Glossary

Learn the language of web accessibility and development.

a11y - Accessibility: Short for accessibility, where the 11 represents the 11 letters between 'a' and 'y'. Ensures products are usable by people with disabilities.
Alt Text: Alternative text that describes the appearance and function of an image on a webpage. Essential for making images accessible to screen reader users and when images fail to load.
API Testing: Testing application programming interfaces (APIs) to ensure they perform as expected in terms of functionality, reliability, and security.
ARIA: Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) is a set of attributes that define ways to make web content and applications more accessible to people with disabilities who use assistive technologies.
CD - Continuous Delivery/Deployment: The process of automatically delivering or deploying code to production after passing tests.
CI - Continuous Integration: A development practice where code changes are automatically built and tested to identify issues early.
Code Coverage: A metric that indicates the percentage of the codebase executed during automated tests.
Color Contrast: The difference in brightness and color between text and its background. WCAG guidelines require specific contrast ratios to ensure content is readable by people with visual impairments.
E2E: End-to-End testing is a methodology that tests the complete functionality of an application from start to finish, simulating real user scenarios across all integrated components.
Exploratory Testing: An informal testing approach where testers actively explore the software without pre-defined test cases.
Focus Management: The practice of controlling and managing keyboard focus in web applications, ensuring users can navigate efficiently and understand their current position on the page.
Keyboard Navigation: The ability to access and interact with all webpage elements using only a keyboard. Essential for users who cannot use a mouse, including people with motor disabilities and power users.
l10n: l10n is a numeronym for localization. It is a shorthand way of writing the word localization. The number 10 represents the number of letters between the first and last letter in the word.
Mocking: The process of simulating objects, functions, or modules during testing to isolate and test specific behaviors.
QA - Quality Assurance: The process of ensuring software meets specified standards and requirements through systematic activities like planning, testing, and monitoring.
QC -Quality Control: Focused on identifying defects in the product by executing test cases and reviewing the product's functionality.
Regression Testing: Testing to ensure new code changes do not negatively affect existing functionality.
Screen Reader: Software that reads digital content aloud, enabling people with visual impairments to use computers and mobile devices. Common examples include NVDA, JAWS, and VoiceOver.
Semantic HTML: HTML elements that carry meaning about their content structure and purpose, such as <nav>, <main>, <article>, and <footer>. Essential for accessibility as they provide context to assistive technologies.
Unit Testing: Testing individual components or functions in isolation to ensure they work correctly. The foundation of the testing pyramid, providing fast feedback and catching issues early.
WAI: WAI is the Web Accessibility Initiative. It is an initiative by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to make the web accessible to people with disabilities.
WAI-ARIA: WAI-ARIA is the Web Accessibility Initiative Accessible Rich Internet Applications. It is a technical specification by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to make web applications accessible to people with disabilities.
WCAG: WCAG is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. It is a technical specification by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to make web content accessible to people with disabilities.