Hardware and/or software that:
- relies on services provided by a user agent to retrieve and render Web content
- works with a user agent or web content itself through the use of APIs, and
- provides services beyond those offered by the user agent to facilitate user interaction with web content by people with disabilities
This definition may differ from that used in other documents.
Examples of assistive technologies that are important in the context of this document include the following:
- screen magnifiers, which are used to enlarge and improve the visual readability of rendered text and images;
- screen readers, which are most-often used to convey information through synthesized speech or a refreshable Braille display;
- text-to-speech software, which is used to convert text into synthetic speech;
- speech recognition software, which is used to allow spoken control and dictation;
- alternate input technologies (including head pointers, on-screen keyboards, single switches, and sip/puff devices), which are used to simulate the keyboard;
- alternate pointing devices, which are used to simulate mouse pointing and clicking.