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Assistive Technology

Assistive technology refers to tooling that disabled people use to more easily navigate the world. The term assistive technology is sometimes abbreviated AT, though this can, in some contexts, refer to accessibility trees instead.

While the term is most often used to refer to tooling that was specifically designed for disabled people to use, such as screenreaders or wheelchairs, in its broadest sense, assistive technology can refer to just about anything that makes disabled people’s day-to-day lives easier regardless of the intention behind the design. For instance, password managers might not have been designed with disabled people in mind specifically, but the fact that they help mitigate strained memory or help people skip past potentially cumbersome typing, alleviating pain points that disabled people in particular might face when setting up secure passwords, means that password managers could very well be considered assistive technologies for some people.

In computing, assistive technologies come in several flavors:

  • Software, such as screen magnifiers, screenreaders, or closed captions
  • Peripheral hardware, such as keyboards, joysticks, or refreshable braille displays
  • Hybrids that combine software and hardware, like eye-tracking.

Sometimes, assistive technologies are a bring-your-own affair, such as when people use their screenreaders on a site. Other times, the assistive technology will be supplied by the user experience itself, such as captions for video content.