Digital Accessibility Glossary
Let's be honest: when you first dive into digital accessibility, the sheer number of acronyms can feel overwhelming. ARIA, RGAA, WCAG, a11y... it's like alphabet soup gone wrong. This glossary is here to help you make sense of it all, whether you're a developer, designer, PM, or someone who just got the "accessibility champion" title dropped on their desk.
A
a11y: the nerdy shorthand for "accessibility" (a + 11 letters + y). You'll see it everywhere on tech Twitter and at conferences. Once you know it, you can't unsee it.
Alt text: the text that describes an image or non-text content. It's the alt attribute on your images, or aria-label / aria-labelledby for more complex cases. Without it, a screen reader just says "image" and the user has no idea what they're missing.
ARIA (WAI-ARIA): Accessible Rich Internet Applications. Think of ARIA as a translator between your HTML and assistive tech. You add attributes (roles, properties, states) and suddenly screen readers understand what your component does. But here's the catch: bad ARIA is worse than no ARIA at all.
Audit: the process of evaluating a website against the 106 RGAA criteria. You can automate part of it (roughly 30-40%), but the rest needs a human with a keyboard and a screen reader. No shortcuts.
B-F
CAPTCHA: the thing that proves you're human... unless you're visually impaired, in which case it mostly proves the site didn't think about you. Classic visual CAPTCHAs are an accessibility nightmare. Use reCAPTCHA v3 or honeypots instead.
Contrast: the luminosity ratio between two colors. RGAA requires 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text. If your designer loves light gray on white, it's time for a chat.
EAA: the European Accessibility Act (Directive 2019/882). The game-changer for the private sector: since June 2025, digital products and services must be accessible too. Yes, this probably affects you.
Focus: the state of an HTML element when it's selected by keyboard. That blue outline when you Tab through a page? That's focus. And it must stay visible. Please remove that outline: none from your CSS.
Focus trap: a technique that keeps keyboard focus inside a component (typically a modal) to prevent users from navigating to hidden content behind it. Essential, but this one is often implemented wrong.
H-L
HTML semantics: this one's a favorite of mine. The idea is simple: use the right HTML elements for what they mean (header, nav, main, article) instead of building everything with div. A <button> instead of a <div onclick> makes all the difference for screen readers.
JAWS: Job Access With Speech. The commercial screen reader of reference on Windows. Widely used in enterprise, but expensive (around $1,000). It's the Photoshop of screen readers.
Label: the text label associated with a form field. Without a label, a screen reader doesn't know what the field is for. The user just hears "edit text" with no clue whether to type their name, email, or social security number.
Landmarks: the structural regions of a page (header, nav, main, footer, aside) that let screen readers jump quickly between sections. It's like an invisible table of contents for keyboard users.
Screen reader: software that reads screen content aloud or sends it to a braille display. The main ones: NVDA (Windows, free), VoiceOver (Mac/iOS, built-in), JAWS (Windows, paid), TalkBack (Android, built-in). If you've never tried one, do it. It will change the way you code.
N-Z
NVDA: NonVisual Desktop Access. The free, open-source screen reader for Windows. It's the one we recommend for starting your testing journey. No financial excuse not to do it.
RGAA: the French General Accessibility Improvement Framework. It translates WCAG into 106 testable criteria. Current version: 4.1. THE standard to know if you work on French websites.
Skip link: a link at the very top of the page that lets you jump straight to the main content. Keyboard users will thank you for not making them tab through 50 navigation links on every page.
VoiceOver: Apple's built-in screen reader on macOS and iOS. If you have a Mac, it's already installed. Activate it with Cmd+F5 and try navigating your own site. Brace yourself for some surprises.
WCAG: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. THE international recommendations for web accessibility. Published by the W3C, adopted into legislation worldwide. If you only remember one acronym from this glossary, make it this one.
This glossary is a living document, just like accessibility itself. Technologies evolve, standards get updated, and new terms pop up regularly. Bookmark it and come back often.