Glossary (A-Z)

Term	Definition
A11y	Accessibility (A11y is an abbreviation) Why is this shortened to a11y? (pronounced A-eleven-Y) Because there are 11 letters between A and Y in the word "accessibility" (crazy but true!) It's a pretty well-established term that's used much more in writing than in speech. Accessibility (A11y is an abbreviation) Why is this shortened to a11y? (pronounced A-eleven-Y) Because there are 11 letters between A and Y in the word "accessibility" (crazy but true!) It's a pretty well-established term that's used much more in writing than in speech.
BEM	A very common CSS naming convention, short for Block-Element__Modifier A very common CSS naming convention, short for Block-Element__Modifier
CMS	Content Management System Content Management System
CSS	Cascading Style Sheet Cascading Style Sheet
FED	Front End Development Front End Development
HTML	Hyper-Text Markup Language This is what gets rendered to the page, the document that makes up a website. Often referred to as just 'markup'. Hyper-Text Markup Language This is what gets rendered to the page, the document that makes up a website. Often referred to as just 'markup'.
JS	JavaScript JavaScript
MVP	Minimum Viable Product Minimum Viable Product
OS	Operating System Operating System
Sass / Scss	Syntactically Awesome Stylesheets Sass is a CSS extension language, a syntax to help us write CSS faster that includes loads of features like nesting, variable maps, functions and mixins. Scss is the most common version of the sass syntax (".scss" file types as opposed to ".sass"). It always has to be compiled (preprocessed) into CSS before it can work in the browser. It's very important to note that CSS written via scss/sass should look exactly the same as if you wrote vanilla styles. It is only meant to speed up development, not to create a different output. Syntactically Awesome Stylesheets Sass is a CSS extension language, a syntax to help us write CSS faster that includes loads of features like nesting, variable maps, functions and mixins. Scss is the most common version of the sass syntax (".scss" file types as opposed to ".sass"). It always has to be compiled (preprocessed) into CSS before it can work in the browser. It's very important to note that CSS written via scss/sass should look exactly the same as if you wrote vanilla styles. It is only meant to speed up development, not to create a different output.
WCAG	Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) These are the essential accessibility standards websites should meet. The WCAG standards have 12-13 guidelines. The guidelines are organized under 4 principles: perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. For each guideline, there are testable success criteria. The success criteria are at three levels: A, AA, and AAA. Most sites aim for a minimum conformance level of AA. The success criteria are what determine “conformance” to WCAG. That is, in order to meet WCAG, the content needs to meet the success criteria. Details are in the Conformance section of WCAG. Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) These are the essential accessibility standards websites should meet. The WCAG standards have 12-13 guidelines. The guidelines are organized under 4 principles: perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. For each guideline, there are testable success criteria. The success criteria are at three levels: A, AA, and AAA. Most sites aim for a minimum conformance level of AA. The success criteria are what determine “conformance” to WCAG. That is, in order to meet WCAG, the content needs to meet the success criteria. Details are in the Conformance section of WCAG.