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Accessibility |
As specified in Section 508 of the 1998 Rehabilitation
Act, the process of designing and developing Web sites and
other technology that can be navigated and understood by all
people, including those with visual, hearing, motor, or
cognitive impairments. This type of design also can benefit
people with older/slower software and hardware. |
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Acrobat |
A set of programs from Adobe:
Acrobat Exchange is
used for converting documents into PDF (portable document
format) files
Acrobat Reader is used for viewing and printing PDF
formatted files. |
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ADA |
The Americans with Disabilities Act; wide-ranging
legislation intended to make society more accessible to
people with disabilities. As web-based information continues
to diversify, it is increasingly important that web pages be
designed with consideration for different types of access.
Recommendations for universally accessible design can be
found at the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST)
web site at http://www.cast.org. |
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Banner |
A graphic file running across the top width of a web
page. |
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Case-Sensitive |
A case-sensitive restriction means lower-case letters
are not equivalent to the same letters in upper-case.
Example: “cat” is not recognized as being the same word as
“Cat” or “CAT”. |
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Decompress |
Opposite of compressing a file; the process of restoring
the file to its original size and format. |
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Digitize |
Sometimes referred to as digital imaging; the act of
translating an image, a sound, or a video clip into digital
format for use on a computer. All data a computer
processes must be digitally encoded as a series of zeroes
and ones. |
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Download |
The process of transferring one or more files from
a remote computer to your local computer. The opposite
action is upload. |
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DPI: |
Dots per inch; a measure of a printer’s resolution. The
higher the number, the better the print quality. A minimum
of 300 dpi usually is required for professional-looking
results. |
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Extension |
A suffix preceded by a period at the end of a filename;
used to describe the file type. |
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Font |
A complete assortment of letters, numbers, and symbols
of a specific size and design. There are hundreds of
different fonts ranging from businesslike type styles to
fonts composed only of special characters such as math
symbols or miniature graphics. |
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Header |
The portion of an e-mail message or a network newsgroup
posting that precedes the body of the message; it contains
information like who the message is from, its subject, and
the date. A header also is the portion of a packet that
proceeds the actual data and contains additional information
the receiver will need. |
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Icon |
a small picture or symbol that represents some object or
function. |
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Image map |
A graphic overlay that contains more than one area (or
hot spot) which is clickable and links to another web page
or anchor. Image maps provide an alternative to text links
for directing the user to additional information. |
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Justified: |
A word processing format in which text is formatted flush
with both the left and right margins. Other options include
left justified (text is lined up against the left margin)
and right justified (text is lined up against the right
margin). |
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Kerning |
The amount of space between characters
in a word.
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Laser Printer |
A type of printer that produces exceptionally high quality
copies. It works on the same principle as a photocopier,
placing a black powder onto paper by using static charge on
a rolling drum. |
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Leading |
The vertical space between lines of text on a page; in
desktop publishing, you can adjust the leading to make text
easier to read. |
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Multimedia |
The delivery of information
in a combination of different formats including text,
graphics, animation, audio, and video. |
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OCR |
Optical character recognition; the act of using a visual
scanning device to read text from hard copy and translate it
into a format a computer can access (e.g., an ASCII file).
OCR systems include an optical scanner for reading text and
sophisticated software for analyzing images. |
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Palette |
A display box containing sets of
colors, patterns, styles, or tools within a desktop publishing or graphics design
program. Also refers to the range of colors a computer or an application is able to
display. Most computers can display as many as 16
million colors, but a given program may use only 256 of
them. |
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Pixel |
Stands for one picture element (one dot on a computer
monitor); commonly used as a unit of measurement. |
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Plug-in |
A program used for viewing multimedia files that your web
browser cannot handle internally; files using a plug-in do
not need to be moved to your computer before being shown or
played. Contrast to a helper application which requires the
file to first be moved to your computer. Example of
plug-in: RealAudio (for streamed files over the Internet). |
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PostScript |
A page description language primarily
used for printing documents on laser printers; it is the
standard for desktop publishing because it takes advantage
of high resolution output devices. |
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PostScript Fonts: |
Called outline or scalable fonts; with a single typeface
definition, a PostScript printer can produce many other
fonts. Contrast to non-PostScript printers that represent
fonts with bitmaps and require a complete set for each font
size. |
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Public Domain |
Non-copyrighted material which may be
used without violating copyright restrictions. |
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Raster |
Also referred to as
bitmap images. Raster images are made up from a
sequence of pixels (picture elements) or dots. There are
many different raster image formats such as; GIF, JPEG, PCX,
and TIFF. |
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RGB |
Red, green, and blue; the primary colors that are mixed to
display the color of pixels on a computer monitor. Every
color of emitted light can be created by combining these
three colors in varying levels. |
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Table |
A method for formatting
information on a web page. Use of tables and the cells within provide a way to create columns of text. Use of tables
vs. frames is recommended for helping to make your web site
ADA-compliant. |
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TrueType |
A technology for outline fonts that is built into all
Windows and Macintosh operating systems. Outline fonts are
scalable enabling a display device to generate a character
at any size based on a geometrical description. |
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Vector |
Computer-aided design (CAD) programs
and drawing applications such as Adobe Illustrator produce
vector graphics. Vector graphics scale up or down easily
without looking blocky or pixilated because
they are described by curves and algorithms (as opposed
to individual pixels which are bitmap or raster images.) |
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Zoom |
The act of enlarging a portion of an onscreen image for fine
detail work; most graphics programs have this capability. |
