“Independent User Interface (Indie UI) is a way for user actions to be communicated to web applications. Indie UI will make it easier for web applications to work in a wide range of contexts – different devices, different assistive technologies (AT), different user needs. For example, if a user wants to scroll down a page, they might use their finger on a touch screen, or click a scroll bar with a mouse, or use a scroll wheel, or say “scroll down” with a voice command. Indie UI will define a way for those different interactions to be translated into a simple event – scroll down. Indie UI will allow web application developers to get these events from different devices without having to recognize how the user performed the action. With Indie UI, AT will have a simple set of events to control web applications, and web application developers will have a uniform way to design applications that work for multiple devices and contexts.”

Link: Indie UI Overview (w3c.org)