device independence When you're developing a program, especially a game or multimedia title, the toughest element to deal with is the hardware that will run it. Complex animation, color-rich graphics, and video and sound can all clog up or choke because of conflicting hardware standards. Device independence is the developer's ideal: you develop your application and let the operating system and its device drivers figure out how to make the hardware handle it. At the very least, device independence requires hardware standards such as VGA and decent drivers. APIs and hardware abstraction layer standards are a more robust approach to device independence. See also: API, hardware abstraction layer