.
A standard device API is one that is considered standard for that particular device on a given operating or windowing system.

Appropriate [ATAG10] 2002-02-27 ISSUE
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Array [WCAG10] [WCAG20]
A set of elements of some type that can be identified by an index, starting in JavaScript at 0, and increasing by 1 for each subsequent member of the array.

Assistive Technology 2001-12-29 [Access Board]
Any item, piece of equipment, or system, whether acquired commercially, modified, or customized, that is commonly used to increase, maintain, or improve functional capabilities of individuals with disabilities.
[36 C.F.R. 1194.4]

Assistive Technology [UAAG10]  (Normative)  2003-03-01
In the context of this document, an assistive technology is a user agent that:
  1. relies on services (such as retrieving Web resources and parsing markup) provided by one or more other "host" user agents. Assistive technologies communicate data and messages with host user agents by using and monitoring APIs.
  2. provides services beyond those offered by the host user agents to meet the requirements of users with disabilities. Additional services include alternative renderings (e.g., as synthesized speech or magnified content ), alternative input methods (e.g., voice), additional navigation or orientation mechanisms, and content transformations (e.g., to make tables more accessible).

    Examples of assistive technologies that are important in the context of this document include the following:

    • screen magnifiers, which are used by people with visual disabilities to enlarge and change colors on the screen to improve the visual readability of rendered text and images.
    • screen readers, which are used by people who are blind or have reading disabilities to read textual information through synthesized speech or braille displays.
    • voice recognition software, which may be used by people who have some physical disabilities.
    • alternative keyboards, which are used by people with certain physical disabilities to simulate the keyboard.
    • alternative pointing devices, which are used by people with certain physical disabilities to simulate mouse pointing and button activations.

Beyond this document, assistive technologies consist of software or hardware that has been specifically designed to assist people with disabilities in carrying out daily activities. These technologies include wheelchairs, reading machines, devices for grasping, text telephones, and vibrating pagers. For example, the following very general definition of "assistive technology device" comes from the (U.S.) Assistive Technology Act of 1998 [AT1998]:

Any item, piece of equipment, or product system, whether acquired commercially, modified, or customized, that is used to increase, maintain, or improve functional capabilities of individuals with disabilities.

Assistive Technology Devices (Visual Disabilities) 2001-10-12 RNIB Devices for blind and the partially sighted. Glossary
Web Browsers for Non-Visual Output
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Attention Deficit Disorder, or ADD [@@]  (Normative)  2003-03-01
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Attribute [ATAG10-TECHS] [ATAG-Wombat] 2001-08-25

This document uses the term "attribute" as used in SGML and XML ([XML]) : Element types may be defined as having any number of attributes. Some attributes are integral to the accessibility of content (e.g., the "alt", "title", and "longdesc" attributes in HTML).

Example: Below, the attributes of the beverage element type are "flavour", which has the value "lots", and "colour", which has the value "red": <beverage flavour="lots" colour="red">my favourite</beverage>



Attribute [UAAG10]  (Normative)  2003-03-01
This document uses the term "attribute" in the XML sense: an element may have a set of attribute specifications (refer to the XML 1.0 specification [XML] section 3).

Attribute [WS-GLOSSARY] 2003-03-02
A distinct characteristic of an object. An object's attributes are said to describe the object. Objects' attributes are often specified in terms of their physical traits, such as size, shape, weight, and color, etc., for real-world objects. Objects in cyberspace might have attributes describing size, type of encoding, network address, etc. Salient attributes of an object is decided by the beholder.

Audio [UAAG10]  (Normative)  2003-03-01
In this document, the term "audio" refers to content that encodes prerecorded sound.

Audio-only presentation [UAAG10]  (Normative)   2003-03-01
An audio-only presentation is content consisting exclusively of one or more audio tracks presented concurrently or in series. Examples of an audio-only presentation include a musical performance, a radio-style news broadcast, and a narration.

Audio track [UAAG10]  (Normative)   2003-03-01
An audio object is content rendered as sound through an audio viewport. An audio track is an audio object that is intended as a whole or partial presentation. An audio track may, but is not required to, correspond to a single audio channel (left or right audio channel).

Audio Description, Auditory Description [UAAG10] 2003-03-01
An audio description (called an "auditory description" in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 [WCAG10]) is either a prerecorded human voice or a synthesized voice (recorded or generated dynamically) describing the key visual elements of a movie or other animation. The audio description is synchronized with (and possibly included as part of) the audio track of the presentation, usually during natural pauses in the audio track. Audio descriptions include information about actions, body language, graphics, and scene changes.

Audio Descriptions [WCAG20] 2003-03-02
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Authentication [WS-GLOSSARY] 2003-03-02
To positively verify the identity of a user, device, or other entity in a computer system, often as a prerequisite to allowing access to resources in a system.

Authentication Code 2001-05-07 XML-Signature Syntax and Processing
A value generated from the application of a shared key to a message via a cryptographic algorithm such that it has the properties of message authentication (integrity) but not signer authentication.

Authoring Tool [ATAG10-TECHS] [ATAG-Wombat] 2001-08-25
An "authoring tool" is any software that is used to produce content for publishing on the Web. Authoring tools include:


Author styles [UAAG10]  (Normative)   2003-03-01
Authors styles are style property values that come from content (e.g., style sheets within a document, that are associated with a document, or that are generated by a server).

Authorization [WS-GLOSSARY] 2003-03-02
The process of determining, by evaluating applicable access control information, whether a subject is allowed to have the specified types of access to a particular resource. Usually, authorization is in the context of authentication. Once a subject is authenticated, it may be authorized to perform different types of access.

Automated Markup Insertion Function [ATAG10-TECHS] [ATAG-Wombat] 2001-08-25
"Automated markup insertion functions" are the features of an authoring tool that allow the author to produce markup without directly typing it. This includes a wide range of tools from simple markup insertion aids (such as a bold button on a toolbar) to markup managers (such as table makers that include powerful tools such as "split cells" that can make multiple changes) to high level site building wizards that produce almost complete documents on the basis of a series of author preferences.

Avatar 2002-02-24 IMS Guidelines for Developing Accessible Learning Applications and iCan
See also Signing Avatar
Avatars are realistically animated, on-screen, interactive human characters. A particular use of Avatars for accessibility is to create signing Avatars.

Available [ATAG10] 2002-02-27 ISSUE
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B

Backward Compatible [WCAG10] [WCAG20]
Design that continues to work with earlier versions of a language, program, etc.

Basic Shape [SVG10] 2001-02-02
Standard shapes which are predefined in SVG as a convenience for common graphical operations. Specifically: 'rect', 'circle', 'ellipse', 'line', 'polyline', 'polygon'.

Binding [XFORMS10] NEW 2001-07-15
The connection between a form control and a model item and an instance data item, represented as a binding expression.

Binding [WS-GLOSSARY] 2003-03-02
An association between an Interface, a concrete protocol and a data format. A Binding specifies the protocol and data format to be used in transmitting messages defined by the associated Interface.

Binding Expression [XFORMS10] 2001-07-15
An XPath addressing expression used by the binding to connect form controls to other parts of XForms.

Blindness [PWD-Use-Web] 2001-03-19
Blindness involves a substantial, uncorrectable loss of vision in both eyes.

Boolean [WCAG10] [WCAG20] 2001-05-07
A primitive data type that only can have values of true or false. As in radio buttons. Also, a variable of Boolean type or a function with Boolean arguments or result. The most common Boolean functions are AND, OR and NOT.

Braille [WCAG10] [WCAG20] 2001-01-26
Braille uses six raised dots in different patterns to represent letters and numbers to be read by people who are blind with their fingertips. An image of the word "Accessible" in braille follows:
Braille dotsAccessible
A braille display, commonly referred to as a "dynamic braille display," raises or lowers dot patterns on command from an electronic device, usually a computer. The result is a line of braille that can change from moment to moment. Current dynamic braille displays range in size from one cell (six or eight dots) to an eighty-cell line, most having between twelve and twenty cells per line.

Braille and Refreshable Braille [PWD-Use-Web] 2001-03-18
Braille is a system using six to eight raised dots in various patterns to represent letters and numbers that can be read by the fingertips. Braille systems vary greatly around the world. Some "grades" of braille include additional codes beyond standard alpha-numeric characters to represent common letter groupings (e.g., "th," "ble" in Grade II American English braille) in order to make braille more compact. An 8-dot version of braille has been developed to allow all ASCII characters to be represented. Dynamic or refreshable braille involves the use of a mechanical display where dots (pins) can be raised and lowered dynamically to allow any braille characters to be displayed.

Browser (for Non-Visual Output) 2001-10-12 RNIB Devices for blind and the partially sighted. Glossary
See also Web Browsers, Voice Browsers
Blind and partially sighted people will use one of three possible methods to read pages on the World Wide Web. Users with some sight can use screen magnification software. For users with little or no useful sight the options are Speech Synthesizers or sound card to convert text into speech or a refreshable braille display to convert text into braille.
eReader - CAST
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Browser [WS-GLOSSARY] 2003-03-02
A system entity that is used by an end user to access a Web site. A browser provides a run-time environment for distributed application components on the client's device.

C

Cache [CC-PP] 2001-04-23
A storage area used by a server or proxy to store data resources that have been retrieved or created in response to a request. When a new request for a "cached" data resource is received, the server or proxy can respond with the cached version instead of retrieving or creating a new copy.

Cacheable [CC-PP] 2001-04-23
A data resource is said to be "cacheable" if the data resource contains a property that allows a sever to determine whether the cached resource matches a request for a similar resource.

Canvas [SVG10] 2001-02-02
A surface onto which graphics elements are drawn, which can be real physical media such as a display or paper or an abstract surface such as a allocated region of computer memory.

Captions [ATAG10]
"Captions" are essential text equivalents for movie audio. Captions consist of a text transcript of the auditory track of the movie (or other video presentation) that is synchronized with the video and auditory tracks. Captions are generally rendered graphically and benefit people who can see but are deaf, hard-of-hearing, or cannot hear the audio.

Captions [UAAG10]   (Normative) 2003-03-01
Captions are text transcripts that are synchronized with other audio tracks or visual tracks. Captions convey information about spoken words and non-spoken sounds such as sound effects. They benefit people who are deaf or hard-of-hearing, and anyone who cannot hear the audio (e.g., someone in a noisy environment). Captions are generally rendered graphically superimposed ("on top of") the synchronized visual track.

The term "open captions" generally refers to captions that are always rendered with a visual track; they cannot be turned off. The term "closed captions" generally refers to captions that may be turned on and off. The captions requirements of this document assume that the user agent can recognize the captions as such; see the section on applicability for more information.

Note: Other terms that include the word "caption" may have different meanings in this document. For instance, a "table caption" is a title for the table, often positioned graphically above or below the table. In this document, the intended meaning of "caption" will be clear from context.

Captions [WCAG20] 2003-03-02
@@

Capability [CC-PP] 2001-04-23
An attribute of a sender or receiver (often the receiver) which indicates an ability to generate or process a particular type of message content .

Cascading Style Sheet (s) [High-Tech] 2001-12-29
See also [XSLT10]
Style sheets describe how documents are presented on screens, in print, and even in spoken voice. Style sheets allow the user to change the appearance of hundreds of Web pages by changing just one file. A style sheet is made up of rules that tell a browser how to present a document. Numerous properties may be defined for an element; each property is given a value.

CC-PP [CC-PP] 2001-04-23
Composite Capability/Preference Profiles.
A CC-PP profile is a description of device capabilities and user preferences that can be used to guide the adaptation of content presented to that device.
As the number and variety of devices connected to the Internet grows, there is a corresponding increase in the need to deliver content that is tailored to the capabilities of different devices. Some limited techniques, such as HTTP accept headers and HTML alt tags, already exist. As part of a framework for content adaptation and contextualization, a general purpose profile format is required that can describe the capabilities of a user agent and preferences of its user. CC-PP is designed to be such a format.

CC-PP Repository [CC-PP] 2001-04-23
A server that stores the User Agent Profile or profile segments persistently in a form that may be referenced by and incorporated into a profile. A CC-PP repository is typically a Web server that provides CC-PP profiles or profile segments in response to HTTP requests.

Channel Security [CC-PP] 2001-04-23
A form of security (authentication and/or confidentiality) that operates on a given communication channel, regardless of the information that is transferred over that channel. The security thus provided is between the end-points of the channel only.

Character [P3P] 2001-02-27
Strings consist of a sequence of zero or more characters, where a character is defined as in the XML Recommendation [XML]. A single character in P3P thus corresponds to a single Unicode abstract character with a single corresponding Unicode scalar value (see [UNICODE]).

Characters [PDF-TECH] 2000-12-14
A character is a printable symbol having phonetic or pictographic meaning and usually forming part of a word of text, depicting a numeral, or expressing grammatical punctuation. A character is generally one of a limited number of symbols, including the letters of a particular language's alphabet, the numerals in the decimal number system, and certain special symbols such as the ampersand and "atsign" @. Several standards of computer encoding have been developed for characters. The most commonly used in personal computers is ASCII. IBM mainframe systems use extended binary-coded decimal interchange code. A new standard, Unicode, is supported by the Windows NT system. A distinction is sometimes made between a character and a glyph. In this distinction, a character can be distinguished from other characters in terms of meaning and sound and a glyph is the graphic image used to portray the character. In different implementations, a character can have more than one possible glyph, and a glyph can represent more than one possible character.

Character Codes [PDF-TECH] 2002-12-13
(a la Loretta)A show string is the encoded re of a sequence of non-negative integers. Each of those integers is a Character Code. The interpretation of a show string depends on the associated font: some fonts imply a one-byte re whie others imply a more complicated re.
A mapping from a set of integers to a set of characters. This mapping is generally 1:1 (i.e., bijective), for example, the code position 65 in ASCII maps only to "A", and it's the only position that maps to "A". There are several standard coded character sets, the most widely used is ASCII, generally in its Latin-1 dialect (the ASCII coded character set, encoded directly as single-byte values), or UTF-8 (the Unicode coded character set, encoded with an 8-bit transformation method), with Unicode becoming slowly more common; while EBCDIC and Baudot are extinct except in legacy systems. A coded character set may include letters, digits, punctuation, control codes, various mathematical and typographic symbols, and other characters. Each character in the set is represented by a unique character code (or "code position").

Character Encoding [UAAG10]  (Normative)  2003-03-01
A "character encoding" is a mapping from a character set definition to the actual code units used to represent the data. Please refer to the Unicode specification [UNICODE] for more information about character encodings. Refer to "Character Model for the World Wide Web" [CHARMOD] for additional information about characters and character encodings.

Character Input [WCAG20] 2003-03-02
@@

Check for [ATAG10]
As used in checkpoint 4.1, "check for" can refer to three types of checking:

  1. In some instances, an authoring tool will be able to check for accessibility problems automatically.

    Example: Checking for validity ( checkpoint 2.2) or testing whether an image is the only content of a link.

  2. In some cases, the tool will be able to "suspect" or "guess" that there is a problem, but will need confirmation from the author.

    Example: In making sure that a sensible reading order is preserved a tool can present a linearized version of a page to the author.

  3. In some cases, a tool must rely mostly on the author, and can only ask the author to check.

    Example: The tool may prompt the author to verify that equivalent alternatives for multimedia are appropriate. This is the minimal standard to be satisfied. Subtle, rather than extensive, prompting is more likely to be effective in encouraging the author to verify accessibility where it cannot be done automatically.



Class [WCAG10] [WCAG20]
A Beginning...01-01-25 A description or template of an object that describes the responsibilities, the operations, and the state, which can then be used to create instancess.

Example: A Car class, which could be used as the template for instances of a class such as myGreyHonda or yourPurpleBeetle.

Client 2001-05-07Generic - Dept of Computing Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/
A computer system or process that requests a service of another computer system or process (a "server") using some kind of protocol and accepts the server's responses. A client is part of a client-server software architecture.


Example: A workstation requesting the contents of a file from a file server is a client of the file server.



Client [CC-PP] 2001-04-23
An entity that is the original compositor of a CC-PP profile.

Client-side Scripting [WCAG20] [Script Techniques] 2002-03-17 NCI National Cancer Institute
See also Scripting
Web programming that sends instructions for actions to be performed on the client, or user's, computer, such as changing the appearance of a page in the user's browser. In order to display the page or change as intended, the user's system must be able to recognize and process the programming.

Clipping Path [SVG10] 2001-02-02
Is a combination of 'path', 'text' and basic shapes which serve as the outline of a (in the absense of antialiasing) 1-bit mask, where everything on the "inside" of the outline is allowed to show through but everything on the outside is masked out. See Clipping paths.

CMap [PDF-TECH] 2001-01-08
A CMap specifies the mapping from character codes to character selectors (CIDs, character names, or character codes) in one or more associated fonts or CIDFonts. It serves a function analogous to the Encoding dictionary for a simple font. A Cmap also specifies the writing mode - horizontal or vertical - for any CIDFont with which the CMap is combined.
Also a CMap (character map) file specifies the correspondence between character codes and the CID (character identifier) numbers used to identify characters. For composite (Type 0) fonts, it is the equivalent to the concept of an encoding in a simple font. A CMap can describe a mapping from multiple-byte codes to thousands of characters in a large CID-keyed font.

Cognitive and Neurological Disabilities [PWD-Use-Web] 2001-03-19


Collated Text Transcript [UAAG10]  (Normative)   2003-03-01
A collated text transcript is a text equivalents of a movie or animation. More specifically, it is the combination of the text transcript of the audio track and the text equivalent of the visual track.

Example: A collated text transcript typically includes segments of spoken dialogue interspersed with text descriptions of the key visual elements of a presentation (actions, body language, graphics, and scene changes). See also the definitions of text transcript and audio description. Collated text transcripts are essential for individuals who are deaf-blind.



Color Blindness [PWD-Use-Web] 2001-03-19
Color blindness is a lack of sensitivity to certain colors. Common forms of color blindness include difficulty distinguishing between red and green, or between yellow and blue. Sometimes color blindness results in the inability to perceive any color.

Column Headers [PDF-TECH] ISSUE
@@

Competitive Activity [WCAG20] 2003-03-02
@@

Complex [WCAG20] 2003-03-02
@@

Component [WS-GLOSSARY] 2003-03-02
  1. A component is a software object, meant to interact with other components, encapsulating certain functionality or a set of functionalities. A component has a clearly defined interface and conforms to a prescribed behavior common to all components within an architecture.
  2. A component is an abstract unit of software instructions and internal state that provides a transformation of data via its interface.


Computed Expression [XFORMS10] 2001-07-15
An XPath expression used by model item properties such as relevant and calculate to include dynamic functionality in XForms.

Concatenate [PDF-TECH] 2002-12-13
To combine character strings, to join together two or more files or lists to form one big one.

Example: The Unix cat command can be used to concatenate files.



Concatenation [WCAG10] [WCAG20] 2001-01-25
The operation of constructing a large string from two smaller strings. The result of a concatenation will have all the contents of both smaller strings.

Conditional-content [UAAG10]  (Normative)   2003-03-01
Conditional content is content that, by format specification, should be made available to users through the user interface, generally under certain conditions (e.g., user preferences or operating environment limitations). Some examples of conditional content mechanisms include:

Specifications vary in how completely they define how and when to render conditional content. For instance, the HTML 4 specification includes the rendering conditions for the "alt" attribute, but not for the "title" attribute. The HTML 4 specification does indicate that the "title" attribute should be available to users through the user interface ("Values of the title attribute may be rendered by user agents in a variety of ways...").

Note: The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 requires that authors provide text equivalents for non-text content. This is generally done by using the conditional content mechanisms of a markup language. Since conditional content may not be rendered by default, the current document requires the user agent to provide access to unrendered conditional content (checkpoints 2.3 and 2.9) as it may have been provided to promote accessibility.



Configure and Control [UAAG10]  (Normative)   2003-03-01

In the context of this [UA] document, the verbs "to control" and "to configure" share in common the idea of governance such as a user may exercise over interface layout, user agent behavior, rendering style, and other parameters required by this [UA] document. Generally, the difference in the terms centers on the idea of persistence. When a user makes a change by "controlling" a setting, that change usually does not persist beyond that user session. On the other hand, when a user "configures" a setting, that setting typically persists into later user sessions. Furthermore, the term "control" typically means that the change can be made easily (such as through a keyboard shortcut) and that the results of the change occur immediately. The term "configure" typically means that making the change requires more time and effort (such as making the change via a series of menus leading to a dialog box, via style sheets or scripts). The results of "configuration" might not take effect immediately (e.g., due to time spent reinitializing the system, initiating a new session, or rebooting the system).

In order to be able to configure and control the user agent, the user needs to be able to "write" as well as "read" values for these parameters. Configuration settings may be stored in a profile. The range and granularity of the changes that can be controlled or configured by the user may depend on limitations of the operating environment or hardware.

Both configuration and control may apply at different "levels": across Web resources (i.e., at the user agent level, or inherited from the operating environment), to the entirety of a Web resource, or to components of a Web resource (e.g., on a per-element basis).

A global configuration is one that applies across elements of the same Web resource, as well as across Web resources.

User agents may allow users to choose configurations based on various parameters, such as hardware capabilities or natural language preferences.

Note: In this document, the noun "control" refers to a user interface control.

Conformance [WCAG10] [WCAG20] 2001-01-11 ISSUE
@@

Container Element [SVG10] 2001-02-02
An element which can have graphics elements and other container elements as child elements. Specifically: 'svg', 'g', 'defs' 'symbol', 'clipPath', 'mask', 'pattern', 'marker', 'a' and 'switch'.

Containing Document [XFORMS10] 2001-07-15
A specific document, for example an XHTML document, in which one or more xform elements are found.

Content [ATAG10]
In this specification, the term "content " is used in two ways:

  1. Content refers to the document object as a whole or in parts. Phrases such as "content type", "text content", and "language of content" refer to this usage. When used in this sense, the term content encompasses equivalent alternatives. Refer also to the definition of rendered content. and other accessibility information.
  2. Content refers to the content of an HTML or XML element, in the sense employed by the XML 1.0 specification ( XML, section 3.1): "The text between the start-tag and end-tag is called the element's content." Context should indicate that the term content is being used in this sense.


Content [UAAG10]  (Normative)  2003-03-01
In this specification, the noun "content" is used in three ways:
  1. It is used to mean the document object as a whole or in parts.
  2. It is used to mean the content of an HTML or XML element, in the sense employed by the XML 1.0 specification ([XML], section 3.1): "The text between the start-tag and end-tag is called the element's content." Context should indicate that the term content is being used in this sense.
  3. It is used in the terms non-text content and text content.

Empty content (which may be conditional content) is either a null value or an empty string (i.e., one that is zero characters long). For instance, in HTML, alt="" sets the value of the "alt" attribute to the empty string. In some markup languages, an element may have empty content (e.g., the HR element in HTML).



Content [WCAG20] 2003-03-02
@@

Content Generation [CC-PP] 2003-03-05
For the purpose of this specification, "content generation" refers to generating content appropriate to the user agent profile of the request by using the user agent profile as input to a dynamic content generation engine. The XSL and style sheets of the document are used to tailor the document to the user agent profile of the request

Content Model [DOM2] 2001-03-10
The content model is a simple grammar governing the allowed types of the child elements and the order in which they appear. See Element Content in XML [XML].

Content Negotiation [CC-PP] 2001-03-10
The mechanism for selecting the appropriate representation when servicing a request. The representation of entities in any response can be negotiated (including error responses).

Content Selection [CC-PP] 2003-03-05
For the purpose of this specification, "content selection" refers to selecting an appropriate document from a list of possible choices or variants by matching the document profile with the user agent profile of the request.

Content Provider [CC-PP] 2003-03-05
A server that originates content in response to a request.

Context [DOM2] 2001-03-10
A context specifies an access pattern (or path): a set of interfaces which give you a way to interact with a model.

Example: Imagine a model with different colored arcs connecting data nodes. A context might be a sheet of colored acetate that is placed over the model allowing you a partial view of the total information in the model.

Contrast [HFES] 2001-11-13
A difference in visual attributes (e.g., hue, lightness, saturation) of an object's foreground and background.

Control [UAAG10]
See Configure UA

Conventional input / output device [UAAG10]  (Normative)  2002-10-28
See Application Programming Interface (API) UA

Conversion Tool [ATAG10]
A "conversion tool" is any application or application feature (e.g., "Save as HTML") that transforms convent in one format to another format (such as a markup language).

Cookie 2001-03-24 Web Characterization Terminology & Definitions Sheet
Data sent by a Web server to a Web client, to be stored locally by the client and sent back to the server on subsequent requests.

Country Code [RFC2828] 2001-03-11
An identifier that is defined for a nation by ISO. For each nation, ISO Standard 3166 defines a unique two- character alphabetic code, a unique three-character alphabetic code, and a three-digit code. Among many uses of these codes, the two-character codes are used as top-level domain names.

Crop Box [PDF-TECH] 2001-01-08
The crop box defines the region to which the contents of the page are to be clipped (cropped) when displayed or printed.

CTM [SVG10]
See Current Transformation Matrix SVG

Current Innermost SVG Document Target [SVG10] 2001-02-02
The XML document sub-tree which starts with the most immediate ancestor 'svg' element of a given SVG element.

Current SVG Document Fragment [SVG10] 2001-02-02
The XML document sub-tree which starts with the outermost ancestor 'svg' element of a given SVG element, with the requirement that all container elements between the outermost 'svg' and this element are all elements in the SVG language.

Current Selection [UAAG10]
See Selection UA

Current Transformation Matrix (CTM) [SVG10] 2001-02-02
Transformation matrices define the mathematical mapping from one coordinate system into another using a 3x3 matrix using the equation [x' y' 1] = [x y 1] * matrix. The current transformation matrix (CTM) defines the mapping from the user coordinate system into the viewport coordinate system.

Current User Selection [ATAG10-TECHS] [ATAG-Wombat] 2001-08-25
When several views co-exist, each may have a selection, but only one is active, called the "current user selection." User selections may be rendered specially (e.g., graphically highlighted).

Current Viewport [UAAG10]
See Views, viewports, and current viewport UA.

D

Data [RFC2828] 03-12-2001
Information in a specific physical representation, usually a sequence of symbols that have meaning; especially a representation of information that can be processed or produced by a computer.

Data Category [P3P] 2001-02-27
A significant attribute of a data element or data set that may be used by a trust engine to determine what type of element is under discussion, such as physical contact information. P3P1.0 specifies a set of data categories.

Data Element [P3P] 2001-02-27
An individual data entity, such as last name or telephone number. For interoperability, P3P1.0 specifies a base set of data elements.

Data Model [WCAG10] [WCAG20] ISSUE
The product of the database design process which aims to to identify and organize the required data logically and physically. A data model says what information is to be contained in a database, how the information will be used, and how the items in the database will be related to each other.

Example: A data model might specify that a customer is represented by a customer name and credit card number and a product as a product code and price, and that there is a one-to-many relation between a customer and a product. It can be difficult to change a database layout once code has been written and data inserted. A well thought-out data model reduces the need for such changes. Data modelling enhances application maintainability and future systems may re-use parts of existing models, which should lower development costs. A data modelling language is a mathematical formalism with a notation for describing data structures and a set of operations used to manipulate and validate that data. One of the most widely used methods for developing data models is the entity-relationship model. The relational model is the most widely used type of data model. Another example is NIAM.



Data Model [DOM1] 2001-03-10
A data model is a collection of descriptions of data structures and their contained fields, together with the operations or functions that manipulate them.

Data Resource [CC-PP] 2003-03-05
A data object that can be transferred across a network. Data resources may be available in multiple representations (e.g. multiple languages, data formats, size, resolutions) or vary in other ways.

Data Set [P3P] 2001-02-27
A known grouping of data elements, such as "user.home.postal". The P3P1.0 base data schema specifies a number of data sets.

Data Set GENERIC 2001-03-17 Dublin Core Def.
A dataset is information encoded in a defined structure (for example, lists, tables, and databases), intended to be useful for direct machine processing.

Data Tables [WCAG10] [WCAG20] ISSUE
@@

Datatype [XFORMS10] 2001-07-15
A 3-tuple, consisting of:

  1. a set of distinct values, called its value space,
  2. a set of lexical representations, called its lexical space, and
  3. a set of facets that characterize properties of the value space, individual values or lexical items.

Note: This definition is taken from XML Schema [XML Schema part 2].

Deprecated [WCAG10] [WCAG20]
A deprecated element or attribute is one that has been outdated by newer constructs. Deprecated elements may become obsolete in future versions of HTML. The [WCAG10-TECHS] index of HTML elements and attributes in the Techniques Document indicates which elements and attributes are deprecated in HTML 4.0.
Authors should avoid using deprecated elements and attributes. User agents should continue to support for reasons of backward compatibility.

Device-dependent [WCAG20] [Script Techniques] 2002-03-17 NCI National Cancer Institute
Used to describe event handlers that require a specific kind of input device. For example, onDblClick requires a mouse; there is no keyboard equivalent for double clicking. Input devices may include pointing devices (such as the mouse), keyboards, braille devices, head wands, microphones, and others. Output devices may include monitors, speech synthesizers, and braille devices. Scripting should be device-independent or provide multiple input and output options for different devices.

Device Independent [WCAG10] [WCAG20]
Users must be able to interact with a (and the document it renders) using the supported input and output devices of their choice and according to their needs. Input devices may include pointing devices, keyboards, braille devices, head wands, microphones, and others. Output devices may include monitors, speech synthesizers, and braille devices.

Note: That "device-independent support" does not mean that s must support every input or output device. User agents should offer redundant input and output mechanisms for those devices that are supported.

Example: If a supports keyboard and mouse input, users should be able to interact with all features using either the keyboard or the mouse.



Device-independence [UAAG10]  (Normative)  2003-03-01
In this document, device-independence refers to the desirable property that operation of a user agent feature is not bound to only one input or output device.

Description Link (D-link) [ATAG10] 2001-01-25
A "description link", or D-Link, is an author-supplied link to additional information about a piece of content that might otherwise be difficult to access (image, applet, video, etc.).

Digital Signature [WEAVING] 2001-04-13
A very large number created in such a way that it can be shown to have been done only by somebody in possession of a secret key and only by processing a document with a particular content . It can be used for the same purposes as a person's handwritten signature on a physical document. Something you can do with public key cryptography.

Discovery [WS-GLOSSARY] 2003-03-02
The exchange of the Web service description details necessary to interact with the service.

Document [ATAG10]
A "document" is a series of elements that are defined by a markup language (e.g., HTML 4 or an XML application).

Document [CC-PP] 2003-03-05
For the purpose of this specification, "document" refers to content supplied in response to a request. Using this definition, a "document" may be a collection of smaller "documents", which in turn is a part of a greater "document".

Document Character Set [UAAG10] Draft 2001-02-03
In this document, a document character set (a concept from SGML) is a collection of abstract characters that a format specification allows to appear in an instance of the format. A document character set consists of:



For instance, the character set required by the HTML 4 specification [HTML4] is defined in the Unicode specification [UNICODE]. Refer to "Character Model for the World Wide Web" [CHARMOD] for more information about document character sets.

Document Content, Structure, and Presentation [WCAG10] [WCAG20]
The content of a document refers to what it says to the user through natural language, images, sounds, movies, animations, etc. The structure of a document is how it is organized logically (e.g., by chapter, with an introduction and table of contents, etc.). An element (e.g., P, STRONG, BLOCKQUOTE in HTML) that specifies document structure is called a structural element. The presentation of a document is how the document is rendered (e.g., as print, as a two-dimensional graphical , as an text-only , as synthesized speech, as braille, etc.) An element that specifies document (e.g., B, FONT, CENTER) is called a presentation element.
Consider a document header, for example:. The content of the header is what the header says (e.g., "Sailboats"). In HTML, the header is a structural element marked up with.

Example:, an H2 element. Finally, the of the header might be a bold block text in the margin, a centered line of text, a title spoken with a certain voice style (like an aural font), etc.



Document Object, Document Object Model (DOM) [UAAG10] (Normative)  2003-03-01
In general usage, the term "document object" refers to the user agent's representation of data (e.g., a document). This data generally comes from the document source, but may also be generated (e.g., from style sheets, scripts, or transformations), produced as a result of preferences set within the user agent, or added as the result of a repair performed automatically by the user agent. Some data that is part of the document object is routinely rendered (e.g., in HTML, what appears between the start and end tags of elements and the values of attributes such as alt, title, and summary). Other parts of the document object are generally processed by the user agent without user awareness, such as DTD- or schema-defined names of element types and attributes, and other attribute values such as href and id. Most of the requirements of this document apply to the document object after its construction. However, a few checkpoints (e.g., checkpoints 2.7 and 2.10) may affect the construction of the document object.
A "document object model" is the abstraction that governs the construction of the user agent's document object. The document object model employed by different user agents may vary in implementation and sometimes in scope. This specification requires that user agents implement the APIs defined in Document Object Model (DOM) Level 2 Specifications ([DOM2CORE] and [DOM2STYLE]) for access to HTML, XML, and CSS content. These DOM APIs allow authors to access and modify the content via a scripting language (e.g., JavaScript) in a consistent manner across different scripting languages.

Document Profile [CC-PP] 2003-03-05
Document profiles offer a means to characterize the features appropriate to given categories of user agents. For instance, one profile might include support for style sheets, vector graphics and scripting, while another might be restricted to the tags in HTML 3.2. Document profiles can be used by servers to select between document variants developed for different user agent categories. They can be used to determine what transformations to apply when such variants are not available. Content developers can use document profiles to ensure that their Web sites will be rendered as intended.

Document Source, Text Source [UAAG10] (Normative)  2003-03-01
In this document, the term "document source" refers to the data that the user agent receives as the direct result of a request for a Web resource (e.g., as the result of an HTTP/1.1 [RFC2616] "GET", or as the result of viewing a resource on the local file system). The document source generally refers to the "payload" of the user agent's request, and does not generally include information exchanged as part of the transfer protocol. The document source is data that is prior to any repair by the user agent (e.g., prior to repairing invalid markup). "Text source" refers to the text portion of the document source.

Document Tree [CSS10] [CSS20] 2001-02-03
The tree of elements encoded in the source document. Each element in this tree has exactly one parent, with the exception of the root element, which has none.

Documentation [ATAG10]
Documentation refers to all information provided by the vendor about a product, including all product manuals, installation instructions, the help system, and tutorials.

Documentation [UAAG10] (Normative)  2003-03-01
Documentation refers to information that supports the use of a user agent. This information may be found, for example, in manuals, installation instructions, the help system, and tutorials. Documentation may be distributed (e.g., some parts may be delivered on CD-ROM, others on the Web). See guideline 12 for information about documentation requirements.

Documents, Elements, and Attributes [UAAG10] 2001-02-03
A document may be seen as a hierarchy of elements. Element types are defined by a language specification (e.g., HTML 4.0 or an XML application). Elements may include content , which generally contributes to the document's content. Elements may also have attributes that take values.

DOM NEW
See Document Object Model UA, and DOM 1.

DTD's, Documents Definition Types 2001-02-04
A document may be seen as a hierarchy of elements. Element types are defined by a language specification (e.g., HTML 4.0 or an XML application). Elements may include content , which generally contributes to the document's content. Elements may also have attributes that take values. A set of rules that defines how a document's markup may be used. Think of a DTD as setting the semantic rules of the document type it is associated with.

Dynamic Content [CC-PP] 2001-03-10
Content that is generated in response to a request. This may be used for content that depends on changing environmental factors such as time (e.g., stock quotes) or place (e.g., nearby gas stations).

Dynamic HTML (DHTML) [WCAG10] [WCAG20]
DHTML is the marketing term applied to a mixture of standards including HTML, style sheets, the Document Object Model DOM 1 and scripting. However, there is no W3C specification that formally defines DHTML. Most guidelines may be applicable to applications using DHTML, however the following guidelines focus on issues related to scripting and style sheets: WC guideline 1, WC guideline 3, WC guideline 6, WC guideline 7, and WC guideline 9.

Dyslexia, Dyscalculia [PWD-Use-Web] 2001-03-19
Individuals with dyslexia or dyscalculia (one of the so-called "learning disabilities" in the U.S.) may have difficulty processing written language or images when read visually, or spoken language when heard, or numbers when read visually or heard.



E

Editing View [ATAG10]
An "editing view" is a view provided by the authoring tool that allows editing.

Element [ATAG10]
An "element" is any identifiable object within a document, for example, a character, word, image, paragraph or spreadsheet cell. In HTML4.01 and XML, an element refers to a pair of tags and their content, or an "empty" tag - one that requires no closing tag or content.

Element, Element Type [UAAG10] (Normative)   2003-03-01
This document uses the terms "element" and "element type" primarily in the sense employed by the XML 1.0 specification ([XML], section 3): an element type is a syntactic construct of a document type definition (DTD) for its application. This sense is also relevant to structures defined by XML schemas. The document also uses the term "element" more generally to mean a type of content (such as video or sound) or a logical construct (such as a header or list).

Element [WCAG10] [WCAG20]
This document uses the term "element" both in the strict SGML sense (an element is a syntactic construct) and more generally to mean a type of content (such as video or sound) or a logical construct (such as a header or list). The second sense emphasizes that a guideline inspired by HTML could easily apply to another markup language.

Note: That some (SGML) elements have content that is rendered (e.g., the P, LI, or TABLE elements in HTML), some are replaced by external content (e.g., IMG), and some affect processing (e.g., STYLE and SCRIPT cause information to be processed by a style sheet or script engine). An element that causes text characters to be part of the document is called a text element.

Element [CSS10] [CSS20] 2001-01-23
(An SGML term, see [ISO8879].) The primary syntactic constructs of the document language. Most CSS style sheet rules use the names of these elements (such as "P", "TABLE", and "OL" for HTML) to specify rendering information for them.

Element [XML10] [XHTML10] 2001-02-04
An element is a document structuring unit declared in the DTD. The element's content model is defined in the DTD, and additional semantics may be defined in the prose description of the element. The proper name for XML tags and the content they contain.

Example: <tag>content</tag>



Embedded 2001-12-29
Needs DEF.............

Embedded Devices 2001-12-29
Needs DEF.............

Enabled Element, Disabled Element [UAAG10] (Normative)   2003-03-01
An enabled element is a piece of content with associated behaviors that may be activated through the user interface or through an API. The set of elements that a user agent enables is generally derived from, but is not limited to, the set of interactive elements defined by implemented markup languages.

Some elements may only be enabled elements for part of a user session. For instance, an element may be disabled by a script as the result of user interaction. Or, an element may only be enabled during a given time period (e.g., during part of a SMIL 1.0 [SMIL10] presentation). Or, the user may be viewing content in "read-only" mode, which may disable some elements.

A disabled element is a piece of content that is potentially an enabled element, but is not in the current session. One example of a disabled element is a menu item that is unavailable in the current session; it might be "grayed out" to show that it is disabled. Generally, disabled elements will be interactive elements that are not enabled in the current session. This document distinguishes disabled elements (not currently enabled) from non-interactive elements (never enabled).

For the requirements of this document, user selection does not constitute user interaction with enabled elements. See the definition of content focus.

Note: Enabled and disabled elements come from content; they are not part of the user agent user interface.

Note: The term "active element" is not used in this document since it may suggest several different concepts, including: interactive element, enabled element, an element "in the process of being activated" (which is the meaning of ':active' in CSS2 [CSS20], for example).



End User [WS-GLOSSARY] 2003-03-02
A natural person who makes use of resources for application purposes.

Entity [XML10] [XHTML10] 2001-02-04
Entities allow you to use reserved markup characters, for example, the greater than sign (>), in your document without having the parser read them as markup.

Equivalent [WCAG10] [WCAG20]
Content is "equivalent" to other content when both fulfill essentially the same function or purpose upon to the user. In the context of this WC document, the equivalent must fulfill essentially the same function for the person with a disability (at least insofar as is feasible, given the nature of the disability and the state of technology), as the primary content does for the person without any disability.

Example:, the text "The Full Moon" might convey the same information as an image of a full moon when presented to users.

Note: that equivalent information focuses on fulfilling the same function. If the image is part of a link and understanding the image is crucial to guessing the link target, an equivalent must also give users an idea of the link target. Providing equivalent information for inaccessible content is one of the primary ways authors can make their documents accessible to people with disabilities.

As part of fulfilling the same function of content an equivalent may involve a description of that content (i.e., what the content looks like or sounds like).

Example:, in order for users to understand the information conveyed by a complex chart, authors should describe the visual information in the chart.

Since text content can be presented to the user as synthesized speech, braille, and visually-displayed text, these guidelines require text equivalents for graphic and audio information. Text equivalents must be written so that they convey all essential content. Non-text equivalents (e.g., an auditory description of a visual presentation, a video of a person telling a story using sign language as an equivalent for a written story, etc.) also improve accessibility for people who cannot access visual information or written text, including many individuals with blindness, cognitive disabilities, learning disabilities, and deafness.
Equivalent information may be provided in a number of ways, including through attributes (e.g., a text value for the "alt" attribute in HTML and SMIL), as part of element content (e.g., the OBJECT in HTML), as part of the document's prose, or via a linked document (e.g., designated by the "longdesc" attribute in HTML or a description link). Depending on the complexity of the equivalent, it may be necessary to combine techniques (e.g., use "alt" for an abbreviated equivalent, useful to familiar readers, in addition to "longdesc" for a link to more complete information, useful to first-time readers). The details of how and when to provide equivalent information are part of the Techniques Document ( WCAG10-TECHS).
A text transcript is a text equivalent of audio information that includes spoken words and non-spoken sounds such as sound effects. A caption is a text transcript for theaudio tracks of a video presentation that is synchronized with the video and audio tracks. Captions are generally rendered visually by being superimposed over the video, which benefits people who are deaf and hard-of-hearing, and anyone who cannot hear the audio (e.g., when in a crowded room). A collated text transcript combines (collates) captions with text descriptions of video information (descriptions of the actions, body language, graphics, and scene changes of the video track). These text equivalents make s accessible to people who are deaf-blind and to people who cannot play movies, animations, etc. It also makes the information available to search engines.
One example of a non-text equivalent is an auditory description of the key visual elements of a presentation. The description is either a prerecorded human voice or a synthesized voice (recorded or generated on the fly). The auditory description is synchronized with the audio track of the , usually during natural pauses in the audio track. Auditory descriptions include information about actions, body language, graphics, and scene changes.

Equivalent (for Content) [UAAG10] Draft 2001-02-03
In the context of this document, an equivalency relationship between two pieces of content means that one piece -- the "equivalent" -- is able to serve essentially the same function for a person with a disability (at least insofar as is feasible, given the nature of the disability and the state of technology) as the other piece -- the "equivalency target" -- does for a person without any disability.

Example: The text "The Full Moon" might convey the same information as an image of a full moon when presented to users. If the image is part of a link and understanding the image is crucial to guessing the link target, then the equivalent must also give users an idea of the link target. Thus, an equivalent is provided to fulfill the same function as the equivalency target.

Equivalents include text equivalents (e.g., text equivalents for images; text transcripts for audio tracks; collated text transcripts for multimedia presentations and animations) and non-text equivalents (e.g., a prerecorded auditory description of a visual track of a movie, or a sign language video rendition of a written text, etc.). Please refer to the definitions of text content and non-text content for more information.

Each markup language defines its own mechanisms for specifying equivalents. For instance, in HTML 4 HTML 4 or SMIL 1.0 SMIL10, authors may use the "alt" attribute to specify a text equivalent for some elements. In HTML 4, authors may provide equivalents (or portions of equivalents) in attribute values (e.g., the "summary" attribute for the TABLE element), in element content (e.g., OBJECT for external content it specifies, NOFRAMES for frame equivalents, and NOSCRIPT for script equivalents), and in prose. Please consult the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 WCAG 1.0 and its associated Techniques document WCAG 1.0-TECHS for more information about equivalents.

Equivalent Alternative [ATAG10]
See Alternative Information [ATAG10]

Equivalent Alternatives for Content [UAAG10] 2001-02-03
Since content in some forms is not always accessible to users with disabilities, authors must provide equivalent alternatives for inaccessible content. In the context of this [UA] document, the equivalent must fulfill essentially the same function for the person with a disability (at least insofar as is feasible, given the nature of the disability and the state of technology), as the "primary" content does for the person without any disability.

Example: The text "The Full Moon" might convey the same information as an image of a full moon when presented to users.

Note: That equivalent information focuses on fulfilling the same function. If the image is part of a link and understanding the image is crucial to guessing the link target, an equivalent must also give users an idea of the link target.

Equivalent alternatives of content include text equivalents (long and short, synchronized and unsynchronized) and non-text equivalents (e.g., an auditory description, or a visual track that shows a sign language translation of a written text, etc.). Please also consult the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 WCAG 1.0 and its associated Techniques document WCAG 1.0-TECHS.
Each markup language defines its own mechanisms for specifying equivalent alternatives. For instance, in HTML 4.01 HTML 4.01 or SMIL 1.0 SMIL10, the "alt" attribute specifies alternative text for many elements. In HTML 4.01, authors may provide alternatives in attribute values (e.g., the "summary" attribute for the TABLE element), in element content (e.g., OBJECT for external content it specifies, NOFRAMES for frame alternatives, and NOSCRIPT for script alternatives), and in prose.

Note: That some (SGML) elements have content that is rendered (e.g., the P, LI, or TABLE elements in HTML), some are replaced by external content (e.g., IMG), and some affect processing (e.g., STYLE and SCRIPT cause information to be processed by a style sheet or script engine). An element that causes text characters to be part of the document is called a text element.

Event [WCAG10] [WCAG20] PROPOSED
An event can be some action taken by the user, some condition that occurs in the operating system, or some condition occurring over a network. A user event might be pressing the Enter key; an OS event might be the system time reaching some preset value; a network event might be the completion of a file download.

Event GENERIC 2001-03-17 Dublin Core Def.
An event is a non-persistent, time-based occurrence. Metadata for an event provides descriptive information that is the basis for discovery of the purpose, location, duration, responsible agents, and links to related events and resources. The resource of type event may not be retrievable if the described instantiation has expired or is yet to occur.


Examples: Exhibition, web-cast, conference, workshop, open-day, performance, battle, trial, wedding, tea-party, conflagration.



Event Handlers [WCAG20] [Script Techniques] 2002-03-17 NCI National Cancer Institute
An event handler is a script that is invoked when a certain event occurs (e.g, the mouse moves, a key is pressed, the document is loaded, etc.). In HTML 4.01, event handlers are attached to elements via event handler attributes (the attributes beginning with "on", as in "onkeyup"). An event handler might produce a purely decorative effect, such as changing the color of an image when the mouse is passed over it, or it might perform more important functions, such as changing the number of items in a shopping cart when a button is clicked or opening a new window.

Events and Scripting, Event Handler [UAAG10] (Normative)
User agents often perform a task when an event having a particular "event type" occurs, including user interface events, changes to content, loading of content, and requests from the operating environment. Some markup languages allow authors to specify that a script, called an event handler, be executed when an event of a given type occurs. An event handler is explicitly associated with an element when the event handler is associated with that element through markup or the DOM. The term "event bubbling" describes a programming style where a single event handler dispatches events to more than one element. In this case, the event handlers are not explicitly associated with the elements receiving the events (except for the single element that dispatches the events).

Note: The combination of HTML, style sheets, the Document Object Model (DOM), and scripting is commonly referred to as "Dynamic HTML" or DHTML. However, as there is no W3C specification that formally defines DHTML, this UA document only refers to event handlers and scripts.

Expansion [PDF-TECH] ISSUE
@@

Explicit User Request [UAAG10] (Normative) 2003-03-02

In this document, the term "explicit user request" refers to any user interaction through the user agent user interface (not through rendered content), the focus, or the selection. User requests are made, for example, through user agent user interface controls and keyboard bindings.

Some examples of explicit user requests include when the user selects "New viewport," responds "yes" to a prompt in the user agent's user interface, configures the user agent to behave in a certain way, or changes the selection or focus with the keyboard or pointing device.

Note: Users make mistakes.

Example: A user may inadvertently respond "yes" to a prompt instead of "no." In this document, this type of mistake is still considered an explicit user request.



Extreme Changes in Context [WCAG10] [WCAG20] 2001-03-12 ISSUE
See alsoMechanisms that cause extreme changes in context
@@



F

Facet [XFORMS10] 2001-07-15
A single defining aspect of a value space. Generally speaking, each facet characterizes a value space along independent axes or dimensions. This definition is taken from XML Schema [XML Schema part 2]

Facilities [XML10] [XHTML10] 2001-02-04
Functionality includes elements, attributes, and the semantics associated with those elements and attributes. An implementation supporting that functionality is said to provide the necessary facilities.

Feature [WCAG20] 2003-03-02
@@

Feature [CC-PP] 2003-03-05
Functional property of a device or entity.

Fee Link [UAAG10] Draft 2001-02-03
For the purpose of this document, the term "fee link" refers to a link that when activated, debits the user's electronic "wallet" (generally, a "micropayment"). The link's role as a fee link must be identified through markup in a manner that the user agent can recognize. This definition of fee link excludes payment mechanisms (e.g., some form-based credit card transactions) that cannot be recognized by the user agent as causing payments. For more information about fee links, refer to "Common Markup for micropayment per-fee-links" MICROPAYMENT.

Fill [SVG10] 2001-02-02
The operation of painting the interior of a shape or the interior of the character glyphs in a text string.

Focus [ATAG10] 2001-01-25
The "focus" designates the active element (e.g., link, form control, element with associated scripts, etc.) in a view that will react when the user next interacts with the document.

Focus, Content Focus, User Interface Focus, Current Focus [UAAG10] (Normative) 2003-03-02
See also Pointer Focus
In this document, the term "content focus" (required by checkpoint 9.1) refers to a user agent mechanism that has all of the following properties:
  1. It designates zero or one element in content that is either enabled or disabled. In general, the focus should only designate enabled elements, but it may also designate disabled elements.
  2. It has state, i.e., it may be "set" on an enabled element, programmatically or through the user interface. Some content specifications (e.g., HTML, CSS) allow authors to associate behavior with focus set and unset events.
  3. Once it has been set, it may be used to trigger other behaviors associated with the enabled element (e.g., the user may activate a link or change the state of a form control). These behaviors may be triggered programmatically or through the user interface (e.g., through keyboard events).

User interface mechanisms may resemble content focus, but do not satisfy all of the properties. For example, designers of word processing software often implement a "caret" that indicates the current location of text input or editing. The caret may have state and may respond to input device events, but it does not enable users to activate the behaviors associated with enabled elements.

The user interface focus shares the properties of the content focus except that, rather than designating pieces of content, it designates zero or one control of the user agent user interface that has associated behaviors (e.g., a radio button, text box, or menu).

On the screen, the user agent may highlight the content focus in a variety of ways, including through colors, fonts, graphics, and magnification. The user agent may also highlight the content focus when rendered as synthesized speech, for example through changes in speech prosody. The dimensions of the rendered content focus may exceed those of the viewport.

In this document, each viewport is expected to have at most one content focus and at most one user interface focus. This document includes requirements for content focus only, for user interface focus only, and for both. When a requirement refers to both, the term "focus" is used.

When several viewports coexist, at most one viewport's content focus or user interface focus responds to input events; this is called the current focus.

Font [SVG10] 2001-02-02
A font represents an organized collection of glyphs in which the various glyph representations will share a common look or styling such that, when a string of characters is rendered together, the result is highly legible, conveys a particular artistic style and provides consistent inter-character alignment and spacing.

Form Control [XFORMS10] 2001-07-15
A user interface control or "widget" that serves as a point of user interaction.

Form Fields [PDF-TECH] 2001-01-08 ISSUE
@@

G

Gateway [RFC2828] 2001-03-24
A relay mechanism that attaches to two (or more) computer networks that have similar functions but dissimilar implementations and that enables host computers on one network to communicate with hosts on the other; an intermediate system that is the interface between two computer networks. (E.G.: bridge, firewall, guard, internetwork, proxy server, router, and subnetwork.)

Gateway [CC-PP] 2003-03-05
Software that is capable of bridging disparate network protocols. For the purposes of this specification, "gateway" refers to protocol bridging functionality, which may exist in a stand-alone gateway or may be co-located with a proxy or origin server.

Generation Tool [ATAG10] 2001-01-25
A "generation tool" is a program or script that produces automatic markup "on the fly" by following a template or set of rules. The generation may be performed on either the server or client side.

Global Configuration [UAAG10] (Normative)   2002-10-30
See also Configure, Control

A global configuration is one that applies across elements of the same Web resource, as well as across Web resources. A global configuration may be implemented by more than one setting (e.g., per component of the user agent). For instance, when a user agent consists of a browser that renders HTML and a plug-in that renders SVG, to satisfy the global configuration requirements of this document, the browser may provide one setting and the plug-in another.

User agents may allow users to choose configurations based on various parameters, such as hardware capabilities or natural language preferences.



Glyph [SVG10] 2001-02-02
A glyph represents a unit of rendered content within a font. Often, there is a one-to-one correspondence between characters to be drawn and corresponding glyphs (e.g., often, the character "A" is rendered using a single glyph), but other times multiple glyphs are used to render a single character (e.g., use of accents) or a single glyph can be used to render multiple characters (e.g., ligatures). Typically, a glyph is defined by one or more shapes such as a path, possibly with additional information such as rendering hints that help a font engine to produce legible text in small sizes.

Glyph [PDF-TECH] 2001-12-13
An image used in the visual re of characters; roughly speaking, how a character looks. A font is a set of glyphs. In the simple case, for a given font (typeface and size), each character corresponds to a single glyph but this is not always the case, especially in a language with a large alphabet where one character may correspond to several glyphs or several characters to one glyph (a character encoding). A glyph can be an alphabetic or numeric font or some other symbol that pictures an encoded character. The following quote is from a document written as background for the Unicode character set standard. An ideal characterization of characters and glyphs and their relationship may be stated as follows: A character conveys distinctions in meaning or sounds. A character has no intrinsic appearance. A glyph conveys distinctions in form. A glyph has no intrinsic meaning. One or more characters may be depicted by one or more glyph res (instances of an abstract glyph) in a possibly context dependent fashion. Glyph is from a Greek word for "carving."

Graceful Transformation, Graceful Degradation 2001-03-28
See: Transform Gracefully


Graphical [UAAG10] (Normative)
In this document, the term "graphical" refers to information (including text, colors, graphics, images, and animations) rendered for visual consumption.

Graphics [WEAVING] GENERIC
Two- or three-dimensional images, typically drawings or photographs. See also GIF, PNG, SVG, and VRML.

Graphics Element [SVG10] 2001-02-02
One of the element types that can cause graphics to be drawn onto the target canvas. Specifically: 'path', 'text', 'rect', 'circle', 'ellipse', 'line', 'polyline', 'polygon', 'image' and 'use'.

Graphics Referencing Element [SVG10] 2001-02-02
A graphics element which uses a reference to a different document or element as the source of its graphical content. Specifically: 'use' and 'image'.



H

Haptic [ATAG10] 2002-02-27 ISSUE IMS
@@

Hearing Disabilities [PWD-Use-Web] 2001-03-19


Highlight [UAAG10] (Normative)
In this document, "to highlight" means to emphasize through the user interface.

Example: User agents highlight which content is selected or focused. Graphical highlight mechanisms include dotted boxes, underlining, and reverse video. Synthesized speech highlight mechanisms include alterations of voice pitch and volume ("speech prosody").



Hint [CC-PP] 2003-03-05
A suggestion or preference for a particular option. While this option is strongly recommended, its use is not required.

HTTP 2001-03-24 Web Characterization Terminology & Definitions Sheet


HTTPS [RFC2828] 2001-03-24
When used in the first part of a URL (the part that precedes the colon and specifies an access scheme or protocol), this term specifies the use of HTTP enhanced by a security mechanism, which is usually SSL.

Hyperlink [RFC1983] GENERIC
A pointer within a hypertext document which points (links) to another document, which may or may not also be a hypertext document. See also: hypertext.

Hypertext [RFC1983] GENERIC
A document, written in HTML, which contains hyperlinks to other documents, which may or may not also be hypertext documents. Hypertext documents are usually retrieved using WWW.



I

Identity [WS-GLOSSARY] 2003-03-02
The unique identifier for a person, organization, resource, or service.

Image [WCAG10] [WCAG20]
A graphical .

Image [Dublin Core] GENERIC 2001-03-15
An image is a primarily symbolic visual representation other than text.

Example: Images and photographs of physical objects, paintings, prints, drawings, other images and graphics, animations and moving pictures, film, diagrams, maps, musical notation.

Note: That image may include both electronic and physical representations.



Image [UAAG10]
This document uses the term "image" to refer (as is commonly the case) to pictorial content. However, in this document, term image is limited to static (i.e., unmoving) visual information. See also the definition of animation.

Image Map [WCAG10] [WCAG20]
An image that has been divided into regions with associated actions. Clicking on an active region causes an action to occur.
When a user clicks on an active region of a client-side image map, the user agent calculates in which region the click occurred and follows the link associated with that region. Clicking on an active region of a server-side image map causes the coordinates of the click to be sent to a server, which then performs some action.
content developers can make client-side image maps accessible by providing device-independent access to the same links associated with the image map's regions. Client-side image maps allow the user agent to provide immediate feedback as to whether or not the user's pointer is over an active region.

Impairment [WCAG20] [WHO] 2002-06-20 World Health Organization WHO
An impairment refers to an abnormality of body structure, appearance, organ and system functioning. Impairments are problems in body function or structure such as a significant deviation or loss.

Impairments of Intelligence [PWD-Use-Web] 2001-03-19
Individuals with impairments of intelligence (sometimes called "learning disabilities" in Europe) may learn more slowly, or have difficulty understanding complex concepts.

Important [WCAG10] [WCAG20]
Information in a document is important if understanding that information is crucial to understanding the document.

Inaccessible Markup [ATAG10]
See Accessibility Problem [ATAG10].

Indexing Value [PDF-TECH] 2001-01-11 Needs DEF
@@

Inference Rules RDF, Artificial-intelligence, Web Research 2001-04-20 Semantic Web Article in Scientific American 04/2001
An ontology may express the inference rule "If a city code is associated with a state code, and an address uses that city code, then that address has the associated state code." A program could then readily deduce, for instance, that a Cornell University address, being in Ithaca, must be in New York State, which is in the U.S., and therefore should be formatted to U.S. standards.

Inform [ATAG10]
To "inform" is to make the author aware of an event or situation through alert, prompt, sound, flash, or other means.

Information Appliances [XHTML Basic] 2001-03-10
Information appliances are targeted for particular uses. They support the features they need for the functions they are designed to fulfill. The following are examples of different information appliances:



Informative [UAAG10] (Normative) 2001-10-17
See also Normative, Non-normative
@@

Inheritance [DOM2] 2001-03-10
In object-oriented programming, the ability to create new classes (or interfaces) that contain all the methods and properties of another class (or interface), plus additional methods and properties. If class (or interface) D inherits from class (or interface) B, then D is said to be derived from B. B is said to be a base class (or interface) for D. Some programming languages allow for multiple inheritance, that is, inheritance from more than one class or interface.

Input Configuration [UAAG10] (Normative)
An input configuration is the set of "bindings" between user agent functionalities and user interface input mechanisms (e.g., menus, buttons, keyboard keys, and voice commands). The default input configuration is the set of bindings the user finds after installation of the software; see checkpoint 12.3 for relevant documentation requirements. Input configurations may be affected by author-specified bindings (e.g., through the accesskey attribute of HTML 4 [HTML4]).

Input Focus [HFES] 2001-11-13
See also Pointer Focus, Keyboard Focus
The current assignment of the input from an input device to a user interface object (a window or an object within a window). Two kinds of input focus are pointer focus and keyboard focus.

Input Method [WCAG10] [WCAG20] 2001-01-23 ISSUE
@@

Insertion Point, Current Insertion Point [UAAG10] (Normative) 2001-02-03
The insertion point is the location where document editing takes place. The insertion point may be set by the user (e.g., by a pointing device or the keyboard editing keys) or through an application programming interface (API). A viewport has at most one logical insertion point. When several viewports co-exist, each may have an insertion point, but only one is active, called the current insertion point.

Note: Graphical user agents that render bidirectional text may render the insertion point at two locations on the screen. Often, the cursor is shown as split into an upper half and a lower half. The insertion point is generally rendered specially (on the screen, by a vertical bar or similar cursor)

Instance Data [XFORMS10] 2001-07-15
An internal tree representation of the values and state of all the instance data items associated with a particular form.

Instance Data Type [XFORMS10] 2001-07-15
An internal representation of the value and state of a single piece of data corresponding to a Schema simpleType, constrained by the definition of a model item.

Insertion Point, Current Insertion Point [UAAG10] (Normative) 2003-03-02
An interactive element is piece of content that, by specification, may have associated behaviors to be executed or carried out as a result of user or programmatic interaction. For instance, the interactive elements of HTML 4 [HTML4] include: links, image maps, form elements, elements with a value for the longdesc attribute, and elements with event handlers explicitly associated with them (e.g., through the various "on" attributes). The role of an element as an interactive element is subject to applicability. A non-interactive element is an element that, by format specification, does not have associated behaviors. The expectation of this document is that interactive elements become enabled elements in some sessions, and non-interactive elements never become enabled elements.

Interaction [WS-GLOSSARY] 2003-03-02
The act of doing an operation.

Interactive Elements, Non-interactive Element [UAAG10] (Normative) 2003-03-04
An interactive element is piece of content that, by specification, may have associated behaviors to be executed or carried out as a result of user or programmatic interaction. For instance, the interactive elements of HTML 4 [HTML4] include: links, image maps, form elements, elements with a value for the longdesc attribute, and elements with event handlers explicitly associated with them (e.g., through the various "on" attributes). The role of an element as an interactive element is subject to applicability. A non-interactive element is an element that, by format specification, does not have associated behaviors. The expectation of this document is that interactive elements become enabled elements in some sessions, and non-interactive elements never become enabled elements.

Interactive Resource GENERIC 2001-03-17 Dublin Core Def.
An interactive resource is a resource which requires interaction from the user to be understood, executed, or experienced.

Examples: Forms on web pages, applets, multimedia learning objects, chat services, virtual reality.



Interface [WS-GLOSSARY] 2003-03-02
A logical grouping of operations. An Interface represents an abstract Service type, independent of transmission protocol and data format.

Interoperability [RFC1983] GENERIC
The ability of software and hardware on multiple machines from multiple vendors to communicate meaningfully.

Intrinsic Dimensions [CSS10] [CSS20] 2001-02-03
The width and height as defined by the element itself, not imposed by the surroundings. In CSS2 it is assumed that all replaced elements -- and only replaced elements -- come with intrinsic dimensions.



J





K

Keyboard [HFES] 2001-11-13
A hardware device (or logical equivalent) consisting of a number of mechanical buttons (keys) that the user presses to input characters to a computer. Note that a logical keyboard may provide a representation of keys (e.g., on-screen keyboard) or it may not (e.g., voice recognition).

Keyboard Equivalents [HFES] 2001-11-13
Keys or key combinations that provide access to keyboard functions that are usually activated by a pointing device, voice input, or other input or control mechanisms/devices.

Keyboard Focus [HFES] 2001-11-13
The current assignment of the input from the keyboard or equivalent to a user interface object (a window or an object within a window). For a window, focus is indicated by a focus indicator; for an individual object, focus is indicated by a focus cursor.



L

Latch [HFES] 2001-11-13
See also Lock for contrast definition
A mode in which any modifier key (e.g., Shift, Control, Command, Alt, Option) remains logically pressed (active) in combination with only a single subsequent (nonmodifier) keypress. Contrast with lock.

Lexical Space [XFORMS10] 2001-07-15 taken from XML Schema part 2
A lexical space is the set of valid literals for a datatype.

Note: The literals in the lexical spaces defined in the X-Forms 1.0 specification have the following characteristics:

Example: "100" and "1.0E2" are two different literals from the lexical space of float which both denote the same value. The type system defined in this specification provides a mechanism for schema designers to control the set of values and the corresponding set of acceptable literals of those values for a datatype.

Linearized Table [WCAG10] [WCAG20]
A table rendering process where the contents of the cells become a series of paragraphs (e.g., down the page) one after another. The paragraphs will occur in the same order as the cells are defined in the document source. Cells should make sense when read in order and should include structural elements (that create paragraphs, headers, lists, etc.) so the page makes sense after linearization.

Line-break Hyphen [PDF-TECH]2002-12-13
Hyphens that you add explicitly by entering the dash character are called line-break or hard hyphens. A hyphen that is always set; for example, the hyphen in "cost-effective." A soft hyphen, by contrast, will only be set when a word that is not normally hyphenated falls at the end of a line, and must be broken for proper type spacing. Word processors use two basic techniques to perform hyphenation. The first employs an internal dictionary of words that indicates where hyphens may be inserted. The second uses a set of logical formulas to make hyphenation decisions. The dictionary method is more accurate but is usually slower. The most sophisticated programs use a combination of both methods. Most word processors allow you to override their own hyphenation rules and define yourself where a word should be divided.

Link Text [WCAG10] [WCAG20] ISSUE
@@

Live [WCAG20] 2002-06-20
See Real-time, Real-time process, Real-time event

Local URI reference, Non-local URI reference [SVG10] 2001-02-02
A Uniform Resource Identifier [URI] that does not include an absoluteURI or relativeURI and thus represents a reference to an element within the current document. A non-local URI reference is a URI that includes an absoluteURI or relativeURI and thus (usually) represents a reference to a different document or an element within a different document. See References and the 'defs' element.
Location Cursor [HFES] 2001-11-13
An indicator that shows which user interface object has focus. The appearance of this indicator usually depends on the kind of object that has focus. The object with focus can be activated if it is a control (e.g., button, menu) or selected if it is a selectable object (e.g., icon, list item). Also called a focus cursor. See also input focus, text cursor, and focus indicator. Contrast with pointer, focus cursor and text cursor.

Lock [HFES] 2001-11-13
See also Latch for contrast definition
A persistent mode in which any modifier key (e.g., Shift, Control, Command, Alt, Option) remains logically pressed (active) in combination with any number of subsequent keypresses until lock mode is turned off. Contrast with latch.



M

Machine-centric 2001-02-03 ISSUE
@@

Machine Understandable [CC-PP] 2001-03-10
Data that is described with tags that associate a meaning to the data (i.e., an "author" tag would describe the author of the document), allowing data to be searched or combined and not just displayed.

MacRomanEncoding, MacExpertEncoding, or WinAnsi Encoding [PDF-TECH] 2001-01-08
The regular font encodings used for Latin-text fonts on mac OS and Windows systems are named MacRomanEncoding and WinAnsiEncoding, respectively. Additionally, an encoding named MacExpertEncoding is used with "expert" fonts that contain addiitonal characters useful for sophisticated typography. Complete details of these encodings and the characters present in typical fonts are found in Appendix D of the PDF Version 1.3 Reference Manual.

Map, Mapped [WCAG10] [WCAG20] 2001-01-11
@@.

Markup [WCAG10] [WCAG20] 2001-01-11
@@

Markup Language [ATAG10]
Authors encode information using a "markup language" such as HTML HTML 4.01, SVG SVG, or MathML MATHML.

Mask [SVG10] 2001-02-02
Is a container element which can contain graphics elements or other container elements which define a set of graphics that is to be used as a semi-transparent mask for compositing foreground objects into the current background.

Mechanisms that cause extreme changes in context [WCAG20] 2003-03-02
See alsoExtreme Changes in Context
@@

Media equivalents [WCAG20] 2003-03-02
@@

Memory Impairments [PWD-Use-Web] 2001-03-19
Individuals with memory impairments may have problems with short-term memory, missing long-term memory, or some loss of language.

Mental Health Disabilities [PWD-Use-Web] 2001-03-19
Individuals with mental or emotional disabilities may have difficulty focusing on information on a Web site, or difficulty with blurred vision or hand tremors due to side effects from medications.

Metadata [WEAVING] GENERIC
Data about data on the Web, including but not limited to authorship, classification, endorsement, policy, distribution terms, IPR, and so on. A significant use for the Semantic Web.

Metadata 2001-03-11 Barron's Dict. of Computer & Internet Terms
Data that describes data. Data dictionaries and repositories are examples of metadata. The term may also refer to any file or database that holds information about another database's structure, attributes, processing or changes.

Method A Beginning...2001-01-25
A function that is part of an object and that is accessed through the object.

Example: Could be “frog.hop(4,feet);”..



Method [DOM1] 2001-03-010
A method is an operation or function that is associated with an object and is allowed to manipulate the object's data.

Mnemonic [HFES] 2001-11-13
See also Access Key (s)
The portion of an option name or control label used for keyboard selection. Also called mnemonic, implicit designator, or menu mnemonic. See implicit designator.

Mnemonic Code [HFES] 2001-11-13
A code that conveys information that is meaningful to the user and has some association with the words it represents. Mnemonic codes frequently consist of alphanumeric characters, making them easier to learn and recall. Many mnemonic codes are abbreviations.

Modal 2001-03-01 Barron's Dict. of Computer & Internet Terms
Mode Oriented. A modal operation switches from one mode to another.

Modalities 2001-02-03 ISSUE
@@

Mode 2001-03-11 Barron's Dict. of Computer & Internet Terms
An operational state that a system has switched to. It Implies at least two possible conditions. There are countless modes for hardware and software.

Model 2001-03-11 Barron's Dict. of Computer & Internet Terms


Model Item [XFORMS10] 2001-07-15
An abstract unit of data-collection within the XForms Model, which defines a XML Schema datatype and possibly other form-specific constraints on a single piece of collected data.

Modifier Key [HFES] 2001-11-13
See also Access Key (s)
A keyboard key that changes the action or effect of another key or of the pointing device.

Example: The Shift key extends the current selection in the direction of pointer movement, rather than moving the position of the text cursor.

Example: The control or command key transforms the keyboard keys from text input into commands.

Multimedia Presentation [WCAG10] [WCAG20] 2001-01-11
A multimedia presentation is a presentation that is not a visual-only, audio-only, or tactile-only. In a "classic" multimedia (e.g., a movie that has sound track or an animation with accompanying audio, including slide-shows), at least one visual track is closely synchronized with at least one audio track.

Multimedia Presentation [UAAG10] (Normative)
For the purposes of this [UA] document, a multimedia presentation is a presentation that is not a visual-only, audio-only, or tactile-only. In a "classic" multimedia presentation (e.g., a movie that has sound track or an animation with accompanying audio), at least one visual track is closely synchronized with at least one audio tracks.

Multi-modal 2001-02-03 ISSUE
@@



N

Namespace [CC-PP] 2003-03-05
A qualifier added to an XML tag to ensure uniqueness among XML elements.

Native Support [UAAG10] (Normative)
A user agent supports a feature natively if it does not require another piece of software (e.g., plug-in or external program) for support. Operating system features adopted by the user agent to meet the requirements of this [UA] document are considered part of native support. User agents may, but are not required to, provide access to adopted operating system features through the user agent's user interface or programmatic means.

Example:, if the user agent relies on the operating system's audio control features to meet some requirements of this [UA] document, the user agent is not required to include those controls in its native user interface. If an adopted operating system feature is not accessible through the operating system's user interface, then the user agent must provide an alternative accessible solution.



Natural Language [UAAG10] (Normative)
Natural language is spoken, written, or signed human language such as French, Japanese, and American Sign Language. On the Web, the natural language of content may be specified by markup or HTTP headers. Some examples include the lang attribute in HTML 4 ([HTML4] section 8.1), the xml:lang attribute in XML 1.0 ([XML], section 2.12), the hreflang attribute for links in HTML 4 ([HTML4], section 12.1.5), the HTTP Content-Language header ([RFC2616], section 14.12) and the Accept-Language request header ([RFC2616], section 14.4). See also the definition of script.

Natural Language [WCAG10] [WCAG20]
Spoken, written, or signed human languages such as French, Japanese, American Sign Language, and braille. The natural language of content may be indicated with the "lang" attribute in HTML ( HTML 4.0, section 8.1) and the "xml:lang" attribute in XML ( XML, section 2.12).

Negotiate Content [CC-PP] 2003-03-05
Message content that has been selected by content negotiation.

Negotiation Metadata [CC-PP] 2003-03-05
Information which is exchanged between the sender and the receiver of a message by content negotiation in order to determine the variant which should be transferred.

Non-normative [UAAG10] (Normative) 2001-10-17 ISSUE
See also Normative, Informative
@@

Non-text Content [WCAG20] 2001-12-10
See also Normative, Informative
Non-text content includes images, text in raster images, image map regions, animations (e.g., animated GIFs), applets and programmatic objects, ascii art, scripts, images used as list bullets, spacers, graphical buttons, sounds (played with or without user interaction), stand-alone audio files, audio tracks of video, and video.

Non-variant Content [CC-PP] 2003-03-05
When the form/format of the content being sent does not depend on receiver's capabilities and/or preferences.

Normative [UAAG10] (Normative) 2003-03-02
See also Non-normative, Informative
What is identified as "normative" is required for conformance (noting that one may conform in a variety of well-defined ways to this document). What is identified as "informative" (sometimes, "non-normative") is never required for conformance.



O

Objects [WCAG10] [WCAG20] 2000-12-13
An object is an identifiable, encapsulated entity that provides one or more services requested by a client. Objects can refer to the objects in OOP (object-oriented programming) or the objects in OLE (Object Linking and Embedding). In object-oriented programming, objects are the things you think about first in designing a program and they are also the units of code that are eventually derived from the process. In between, each object is made into a generic class of object and even more generic classes are defined so that objects can share models and reuse the class definitions in their code. Each object is an instance of a particular class or subclass with the class's own method or procedures and data variable. An object is what actually runs in the computer. An object can be a spell checker or a piece of a graphics program used to draw squares or circles. Do you remember the crazy story people used to try to tell about a word processer where you could pick all of your favorite pieces (favorite spell checker, grammar checker, text editor, font manager, etc.) and piece them together to form the ultimate customizable word processer? Well, those pieces are objects. In OLE, an object is a piece of a document, a graphic, or some multimedia. In general multimedia terms, an object is a stored data element, such as a video clip, an audio file, or a graphic re of an object.

Obsolete Element GENERIC 2001-03-17 Dublin Core Def.
An obsolete element or attribute is one for which there is no guarantee of support by a user agent. Obsolete elements are no longer defined in the specification, but are listed for historical purposes in the changes section of the reference manual.

Ontology Philosophy 2001-04-20 Semantic Web Article in Scientific American 04/2001
Is a theory about the nature of existence, of what types of things exist; ontology as a discipline studies such theories.

Ontology RDF, Artificial-intelligence, Web Research 2001-04-20 Semantic Web Article in Scientific American 04/2001
An ontology in RDF and Artificial Intelligence infers a document or file that formally defines the relations among terms. Ontologies establish a joint terminology between members of a community of interest. These members can be human or automated agents. The most typical kind of ontology for the Web has a taxonomy and a set of inference rules.

Operating environment [UAAG10] (Normative) 2003-03-02
The term "operating environment" refers to the environment that governs the user agent's operation, whether it is an operating system or a programming language environment such as Java.

Operators2001-01-25
Symbols in a computer language that manipulates an operand. An example is “2 * 3” where “*” is the operator for multiplication and 2 and 3 are operands.

Output Method [WCAG10] [WCAG20] 2001-01-11 ISSUE
@@

Override [UAAG10] (Normative) 2003-03-02
In this document, the term "override" means that one configuration or behavior preference prevails over another. Generally, the requirements of this document involve user preferences prevailing over author preferences and user agent default settings and behaviors. Preferences may be multi-valued in general (e.g., the user prefers blue over red or yellow), and include the special case of two values (e.g., turn on or off blinking text content ).


P

Page-content Stream [PDF-TECH] 2001-01-08
A page's content stream contains operands and operators used to place "paint" on a page in selected areas. By executing the actions described in the page content stream, an application builds up the image of the page described by the stream.

Pagination [PDF-TECH] 2001-01-08 ISSUE
@@

Paint [SVG10] 2001-02-02
A paint represents a way of putting color values onto the canvas. A paint might consists of both color values and associated alpha values which control the blending of colors against already existing color values on the canvas. SVG supports three types of built-in paint: color, gradients and patterns.

Parser, Parsing [XML10] [XHTML10] 2001-02-04
A parser extracts information from an XML document and parses it back to the application (for example, a browser) for processing or display. Parsing is the act whereby a document is scanned, and the information contained within the document is filtered into the context of the elements in which the information is structured.

Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) [WCAG10] [WCAG20]
A PDA is a small, portable computing device. Most PDAs are used to track personal data such as calendars, contacts, and electronic mail. A PDA is generally a handheld device with a small screen that allows input from various sources.

Personally Identifiable Data [P3P] 2001-02-27
Any information relating to an identified or identifiable individual.

Photosensitive Epilepsy, Photoepilepsy [WCAG10] [WCAG20] 2001-07-26
Some people with epilepsy can be triggered into seizures by flashing or flickering lights, rapidly changing images or visual patterns. This is called photosensitive epilepsy. When given an EEG test, the majority of people with photosensitive epilepsy will show epileptic discharges in the brain when exposed to flashing lights.
Epilepsy is best described as a tendency to recurrent convulsions. Photosensitivity is sensitivity to flickering or intermittent light stimulation but includes sensitivity to visual patterns. Photosensitive epilepsy therefore can be defined as recurrent convulsions precipitated by visual stimuli, particularly flickering light (Harding & Jeavons, 1994).
Photosensitive epilepsy is largely genetically determined, although its inheritance is complex. It most commonly affects children, and usually appears between the ages of 8 and 20 years. The incidence is highest around ages 12 and 13, suggesting a link with early puberty, and girls are affected more often than boys. One quarter of patients lose their photosensitivity around 25 years of age. The rest remain photosensitive for life.

Physical Disabilities [PWD-Use-Web] 2001-03-19


Placeholder [UAAG10] 2003-03-02
A placeholder is content generated by the user agent to replace author-supplied content. A placeholder may be generated as the result of a user preference (e.g., to not render images) or as repair content (e.g., when an image cannot be found). Placeholders can be any type of content, including text, images, and audio cues.

Plaintext [RFC2828] 2001-03-24
Data that is input to and transformed by an encryption process, or that is output by a decryption process.

Plug-in [UAAG10] (Normative)
A plug-in is a program that runs as part of the user agent and that is not part of content. Users generally choose to include or exclude plug-ins from their user agent.
Point of Regard [UAAG10] (Normative)
The point of regard is a position in rendered content that the user is presumed to be viewing. The dimensions of the point of regard may vary. For example, it may be a point (e.g., a moment during an audio rendering or a cursor position in a graphical rendering), or a range of text (e.g., focused text), or a two-dimensional area (e.g., content rendered through a two-dimensional graphical viewport). The point of regard is almost always within the viewport, but it may exceed the spatial or temporal dimensions of the viewport (see the definition of rendered content for more information about viewport dimensions). The point of regard may also refer to a particular moment in time for content that changes over time (e.g., an audio-only presentation). User agents may determine the point of regard in a number of ways, including based on viewport position in content, content focus, and selection. The stability of the point of regard is addressed by guideline 5 and checkpoint 9.4.

Pointer [HFES] 2001-11-13
A user interface object represented by a graphical symbol that moves on the screen to reflect the user's manipulation of a pointing device and/or the current state of the dialog or system. Users interact with other objects on the screen by moving the pointer to an object's location and manipulating that object. Examples of pointers include mouse devices, tablets, fingers, and 3 D wands. Pointers may be represented with an auditory representation of a location on the screen. Although the pointer is sometimes called a type of cursor, this document uses the word cursor only for the indication of keyboard input focus or location. Also called On-Screen Pointer. See also focus cursor and text cursor.

Pointer Focus [HFES] 2001-11-13
See also Focus
The current assignment of the input from the pointing device to a window. The window with pointer focus usually has some distinguishing characteristic, such as a highlighted border and/or title bar.

Policy [P3P10] 2001-02-27
A collection of one or more privacy statements together with information asserting the identity, URI, assurances, and dispute resolution procedures of the service covered by the policy.

Practice [P3P10] 2001-02-27
The set of disclosures regarding data usage, including purpose, recipients, and other disclosures.

Preference [P3P10] 2001-02-27
A rule, or set of rules, that determines what action(s) a user agent will take. A preference might be expressed as a formally defined computable statement.

Presentation [UAAG10] (Normative)
In this [UA] document, the term presentation refers to a collection of information, consisting of one or more web resources, intended to be rendered simultaneously, and identified by a single URI. In general, a has an inherent time component (i.e., it's not just a static "Web page" (refer to the definition of "Web page" in "Web Characterization Terminology and Definitions Sheet" WEBCHAR).

Presentation [WCAG10] [WCAG20] 2001-01-13
@@.

Presentation Attribute [SVG10] 2001-02-02
An XML attribute on an SVG element which specifies a value for a given property for that element.

Presentation Markup [ATAG10]
"Presentation markup" is markup language that encodes information about the desired or layout of the content. For example, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS 1, CSS 2) can be used to control fonts, colors, aural rendering, and graphical positioning. Presentation markup should not be used in place of structural markup to convey structure. For example, authors should mark up lists in HTML with proper list markup and style them with CSS (e.g., to control spacing, bullets, numbering, etc.). Authors should not use other CSS or HTML incorrectly to lay out content graphically so that it resembles a list.

Presentation Markup [WCAG10] [WCAG20] 2001-02-03
Presentation markup is markup that achieves a stylistic (rather than structuring) effect such as the B or I elements in HTML. Note: that the STRONG and EM elements are not considered markup since they convey information that is independent of a particular font style.

Privacy [CC-PP] 2003-03-05
Preventing the unintended or unauthorized disclosure of information about a person. Such information may be contained within a message, but may also be inferred from patterns of communication; e.g. when communications happen, the types of resource accessed, the parties with whom communication occurs, etc.

Profile [UAAG10] (Normative)
A profile is a named and persistent representation of user preferences that may be used to configure a user agent. Preferences include input configurations, style preferences, and natural language preferences. In operating environments with distinct user accounts, profiles enable users to reconfigure software quickly when they log on. Users may share their profiles with one another. Platform-independent profiles are useful for those who use the same user agent on different platforms.

Prompt [ATAG10]
A "prompt" is a request for author input, either information or a decision. A prompt requires author response. For example, a text equivalents entry field prominently displayed in an image insertion dialog would constitute a prompt. Prompts can be used to encourage authors to provide information needed to make content accessible (such as alternative text equivalents).

Prompt [UAAG10] (Normative) 2003-03-02
In this document, "to prompt" means to require input from the user. The user agent should allow users to configure how they wish to be prompted. For instance, for a user agent functionality X, configurations might include: "always prompt me before doing X," "never prompt me before doing X," "never do X but tell me when you could have," and "never do X and never tell me that you could have."

Property [ATAG10]
A "property" is a piece of information about an element, for example structural information (e.g., it is item number 7 in a list, or plain text) or information (e.g., that it is marked as bold, its font size is 14). In XML and HTML, properties of an element include the type of the element (e.g., IMG or DL), the values of its attributes, and information associated by means of a style sheet. In a database, properties of a particular element may include values of the entry, and acceptable data types for that entry.

Property [SVG10] 2001-02-02
A parameter that helps specify how a document should be rendered. A complete list of SVG's properties can be found in Property Index. Properties are assigned to elements in the SVG language either by presentation attributes on elements in the SVG language or by using a styling language such as CSS, CSS 2.

Properties, Values, and Defaults [UAAG10] (Normative)
A user agent renders a document by applying formatting algorithms and style information to the document's elements. Formatting depends on a number of factors, including where the document is rendered: on screen, on paper, through loudspeakers, on a Braille display, on a mobile device. Style information (e.g., fonts, colors, and synthesized speech prosody) may come from the elements themselves (e.g., certain font and phrase elements in HTML), from style sheets, or from user agent settings. For the purposes of these guidelines, each formatting or style option is governed by a property and each property may take one value from a set of legal values. Generally in this document, the term "property" has the meaning defined in CSS 2 ( CSS 2, section 3). A reference to "styles" in this UA document means a set of style-related properties.
The value given to a property by a user agent when it is installed is called the property's default value UA.

Protocol [RFC2828] 2001-03-24
A set of rules (i.e., formats and procedures) to implement and control some type of association (e.g., communication) between systems. (E.g., Internet Protocol) In particular, a series of ordered steps involving computing and communication that are performed by two or more system entities to achieve a joint objective.

Protocols 2001-03-11 ISSUE
A formal description of message formats and the rules two computers must follow to exchange those messages. Protocols can describe low-level details of machine-to-machine interfaces (e.g., the order in which bits and bytes are sent across a wire) or high-level exchanges between allocation programs (e.g., the way in which two programs transfer a file across the Internet).

Publishing Tool [ATAG10] 2001-01-25
A "publishing tool" is software that allows content to be uploaded in an integrated fashion. Sometimes these tools makes changes such as local hyper-reference modifications. Although these tools sometimes stand alone, they may also be integrated into site management tools.

Purpose [P3P10] 2001-02-27
The reason(s) for data collection and use.



Q

Query-by-example [WCAG10] [WCAG20] 2001-01-11
@@.



R

Real-time, Real-time process, Real-time event [WCAG20] 2002-06-20 The Daisy Consortium
This term is often written as "realtime" or "real-time". The expression indicates that a process is happening "live", i.e. at the same time as something else. For example, with some audio CoDecs, it is possible to "compress in real time", which in this case can indicate that the digital audio data compression is performed by the computer at the same time as the digitisation and data storing is talking place. To be a true real time process, it must be possible to do the work as fast as – or preferable faster – than the rate at which input data is coming in. If the real time process can not keep up with the tempo of "real life", it is no longer a real-time process.

Real-time Events [WCAG20] 2003-03-02
@@

Recognize [UAAG10] (Normative)
A user agent is said to recognize markup, content types, or rendering effects when it can identify the information. Recognition may occur through built-in mechanisms, Document Type Definitions (DTDs) style sheets, HTTP headers, and other means. User agents may not understand everything the author has encoded in content, such as the semantics of XML elements unknown to the user agent, whether the link text and link title accurately describe the linked resource, whether a sentence (that has not been specially marked up) is a text equivalent for an image, or whether a script is calculating a factorial. Another example of failure of recognition is that HTML 3.2 s may not recognize the new elements or attributes of HTML 4.01 HTML 4.01. While a user agent may recognize blinking content specified by elements or attributes, it may not recognize blinking in an applet. The Techniques document UAAG10-TECHS lists some markup known to affect accessibility that should be recognized by user agents.

Recognize [UAAG10] Draft 2001-02-03
Authors encode information in markup languages, style sheet languages, scripting languages, protocols, etc. When the information is encoded in a manner that allows the user agent to process it with certainty, the user agent can "recognize" the information. For instance, HTML allows authors to specify a heading with the H1 element, so a user agent that implements HTML can recognize that content as a heading. If the author creates headings using a visual effect alone (e.g., by increasing the font size), then the author has encoded the heading in a manner that does not allow the user agent to recognize it as a heading.

Some requirements of this document depend on content roles, content relationships, timing relationships, and other information that must be supplied by the author. These requirements only apply when the author has encoded that information in a manner that the user agent can recognize. See the section on conformance for more information about applicability.

In practice, user agents will rely heavily on information that the author has encoded in a markup language or style sheet language. Information encoded in a script may not be recognized by the user agent as easily. For instance, a user agent is not expected to recognize that, when executed, a script will calculate a factorial. The user agent will be able to recognize some information in a script by virtue of implementing the scripting language or a known program library (e.g., the user agent is expected to recognize when a script will open a viewport or retrieve a resource from the Web). The Techniques document UAAG10-TECHS lists some markup known to affect accessibility that user agents can recognize.



Redirection [WCAG10] [WCAG20] 2001-01-11 ISSUE
@@.

Registry [WS-GLOSSARY] 2003-03-02
A system entity that provides Service and Service Provider information.

Rendered [WCAG10] [WCAG20] ISSUE
@@.

Rendering [XML10] [XHTML10] 2001-02-04
Rendering is the act whereby the information in a document is presented. This presentation is done in the form most appropriate to the environment (e.g. aurally, visually, in print).

Rendered Content, Rendered Text [UAAG10] Draft 2001-02-03
Rendered content is the part of content capable of being perceived by a user through a given viewport (whether visual, auditory, or tactile). Some rendered content may lie "outside" of a viewport at some times (e.g., when the user can only view a portion of a large document through a small graphical viewport, when audio content has already been played, etc.). By changing the viewport's position, the user can view the remaining rendered content.
Note: In the context of this document, "invisible content" is content that influences graphical rendering of other content but is not rendered itself. Similarly, "silent content" is content that influences audio rendering of other content but is not rendered itself. Neither invisible nor silent content is considered rendered content.

Rendered Content [UAAG10] (Normative) 2001-02-03
The rendered content is that part of content rendered in a given viewport (whether graphical, auditory, or tactile). An element's rendered content is that which a user agent renders for the element. This may be what appears between the element's start and end tags, the value of an attribute (c.f. the "alt", "title", and "longdesc" attributes in HTML), or external data (e.g., the IMG element in HTML). content may be rendered to a graphical display, to an auditory display (to a speaker as speech and non-speech sounds) or to a tactile display (Braille and haptic displays).

Rendered Content [ATAG10] 01-2001-01-25
The "rendered content" of an element is that which the element actually causes to be rendered by the user agent. This may differ from the element's structural content . For example, some elements cause external data to be rendered , and in some cases, browsers may render the value of an attribute (e.g., "alt", "title") in place of the element's content.

Rendered Content [CSS10] [CSS20] 2001-02-03
The content of an element after the rendering that applies to it according to the relevant style sheets has been applied. The rendered content of a replaced element comes from outside the source document. Rendered content may also be alternate text for an element (e.g., the value of the HTML "alt" attribute), and may include items inserted implicitly or explicitly by the style sheet, such as bullets, numbering, etc.

Rendered View [ATAG10] 2001-01-25
A "rendered view" simulates for the author how a user will interact with the content being edited once published.

Repair Content, Repair Text [UAAG10] (Normative) 2001-01-25
In this document, the term "repair content" refers to content generated by the user agent in order to correct an error condition or as the result of a user preference. "Repair text" means repair content consisting only of text. This document does not require user agents to include repair content in the document object.

Some error conditions that may lead to the generation of repair content include:



Some user preferences may change content , such as when the user has turned off support for images and a placeholder icon to appears in place of each image that has not been loaded.

For more information about repair techniques for Web content and software, refer to "Techniques For Accessibility Evaluation And Repair Tools" AERT.



Replaced Element [CSS10] [CSS20] 2001-02-03
An element for which the CSS formatter knows only the intrinsic dimensions. In HTML, IMG, INPUT, TEXTAREA, SELECT, and OBJECT elements can be examples of replaced elements. For example, the content of the IMG element is often replaced by the image that the "src" attribute designates. CSS does not define how the intrinsic dimensions are found.

Repository [P3P10] 2001-02-27
A mechanism for storing user information under the control of the user agent.

Repudiation [RFC2828] 2001-03-24
Denial by a system entity that was involved in an association (especially an association that transfers information) of having participated in the relationship. Denial by one of the entities involved in a communication of having participated in all or part of the communication.

Repurpose 2001-02-27 ISSUE
@@

ReverseChars [PDF-TECH]2001-12-14
Font characteristics may suggest that right-to-left text be typeset left-to-right. The ReverseChars marked content indicates that the show strings within the marked content are individually reversed in reading order.

Rich Media 2001-08-25 xtech
Rich media refers to elements on a web page (or in a separate player) which exhibit dynamic motion over time or in response to user interaction.
The taxonomy defines classes of objects and relations among them.

Example:



Router [RFC2828] 2001-03-24
A computer that is a gateway between two networks at OSI layer 3 and that relays and directs data packets through that internetwork. The most common form of router operates on IP packets. In the context of the Internet protocol suite, a networked computer that forwards Internet Protocol packets that are not addressed to the computer itself.

Rules 2001-04-20Needs other Defs
See: Inference Rules
@@

Running Headers [PDF-TECH] ISSUE
@@.



S

Scanning Software [PWD-Use-Web] 2001-03-18
Scanning software is adaptive software used by individuals with some physical or cognitive disabilities that highlights or announces selection choices (e.g., menu items, links, phrases) one at a time. A user selects a desired item by hitting a switch when the desired item is highlighted or announced.

Schema, schema 2001-04-24
See also: XML Schema


Schema, RDF Schema [CC-PP] 2003-03-05
An RDF schema denotes resources which constitute the particular unchanging versions of an RDF vocabulary at any point in time. It is used to provide semantic information (such as organization and relationship) about the interpretation of the statements in an RDF data model. It does not include the values associated with the attributes.

Screen Magnifier [WCAG10] [WCAG20]
A software program that magnifies a portion of the screen, so that it can be more easily viewed. Screen magnifiers are used primarily by individuals with low vision.

Screen Magnifier [PWD-Use-Web] 2001-03-18
Screen magnification is software used primarily by individuals with low vision that magnifies a portion of the screen for easier viewing. At the same time screen magnifiers make presentations larger, they also reduce the area of the document that may be viewed, removing surrounding context . Some screen magnifiers offer two views of the screen: one magnified and one default size for navigation.

Screen Reader [WCAG10] [WCAG20]
A software program that reads the contents of the screen aloud to a user. Screen readers are used primarily by individuals who are blind. Screen readers can usually only read text that is printed, not painted, to the screen.

Screen Reader [PWD-Use-Web] 2001-03-18
Software used by individuals who are blind or who have dyslexia that interprets what is displayed on a screen and directs it either to Speech Synthesis for audio output, or to refreshable braille for tactile output. Some screen readers use the document tree (i.e., the parsed document code) as their input. Older screen readers make use of the rendered version of a document, so that document order or structure may be lost (e.g., when tables are used for layout) and their output may be confusing.

Screen Reader [HFES] 2001-11-13
Assistive technology (software, and sometimes additional hardware), in combination with information available via the operating system, that allows users who are blind to navigate the user interface, determine the state of controls, and read text via Braille or hear it via text-to-speech conversion.

Script [UAAG10] (Normative) 2003-03-05

In this document, the term "script" almost always refers to a scripting (programming) language used to create dynamic Web content. However, in checkpoints referring to the written (natural) language of content, the term "script" is used as in Unicode [UNICODE] to mean "A collection of symbols used to represent textual information in one or more writing systems."

Information encoded in (programming) scripts may be difficult for a user agent to recognize. For instance, a user agent is not expected to recognize that, when executed, a script will calculate a factorial. The user agent will be able to recognize some information in a script by virtue of implementing the scripting language or a known program library (e.g., the user agent is expected to recognize when a script will open a viewport or retrieve a resource from the Web).



Scripting 2002-03-17 NCI National Cancer Institute
See also Client-side Scripting, Server-side Scripting
@@

Security [CC-PP] 2003-03-05
Describes a set of procedures applied to data communications to ensure that information is transferred exactly as the sender and receiver intend, and in no other way. Security generally breaks down into Integrity, Authentication, Confidentiality and Privacy.

Seizure Disorders [PWD-Use-Web] 2001-03-19
Some individuals with seizure disorders are triggered by visual flickering or audio signals at a certain frequency.


Selection [ATAG10] 2001-01-25
A "selection" is a set of elements identified for a particular operation. The user selection identifies a set of elements for certain types of user interaction (e.g., cut, copy, and paste operations). The user selection may be established by the user (e.g., by a pointing device or the keyboard) or via an accessibility Application Programmatic Interface (API). A view may have several selections, but only one user selection.


Selection, Current Selection [UAAG10] (Normative) 2003-03-05

In this document, the term "selection" refers to a user agent mechanism for identifying a (possibly empty) range of content. Generally, user agents limit the type of content that may be selected to text content (e.g., one or more fragments of text). In some user agents, the value of the selection is constrained by the structure of the document tree.

On the screen, the selection may be highlighted in a variety of ways, including through colors, fonts, graphics, and magnification. The selection may also be highlighted when rendered as synthesized speech, for example through changes in speech prosody. The dimensions of the rendered selection may exceed those of the viewport.

The selection may be used for a variety of purposes, including for cut and paste operations, to designate a specific element in a document for the purposes of a query, and as an indication of point of regard.

The selection has state, i.e., it may be "set," programmatically or through the user interface.

In this document, each viewport is expected to have at most one selection. When several viewports coexist, at most one viewport's selection responds to input events; this is called the current selection.

See the section on the Selection label for information about implementing a selection and conformance.

Note: Some user agents may also implement a selection for designating a range of information in the user agent user interface. The current document only includes requirements for a content selection mechanism.

Semantics [WCAG10] [WCAG20] 2001-12-14
The study of relationships between signs and symbols and what they represent. In this sense, also called semasiology. semantics n : the study of language meaning
The meaning of a string in some language, as opposed to syntax which describes how symbols may be combined independent of their meaning.

Sender-initiated Transmission 2001-04-22 /Protocols/HTTP/1.1
A message transmission which is invoked by the sender of the message. Sometimes described as "push" messaging. E.g. sending an email.

Serial Access, Sequential Navigation [UAAG10] (Normative) 2003-03-05

In this document, the expression "serial access" refers to one-dimensional access to rendered content. Some examples of serial access include listening to an audio stream or watching a video (both of which involve one temporal dimension), or reading a series of lines of braille one line at a time (one spatial dimension). Many users with blindness have serial access to content rendered as audio, synthesized speech, or lines of braille

The expression "sequential navigation" refers to navigation through an ordered set of items (e.g., the enabled elements in a document, a sequence of lines or pages, or a sequence of menu options). Sequential navigation implies that the user cannot skip directly from one member of the set to another, in contrast to direct or structured navigation (see guideline 9 for information about these types of navigation). Users with blindness or some users with a physical disability may navigate content sequentially (e.g., by navigating through links, one by one, in a graphical viewport with or without the aid of an assistive technology). Sequential navigation is important to users who cannot scan rendered content visually for context and also benefits users unfamiliar with content. The increments of sequential navigation may be determined by a number of factors, including element type (e.g., links only), content structure (e.g., navigation from heading to heading), and the current navigation context (e.g., having navigated to a table, allow navigation among the table cells).

Users with serial access to content or who navigate sequentially may require more time to access content than users who use direct or structured navigation.



Server 2001-03-24 /Protocols/HTTP/1.1
An application program that accepts connections in order to service requests by sending back responses. Any given program may be capable of being both a client and a server; our use of these terms refers only to the role being performed by the program for a particular connection, rather than to the program's capabilities in general. Likewise, any server may act as an origin server, proxy, gateway, or tunnel, switching behavior based on the nature of each request.

Server-side Scripting [WCAG20] [Script Techniques] 2002-03-18 NCI National Cancer Institute
See also Scripting
Web programming that is carried out on the Web server, as opposed to the client's computer. Pages programmed with server-side scripting do not require any special capabilities on the part of the user's computer or browser.

Service [P3P10] 2001-02-27
A program that issues policies and (possibly) data requests. By this definition, a service may be a server (site), a local application, a piece of locally active code, such as an ActiveX control or Java applet, or even another user agent.

Service GENERIC 2001-03-17 Dublin Core Def.
A service is a system that provides one or more functions of value to the end-user. Examples include: a photocopying service, a banking service, an authentication service, interlibrary loans, a Z39.50 or Web server.

Session [WS-GLOSSARY] 2003-03-02
A lasting interaction between system entities, often involving a user, typified by the maintenance of some state of the interaction for the duration of the interaction. A lasting interaction between system entities, often involving a user, typified by the maintenance of some state of the interaction for the duration of the interaction.

Showstring [PDF-TECH] 2001-12-14
(a la Loretta) The strings that are the arguments to the PDF and Postscript text-showing operators that show text on a page. The show string is interpreted as a sequence of character codes identifying the glyphs to be painted.

Signing Avatar 2002-02-24 IMS Guidelines for Developing Accessible Learning Applications and iCan
See also Avatar
Computer-generated signer for on-screen signing animation. A virtual sign language translator in 3D animation, that displays a distinct personality and natural facial expressions that help interpret words and phrases for hearing-disabled viewers on their computer screens. A signing avatar can translate text and video into sign language using both hand signs and facial expressions.

Simpler-language Alternative [WCAG20] 2001-04-20
Is comparable information on the same subject which is written at a more introductory or elementary level.

Site Management Tool [ATAG10] 2001-01-25
A "site management tool" provides an overview of an entire Web site indicating hierarchical structure. It will facilitate management through functions that may include automatic index creation, automatic link updating, and broken link checking.

Site Navigation Mechanism [WCAG20] 2003-03-02
@@

Soft Hyphen [PDF-TECH] 2001-12-14
(a la Loretta) A character that is used to mark conditional hyphenation points. Unicode and ISO_Latin-1 code-point 0xAD.


Speech Synthesis [SSML10] 2003-03-04
The process of automatic generation of speech output from data input which may include plain text, formatted text or binary objects.

State [WS-GLOSSARY] 2003-03-02
A set of attributes representing the properties of a component at some point in time.

Structure [WCAG20] 2003-03-02
@@

Support, Implement, Conform [UAAG10] (Normative) 2003-03-05
In this document, the terms "support," "implement," "conform" all refer to what a developer has designed a user agent to do, but they represent different degrees of specificity. A user agent "supports" general classes of objects, such as "images" or "Japanese." A user agent "implements" a specification (e.g., the PNG and SVG image format specifications or a particular scripting language), or an API (e.g., the DOM API) when it has been programmed to follow all or part of a specification. A user agent "conforms to" a specification when it implements the specification and satisfies its conformance criteria.

Synchronize [UAAG10] (Normative) 2003-03-05
In this document, "to synchronize" refers to the act of time-coordinating two or more presentation components (e.g., a visual track with captions, or several tracks in a multimedia presentation). For Web content developers, the requirement to synchronize means to provide the data that will permit sensible time-coordinated rendering by a user agent. For example, Web content developers can ensure that the segments of caption text are neither too long nor too short, and that they map to segments of the visual track that are appropriate in length. For user agent developers, the requirement to synchronize means to present the content in a sensible time-coordinated fashion under a wide range of circumstances including technology constraints (e.g., small text-only displays), user limitations (slow reading speeds, large font sizes, high need for review or repeat functions), and content that is sub-optimal in terms of accessibility.



T

Tab Order [WCAG10] [WCAG20]
An assistive technology strategy. For people who cannot use a mouse, one strategy for rapidly scanning through links, headers, list items, or other structural items on a Web page is to use the tab key to go through the items in sequence. People who are using screen readers -- whether because they are blind or dyslexic -- may tab through items on a page, as well as people using voice recognition.

Tabular Information [WCAG10] [WCAG20]
When tables are used to represent logical relationships among data -- text, numbers, images, etc., that information is called "tabular information" and the tables are called "data tables". The relationships expressed by a table may be rendered visually (usually on a two-dimensional grid), aurally (often preceding cells with header information), or in other formats.

Tactile Object [UAAG10] (Normative)
A tactile object is output from a tactile viewport Tactile objects include text (rendered as Braille) and graphics (rendered as raised-line drawings).

Tactile-only Presentation [UAAG10] (Normative)
A tactile-only presentation is a presentation consisting exclusively of one or more tactile tracks presented concurrently or in series.

Tactile Track [UAAG10] (Normative)
A tactile track is a tactile object that is intended as a whole or partial presentation . This does not necessarily correspond to a single physical or logical track on the storage or delivery media.

Tagged PDF 2001-07-25 Adobe
Is a version od PDF that provides structure and orders information to allow PDF documents to be read by screen-readers and to be reflowed to fit different display screen sizes. To accomplish this, Tagged PDF marks, or tags, the various elements that make up a page.

Target [WCAG10] [WCAG20] ISSUE
@@.

Taxonomy RDF, Artificial-intelligence, Web Research 2001-04-20 Semantic Web Article in Scientific American 04/2001
The taxonomy defines classes of objects and relations among them.

Example: An address may be defined as a type of location, and city codes may be defined to apply only to locations, and so on. Classes, subclasses and relations among entities are a very powerful tool for Web use. We can express a large number of relations among entities by assigning properties to classes and allowing subclasses to inherit such properties. If city codes must be of type city and cities generally have Web sites, we can discuss the Web site associated with a city code even if no database links a city code directly to a Web site.



Technology [WCAG20] 2003-03-02
@@

Telecommunications [Access Board] 2001-12-29
The transmission, between or among points specified by the user, of information of the user's choosing, without change in the form or content of the information as sent and received.
[36 C.F.R. 1194.4]

Telecommunications 2001-12-29 [High-Tech]
The transmission of information over a communications line.Telecommunications can include use of a modem, fax, telephone line, etc. to send voice, data, text, images, or video over long distances.

Text GENERIC [Dublin-Core] 2001-03-17
A text is a resource whose content is primarily words for reading.

Example: Books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists.

Note: that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.



Text [UAAG10] (Normative) 2003-03-05
In this document, the term "text" used by itself refers to a sequence of characters from a markup language's document character set. Refer to the "Character Model for the World Wide Web" CHARMOD for more information about text and characters.
Note: This document makes use of other terms that include the word "text" that have highly specialized meanings: collated text transcript, non-text content, text content, non-text element, text element, text equivalent, and text transcript.

Text Content, non-text content, text element, non-text element, text equivalent, non-text equivalent [UAAG10] (Normative) 2003-03-05
As used in this document a "text element" adds text characters to either content or the user interface. Both in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 [WCAG10] and in this document, text elements are presumed to produce text that can be understood when rendered visually, as synthesized speech, or as Braille. Such text elements benefit at least these three groups of users:
  1. visually-displayed text benefits users who are deaf and adept in reading visually-displayed text;
  2. synthesized speech benefits users who are blind and adept in use of synthesized speech;
  3. braille benefits users who are blind, and possibly deaf-blind, and adept at reading braille.

A text element may consist of both text and non-text data. For instance, a text element may contain markup for style (e.g., font size or color), structure (e.g., heading levels), and other semantics. The essential function of the text element should be retained even if style information happens to be lost in rendering.

A user agent may have to process a text element in order to have access to the text characters. For instance, a text element may consist of markup, it may be encrypted or compressed, or it may include embedded text in a binary format (e.g., JPEG).

"Text content" is content that is composed of one or more text elements. A "text equivalent" (whether in content or the user interface) is an equivalent composed of one or more text elements. Authors generally provide text equivalents for content by using the conditional content mechanisms of a specification.

A "non-text element" is an element (in content or the user interface) that does not have the qualities of a text element. "Non-text content" is composed of one or more non-text elements. A "non-text equivalent" (whether in content or the user interface) is an equivalent composed of one or more non-text elements.



Text Browsers [PWD-Use-Web] 2001-03-18
An assistive technology device. Text browsers such as Lynx are an alternative to graphical user interface browsers. They can be used with screen readers for people who are blind. They are also used by many people who have low bandwidth connections and do not want to wait for images to download.

Text Content Element [SVG10] 2001-02-02
One of SVG's elements that can define a text string that is to be rendered onto the canvas. SVG's text content elements are the following: 'text', 'tspan', 'tref' and 'textPath'.

Text Cursor [HFES] 2001-11-13
The visual indication of the current insertion point for text entry-that is, the character position where text will be inserted into a text entry field or other text-based area (e.g., the document window in a word processor). Contrast with pointer and focus cursor.

Text Decoration [UAAG10] (Normative) 2003-03-05
In this document, a "text decoration" is any stylistic effect that the user agent may apply to visually rendered text that does not affect the layout of the document (i.e., does not require reformatting when applied or removed). Text decoration mechanisms include underline, overline, and strike-through.

Text Equivalent [WCAG10] [WCAG20] 2001-01-13
Text is "equivalent" to other content when both fulfill essentially the same function or purpose upon presentation to the user. Equivalent alternatives play an important role in accessible authoring practices since certain types of content may not be accessible to all users (e.g., video, images, audio, etc.). Authors are encouraged to provide text equivalents for non-text content since text may be rendered as synthesized speech for individuals who have visual or learning disabilities, as braille for individuals who are blind, or as graphical text for individuals who are deaf or do not have a disability. For more information about equivalent alternatives, please refer to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines WCAG 1.0 WCAG 1.0.

Text-To-Speech [SSML10] 2003-03-04
The process of automatic generation of speech output from text or annotated text input.

Text Transcript [UAAG10] (Normative) 2003-03-05
A text transcript is a text equivalent of audio information (e.g., an audio-only presentation or the audio tracks of a movie or other animation). It provides text for both spoken words and non-spoken sounds such as sound effects. Text transcripts make audio information accessible to people who have hearing disabilities and to people who cannot play the audio. Text transcripts are usually created by hand but may be generated on the fly (e.g., by voice-to-text converters). Refer also to the definitions of captions and collated text transcripts.

Time-dependent Presentation [WCAG10] [WCAG20] 2003-03-02
@@.

Time-Out [WS-GLOSSARY] 2003-03-02
period of time after which some condition becomes true if some event has not occurred. For example, a session that is terminated because its state has been inactive for a specified period of time is said to "time out".

Trailing Space Character [PDF-TECH] 2001-01-08
A white space character inserted into the text for a page after the last word on a line. A trailing space character is not needed to produce the correct page image, but is important for determining word breaks in the text of the page.

Transcript [ATAG10]
A "transcript" is a text representation of sounds in an audio clip or an auditory track of a multimedia presentation. A "collated text transcript" for a video combines (collates) caption text with text descriptions of video information (descriptions of the actions, body language, graphics, and scene changes of the visual track). Collated text transcripts are essential for individuals who are deaf-blind and rely on braille for access to movies and other content .

Transform Gracefully [WCAG10] [WCAG20] 2001-01-23 ISSUE a la Daniel D's XML Accessibility doc
Graceful transformation is a property of a system that can still function relatively error free when the system is damaged or when the input stimuli are incomplete. In such systems, removing a symbol token only results in the loss of the information stored in that token, with no abrupt performance decline of the overall process.
For instance, suppose I need to check the online yellow line train schedule and I don't have visual access to the Web. If the train Web site uses a yellow wagon animated icon to point me at the schedule, and do not provide a label somewhere saying that this is for the yellow line, thus only relying on my capacity to see the color, I suddenly cannot understand this site: it does not transform gracefully.

Transform Gracefully, Graceful Degradation07-18-2001 Viewable in Any Browser.org
Since HTML is continually changing and different browsers support different elements, graceful degradation is the key to making sure that pages are readable and accessible in all browsers. When a browser encounters tags it doesn't understand or can't display, degradation takes place. Whether this degradation will cause some of your page content to be lost to the browser, or whether the content of your page can still be accessed fully is dependent on whether the degradation is graceful.


The HTML standards were written with graceful degradation in mind - new attributes to older tags are safely ignored so that the rest of the tag can still function normally, and new tags are written with alternative display for browsers that don't support them in mind. There are many elements of HTML that can't be displayed or can be turned off in browsers that were written with the knowledge of these elements- such as images, java, and frames. Using the appropriate methods to provide an alternative message to those who can't see those elements or have turned them off is one way to design for graceful degradation.


If you design pages with graceful degradation in mind, by utilizing the built in elements of the HTML standards, and the advice provided here, you can design pages that should degrade gracefully in all browsers and are accessible.



Transform Gracefully From Face2Face in Boston


Transformation [ATAG10]
A "transformation" is a process that changes a document or object into another, equivalent, object according to a discrete set of rules. This includes conversion tools, software that allows the author to change the DTD defined for the original document to another DTD, and the ability to change the markup of lists and convert them into tables.

Transformation Filter [WCAG10] [WCAG20] 2001-01-13
Tools that assist Web users (rather than authors) to either modify a page or supplement an assistive technology or browser. Some of these tools integrate into the browser although most of them work by proxy: using a piece of software that sits between the user and the target server to transform a page to make it more accessible.

Transformation Matrix [SVG10] 2001-02-02
Transformation matrices define the mathematical mapping from one coordinate system into another using a 3x3 matrix using the equation [x' y' 1] = [x y 1] * matrix. See current transformation matrix (CTM) and Coordinate system transformations.

Type 0 Font, Type 1 Font [PDF-TECH] 2001-01-08
Type 0 font: a composite font, that is, a font composed of other fonts, organized hierarchically.
Type 1 font: a font represented using the Adobe Type 1 Font Format. A Type 1 font program is a stylized PostScript program that describes glyph shapes.

Typographic Style [PDF-TECH] ISSUE
@@.



U

Unfamiliar [WCAG20] 2003-03-02
@@

Unicode [PDF-TECH] 2000-12-14
A character coding scheme that uses 16 bits for each character, designed to extend the capabilities of ASCII, which uses seven bits. Nearly all letters and symbols in all languages can be represented in a standard way with Unicode. The first 128 characters of Unicode are identical to those in standard ASCII. Unicode is an entirely new idea in setting up binary codes for text or script characters. Officially called the Unicode Worldwide Character Standard, it is a system for "the interchange, processing, and display of the written texts of the diverse languages of the modern world." It also supports many classical and historical texts in a number of languages. Currently, the Unicode standard contains 57709 distinct coded characters derived from 24 supported language scripts. These characters cover the principal written languages of the world. Originally Unicode was designed to be universal, unique, and uniform, i.e., the code was to cover all major modern written languages (universal), each character was to have exactly one encoding (unique), and each character was to be represented by a fixed width in bits (uniform). Parallel to the development of Unicode an ISO/IEC standard was being worked on that put a large emphasis on being compatible with existing character codes such as ASCII or ISO Latin 1. To avoid having two competing 16-bit standards, in 1992 the two teams compromised to define a common character code standard, known both as Unicode and BMP. Since the merger the character codes are the same but the two standards are not identical. The ISO/IEC standard covers only coding while Unicode includes additional specifications that help implementation. Unicode is not a glyph encoding. The same character can be displayed as a variety of glyphs, depending not only on the font and style, but also on the adjacent characters. A sequence of characters can be displayed as a single glyph or a character can be displayed as a sequence of glyphs. Which will be the case, is often font dependent.

Unicode Value [PDF-TECH] 2000-12-14
(a la Loretta)Unicode value or code point: The Unicode Consortium defined a set of sixteen-bit code points, 57709 of which are currently assigned and named Unicode Characters. The lowest 65536 code-points in ISO 10646-1 1993 are idential to the Unicode Standard and are sometimes called the Basic Multilingual Plane. See http://www.unicode.org

User [CC-PP] 2001-04-22
An individual or group of individuals acting as a single entity. The user is further qualified as an entity who uses a device to request content and/or resource from a server.

User [P3P10] 2001-02-27
An individual (or group of individuals acting as a single entity) on whose behalf a service is accessed and for which personal data exists.

User Agent [ATAG10]
A "user agent" is software that retrieves and renders Web content. User agents include browsers, plug-ins for a particular media type, and some assistive technologies.

User Agent [WCAG10] [WCAG20]
Software to access Web content, including desktop graphical browsers, text browsers, voice browsers, mobile phones, multimedia players, plug-ins, and some software assistive technologies used in conjunction with browsers such as screen readers, screen magnifiers, and voice recognition software.

User Agent [UAAG10] (Normative) 2003-03-05
In this document, the term "user agent" is used in two ways:

  1. The software and documentation components that together, conform to the requirements of this document. This is the most common use of the term in this document and is the usage in the checkpoints.
  2. Any software that retrieves and renders Web content for users. This may include Web browsers, media players, plug-ins, and other programs — including assistive technologies — that help in retrieving and rendering Web content.


User Agent [P3P10] 2001-02-27
A program whose purpose is to mediate interactions with services on behalf of the user under the user's preferences. A user may have more than one user agent, and agents need not reside on the user's desktop, but any agent must be controlled by and act on behalf of only the user. The trust relationship between a user and his or her agent may be governed by constraints outside of P3P. For instance, an agent may be trusted as a part of the user's operating system or Web client, or as a part of the terms and conditions of an ISP or privacy proxy.

User Agent Default Styles [UAAG10] (Normative) 2003-03-05
User agent default styles are style property values applied in the absence of any author or user styles. Some markup languages specify a default rendering for documents in that markup language. Other specifications may not specify default styles.

Example: XML 1.0 [XML] does not specify default styles for XML documents. HTML 4 [HTML4] does not specify default styles for HTML documents, but the CSS 2 [CSS 2] specification suggests a sample default style sheet for HTML 4 based on current practice.



User Agent Profile [CC-PP] 2003-03-05
Capabilities and preference Information pertaining to the capabilities of the device, the operating and network environment, and users personal preferences for receiving content and/or resource.

User-centric2001-02-03 ISSUE
@@.

User Coordinate System, User Space [SVG10] 2001-02-02
In general, a coordinate system defines locations and distances on the current canvas. The current user coordinate system is the coordinate system that is currently active and which is used to define how coordinates and lengths are located and computed, respectively, on the current canvas. See coordinate system transformations.

User-Configurable Schedule [ATAG10] 2001-01-25
A "user-configurable schedule" allows the user to determine the type of prompts and alerts that are used, including when they are presented.

Example: a user may wish to include multiple images without being prompted for alternative information, and then provide the alternative information in a batch process, or may wish to be reminded each time they add an image. If the prompting is done on a user-configurable schedule they will be able to make that decision themselves. This technique allows a tool to suit the needs a wide range of authors.



User-initiated and User Agent-initiated [UAAG10] (Normative) 2001-02-03
User-initiated actions result from user input to the user agent. User Agent-initiated actions result from scripts, operating system conditions, or built-in user agent behavior.

User-initiated and User Agent-initiated [UAAG10] (Normative)
An action initiated by the user is one that results from user operation of the user interface. An action initiated by the user agent is one that results from the execution of a script (e.g., an event handler bound to an event not triggered through the user interface), from operating system conditions, or from built-in behavior.

User interface [UAAG10] (Normative) 2003-03-05
For the purposes of this document, user interface includes both:
  1. the user agent user interface, i.e., the controls (e.g., menus, buttons, prompts, and other components for input and output) and mechanisms (e.g., selection and focus) provided by the user agent ("out of the box") that are not created by content.
  2. the "content user interface," i.e., the enabled elements that are part of content, such as form controls, links, and applets.

The document distinguishes them only where required for clarity. For more information, see the section on requirements for content, for user agent features, or both.

The term "user interface control" refers to a component of the user agent user interface or the content user interface, distinguished where necessary.



User Name (/TU key) [PDF-TECH] 2001-01-08
Any interactive form field may contain the optional /TU entry in its dictionary. This entry, known as the user name or short description, is used to identify this field when generating an error message or naming the field to a screen reader.

Username/User Identity [WS-GLOSSARY] 2003-03-02
The unique identity for a user with a system.

User Styles [UAAG10]  (Normative)  2003-01-03
User styles are style property values that come from user interface settings, user style sheets, or other user interactions.

User Units,User Space [SVG10] 2001-02-02
A coordinate value or length expressed in user units represents a coordinate value or length in the current user coordinate system. Thus, 10 user units represents a length of 10 units in the current user coordinate system.



V

Variant [CC-PP] 2003-03-05
One of several possible representations of a data resource.

Variant Content [CC-PP] 2003-03-05
When the form/format of the content being sent depends on receiver's capabilities and/or preferences.

View [ATAG10]
Authoring tools may render the same content in a variety of ways; each rendering is called a "view." Some authoring tools will have several different types of view, and some allow views of several documents at once. For instance, one view may show raw markup, a second may show a structured tree, a third may show markup with rendered objects while a final view shows an example of how the document may appear if it were to be rendered by a particular browser. A typical way to distinguish views in a graphic environment is to place each in a separate window.

View, Viewport [UAAG10]  (Normative)  2003-01-03

The user agent renders content through one or more viewports. Viewports include windows, frames, pieces of paper, loudspeakers, and virtual magnifying glasses. A viewport may contain another viewport (e.g., nested frames). User agent user interface controls such as prompts, menus, and alerts are not viewports.

Graphical and tactile viewports have two spatial dimensions. A viewport may also have temporal dimensions, for instance when audio, speech, animations, and movies are rendered. When the dimensions (spatial or temporal) of rendered content exceed the dimensions of the viewport, the user agent provides mechanisms such as scroll bars and advance and rewind controls so that the user can access the rendered content "outside" the viewport.

Examples: when the user can only view a portion of a large document through a small graphical viewport, or when audio content has already been played.

When several viewports coexist, only one has the current focus at a given moment. This viewport is highlighted to make it stand out.

User agents may render the same content in a variety of ways; each rendering is called a view. For instance, a user agent may allow users to view an entire document or just a list of the document's headers. These are two different views of the document.

Viewport [SVG10] 2001-02-02
Is a rectangular region within the current canvas onto which graphics elements are to be rendered. See the discussion of the SVG viewport in the chapter on Coordinate Systems, Transformations and Units.

Viewport Coordinate System, Viewport Space [SVG10] 2001-02-02
In general, a coordinate system defines locations and distances on the current canvas. The viewport coordinate system is the coordinate system that is active at the start of processing of an 'svg' element, before processing the optional viewBox attribute. In the case of an SVG document fragment that is embedded within a parent document which uses CSS to manage its layout, then the viewport coordinate system will have the same orientation and lengths as in CSS, with the origin at the top-left on the viewport. See The initial viewport and Establishing a new viewport.

Viewport Units [SVG10] 2001-02-02
A coordinate value or length expressed in viewport units represents a coordinate value or length in the viewport coordinate system. Thus, 10 viewport units represents a length of 10 units in the viewport coordinate system.

Visual Disabilities [PWD-Use-Web] 2001-03-19


Visual Object [UAAG10] (Normative)
A visual object is output from a visual viewport. Visual objects include graphics, text, and visual portions of movies and animations.

Visual-only Presentation [UAAG10]  (Normative)  2003-01-03
A visual-only presentation is content consisting exclusively of one or more visual tracks presented concurrently or in series. A silent movie is an example of a visual-only presentation.

Visual Track [UAAG10]  (Normative)  2003-01-03
A visual object is content rendered through a graphical viewport. Visual objects include graphics, text, and visual portions of movies and other animations. A visual track is a visual object that is intended as a whole or partial presentation. A visual track does not necessarily correspond to a single physical object or software object.

Vocabulary [CC-PP] 2001-04-15
A collection of attributes that adequately describe the CC-PP. A vocabulary is associated with a schema.

Voice Browser [UAAG10]  (Normative)  2003-01-03
From "Introduction and Overview of W3C Speech Interface Framework" VOICEBROWSER: "A voice browser is a device (hardware and software) that interprets voice markup languages to generate voice output, interpret voice input, and possibly accept and produce other modalities of input and output."

Voice Browser [SSML10] 2003-03-04
A device which interprets a (voice) markup language and is capable of generating voice output and/or interpreting voice input, and possibly other input/output modalities.

Voice Browser [PWD-Use-Web] 2001-03-18
An assistive technology device. Voice browsers are systems which allow voice-driven navigation, some with both voice-input and voice-output, and some allowing telephone-based Web access.



W

Web Browsers (for Non-Visual Output) 2001-10-12 RNIB Devices for blind and the partially sighted. Glossary
Blind and partially sighted people will use one of three possible methods to read pages on the World Wide Web. Users with some sight can use screen magnification software. For users with little or no useful sight the options are Speech Synthesizers or sound card to convert text into speech or a refreshable braille display to convert text into braille.
eReader - CAST
@@

Web Resource [UAAG10]  (Normative)  2003-01-03
The term "Web resource" is used in this document in accordance with Web Characterization Terminology and Definitions Sheet [WEBCHAR] to mean anything that can be identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI); refer to RFC 2396 [RFC2396]

Web Services [Web Services Working Group?] 2002-02-27 ISSUE
@@

Web Services [WS-GLOSSARY] 2003-03-02
  1. A Web service is a software system identified by a URI [RFC 2396], whose public interfaces and bindings are defined and described using XML. Its definition can be discovered by other software systems. These systems may then interact with the Web service in a manner prescribed by its definition, using XML based messages conveyed by Internet protocols.
  2. A collection of EndPoints.


Web Site [WS-GLOSSARY] 2003-03-02
A collection of interlinked Web pages, including a host page, residing at the same network location.

Whiteboard [ATAG10] 2002-02-27 IMS ISSUE
@@

Wizard [ATAG10] 2002-02-27 ISSUE
@@

Word Breaks [PDF-TECH] 2001-01-08
Applications divide the text of a page into words; word breaks are the points in the text stream that separate adjoining words. Different applications may use different rules for defining words.

Example: One application may consider everything between white space characters to be a word. Another application may not include leading or trailing punctuation as part of a word.





X

XML Schema 2001-04-24 a la Al Gilman. This is NOT the def, just his ideas.......


  1. "XML Schema" -- for recurring use in a document which refers to it a lot; I will even use just 'Schema' with a capital S where there are only two choices, the general meaning and the specific meaning indicated [more surely] by b) and c) following.
  2. W3C XML Schema language -- for occasional reference in a document that doesn't refer often.

  3. A language defined by the W3C for writing schemas which are both in and about XML, see
    <a href="http://www.w3.org/XML/Schema">http://www.w3.org/XML/Schema</a>.




Y




Z






7. Abbreviations / Acronyms

AAATE
Association for the Advancement of Assistive Technology (Europe)
AAC
Augmentative and Alternative Communication
ABM
Asynchronous Balances Mode (HDLC)
ABP
Action for Blind People
ACC
Austrian CCITT Comittee
ACCC
Australian Competition and Consumer Commission
ACCESS
Development Platform for Unified Access to Enabling Environments (TIDE Project)
ACD
Automatic Call Distribution
ACEC
Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce
AceS
Asia Cellular Satellite
ACITS
Advisory Committee for Information Technology Standardisation (SOG-IT)
ACM
Association for Computing Machinery
ACTE
Approvals Committee for Terminal Equipment (European Community, European Commissions)
ACTS
Advanced Communications Technologies and Services
ADA
Americans with Disabilities Act
ADC
Analogue Digital Converter
ADD
Attention Deficit Disorder
ADHD
Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder
ADL
Activities of Daily Living
ADPCM
Adaptive Differential Pulse Code Modulation
ASR
Automated Speech Recognition





8. References

Access Board
The United States Access Board.
AT1998
The Assistive Technology Act of 1998.
ATAG10
"Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 1.0" J. Treviranus, C. McCathieNevile, I. Jacobs, and J. Richards, eds., 3 February 2000. This W3C Recommendation is http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-ATAG10-20000203/.
ATAG10-TECHS
"Techniques for Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 1.0" J. Treviranus, C. McCathieNevile, J. Richards, eds., 29 Oct 2002. This W3C Note is http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/NOTE-ATAG10-TECHS-20021029/.
ATAG-Wombat
"Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines "Wombat" J. Treviranus, C. McCathieNevile, J. Richards, eds., 21 December 2001. This W3C Working Draft is http://www.w3.org/TR/ATAG-wombat/.
CC-PP
"Composite Capability/Preference Profiles (CC/PP): Structure and Vocabularies" G. Klyne, F. Reynolds, C. Woodrow, H. Ohto, M. H. Butler, eds., 08 November 2002. This W3C Working Draft is http://www.w3.org/TR/CCPP-struct-vocab/.
CHARMOD
"Character Model for the World Wide Web" M. Dürst and F. Yergeau, eds., 30 April 2002. This W3C Working Draft is http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-charmod-20020430/. The latest version is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/charmod/.
CSS10
"Cascading Style Sheets (CSS1) Level 1 Specification" B. Bos, H. Wium Lie, eds., 17 December 1996, revised 11 January 1999. This W3C Recommendation is http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-CSS1-19990111.
CSS20
"Cascading Style Sheets, level 2 (CSS2) Specification" B. Bos, H. Wium Lie, C. Lilley, and I. Jacobs, eds., 12 May 1998. This W3C Recommendation is http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-CSS2-19980512/.
DAISY
"The Daisy Consortium"
DIP
Device Independence Principles, W3C Working Draft 18 September 2001
For latest version see: http://www.w3.org/TR/di-princ/
DOM2HTML
"Document Object Model (DOM) Level 2 HTML Specification" J. Stenback, P. Le Hégaret, A. Le Hors, eds., 8 November 2002. This W3C Proposed Recommendation is http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/PR-DOM-Level-2-HTML-20021108/. The latest version is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-2-HTML/.
DOM2CORE
"Document Object Model (DOM) Level 2 Core Specification" A. Le Hors, P. Le Hégaret, L. Wood, G. Nicol, J. Robie, M. Champion, S. Byrne, eds., 13 November 2000. This W3C Recommendation is http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-DOM-Level-2-Core-20001113/.
DOM2STYLE
"Document Object Model (DOM) Level 2 Style Specification" V. Apparao, P. Le Hégaret, C. Wilson, eds., 13 November 2000. This W3C Recommendation is http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-DOM-Level-2-Style-20001113/.
Dublin Core
"Dublin-Core"
HFES
Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (See http://fixthis.org.)
High-Tech Computer User High-Tech Dictionary
"Computer User High-Tech Dictionary"
HTML4
"HTML 4.01 Recommendation" D. Raggett, A. Le Hors, and I. Jacobs, eds., 24 December 1999. This W3C Recommendation is http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/.
iCAN
"iCAN"
IMS
"IMS"
INFOSET
"XML Information Set" J. Cowan and R. Tobin, eds., 24 October 2001. This W3C Recommendation is http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/REC-xml-infoset-20011024/.
MATHML20
"Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) Version 2.0" D. Carlisle, P. Ion, R. Miner, N. Poppelier, et al., 21 February 2001. This W3C Recommendation is http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/REC-MathML2-20010221/.
P3P
"The Platform for Privacy Preferences 1.0 (P3P1.0) Specification", See W3C Recommendation http://www.w3.org/TR/P3P/
PDF-TECH
"PDF Techniques for WCAG 2.0". L. Guarino Reid, K. Haritos-Shea, W. Chisholm, eds., 13 September 2001. (See http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/WCAG-PDF-TECHS-20010913/)
PNG
"PNG (Portable Network Graphics) Specification 1.0" T. Boutell, ed., 1 October 1996. This W3C Recommendation is http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-png.
PWD-Use-Web
"How People with Disabilities Use the Web" Judy Brewer, editor, 4 January 2001. This is a W3C Working Draft, http://www.w3.org/WAI/EO/Drafts/PWD-Use-Web/.
RDF10
"Resource Description Framework (RDF) Model and Syntax Specification" O. Lassila, R. Swick, eds., 22 February 1999. This W3C Recommendation is http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-rdf-syntax-19990222/.
RFC2046
"Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Part Two: Media Types" N. Freed, N. Borenstein, November 1996.
RFC2119
"Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels" S. Bradner, March 1997.
RFC2396
"Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax" T. Berners-Lee, R. Fielding, L. Masinter, August 1998.
RFC2616
"Hypertext Transfer Protocol — HTTP/1.1" J. Gettys, J. Mogul, H. Frystyk, L. Masinter, P. Leach, T. Berners-Lee, June 1999.
RFC2828
"Internet Security Glossary" R. Shirey, May 2000.
RFC3023
"XML Media Types" M. Murata, S. St. Laurent, D. Kohn, January 2001.
SMIL10
"Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL) 1.0 Specification" P. Hoschka, ed., 15 June 1998. This W3C Recommendation is http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-smil-19980615/.
SMIL20
"Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL 2.0) Specification" J. Ayars, et al., eds., 7 August 2001. This W3C Recommendation is http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/REC-smil20-20010807/.
SSML10
"Speech Synthesis Markup Language Version 1.0" D. C. Burnett, M. R. Walker, A. Hunt, eds., 02 December 2002. This W3C Working Draft is http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-synthesis/.
SVG10
"Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.0 Specification" J. Ferraiolo, ed., 4 September 2001. This W3C Recommendation is http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/REC-SVG-20010904/.
UAAG10
"User Agent Accessibility Guidelines 1.0" I. Jacobs, J. Gunderson, Eric Hansen, eds., 17 December 2002. This W3C Recommendation is http://www.w3.org/TR/UAAG10/.
UAAG10-CHECKLIST
An appendix to this document lists all of the checkpoints, sorted by priority. The checklist is available in either tabular form or list form.
UAAG10-ICONS
Information about UAAG 1.0 conformance icons and their usage is available at http://www.w3.org/WAI/UAAG10-Conformance.
UAAG10-SUMMARY
An appendix to this document provides a summary of the goals and structure of User Agent Accessibility Guidelines 1.0.
UAAG10-TECHS
"Techniques for User Agent Accessibility Guidelines 1.0" I. Jacobs, J. Gunderson, E. Hansen, eds. The latest draft of the techniques document is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/UAAG10-TECHS/.
UNICODE
"The Unicode Standard, Version 3.2." This technical report of the Unicode Consortium is available at http://www.unicode.org/unicode/reports/tr28/. This is a revision of "The Unicode Standard, Version 3.0," The Unicode Consortium, Addison-Wesley Developers Press, 2000. ISBN 0-201-61633-5. Refer also to http://www.unicode.org/unicode/standard/versions/. For information about character encodings, refer to Unicode Technical Report #17 "Character Encoding Model".
VOICEBROWSER
"Introduction and Overview of W3C Speech Interface Framework" J. Larson, 4 December 2000. This W3C Working Draft is http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/WD-voice-intro-20001204/. The latest version is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/voice-intro/. This document includes references to additional W3C specifications about voice browser technology.
W3CPROCESS
"World Wide Web Consortium Process Document" I. Jacobs ed. The 19 July 2001 version of the Process Document is http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Process-20010719/. The latest version is available at http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Process/.
WEAVING
Glossary from "Weaving the Web" by Tim Berners-Lee (See http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/Weaving/glossary.html.)
WEBCHAR
"Web Characterization Terminology and Definitions Sheet" B. Lavoie, H. F. Nielsen, eds., 24 May 1999. This is a W3C Working Draft that defines some terms to establish a common understanding about key Web concepts. This W3C Working Draft is http://www.w3.org/1999/05/WCA-terms/01.
WCAG10
"Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0" W. Chisholm, G. Vanderheiden, and I. Jacobs, eds., 5 May 1999. This W3C Recommendation is http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/WAI-WEBCONTENT-19990505/.
WCAG20
"Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0" Ben Caldwell, W. Chisholm, J. White, G. Vanderheiden,, eds., 8 January 2003. This W3C Working Draft is at http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/WCAG20/.
WCAG10-TECHS
"Techniques for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0" W. Chisholm, G. Vanderheiden, and I. Jacobs, eds., 6 November 2000. This W3C Note is http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/NOTE-WCAG10-TECHS-20001106/. The latest version is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10-TECHS/. Additional format-specific techniques documents are available from this Note.
WHO
World Health Organization (See http://www.who.org)
WS-GLOSSARY
Web Services Glossary, A. Brown, H. Haas, eds., W3C Working Draft 14 November 2002 (See http://www.w3.org/TR/ws-gloss/)
XAG10
"XML Accessibility Guidelines 1.0" D. Dardailler, S. Palmer, C. McCathieNevile, eds., 3 October 2001. This W3C Working Draft is http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-xag-20021003. The latest version is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/xag.
XFORMS10
"XForms 1.0" D. Dardailler, S. Palmer, C. McCathieNevile, eds., 12 November 2002. W3C Candidate Recommendation is http://www.w3.org/TR/xforms/.
XHTML10
"XHTMLtm 1.0: The Extensible HyperText Markup Language" S. Pemberton, et al., 26 January 2000. This W3C Recommendation is http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-xhtml1-20000126/.
XHTML Basic
XML
"Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (Second Edition)" T. Bray, J. Paoli, C.M. Sperberg-McQueen, eds., 6 October 2000. This W3C Recommendation is http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-xml-20001006.
XMLDSIG
"XML-Signature Syntax and Processing" D. Eastlake, J. Reagle, D. Solo, eds., 12 February 2002. This W3C Recommendation is http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/REC-xmldsig-core-20020212/.
XMLENC
"XML Encryption Syntax and Processing" D. Eastlake, J. Reagle, eds., 10 December 2002. This W3C Recommendation is http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/REC-xmlenc-core-20021210/.
XSLT10
"XSL Transformations (XSLT) Version 1.0" J. Clark, ed., 16 November 1999. This W3C Recommendation is http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt.
XSLT20
"XSL Transformations (XSLT) Version 2.0" M. Kay, ed., 15 November 2002. This W3C Working Draft is http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt20/.




This WAI Glossary is dedicated to the Memory of Len Kasday



Editors:
Katie Haritos-Shea , Charles McCathieNevile


For corrections and updates, please contact Katie Haritos-Shea
Comments about this WAI Glossary may be viewed at wai-xtech@w3.org



Last Updated:
$Date: 2003/03/07 15:41:51 $

by: Katie Haritos-Shea or Charles McCathieNevile


Copyright ©1999-2002 W3C (MIT, INRIA,Keio), All Rights Reserved. W3C liability, trademark,document use and software licensing rules apply.