Glossary of LNOB Terms

Accessibility – Openness, the quality of being approachable, available in practice. The term also describes the ability to comprehend the language of a service or activity, and the distance between service or activity and potential users due to various resources such as time and money. (Porta, 2023).

Consent – Agreement by choice, made freely without duress or deception, and with sufficient capacity and legal competence to give it. (Law, 2022).

Bias – A conscious or unconscious attitude towards people or the interpretation of a phenomenon that can lead to (positive or negative) prejudice, discrimination, and/or representation. (Chandler & Munday, 2020).

Diversity – The existence of variations of different characteristics in a group of people. These characteristics could be anything that makes us unique, such as our cognitive skills and personality traits, along with the things that shape our identity (e.g. race, age, gender, religion, sexual orientation, cultural background). (Hinsenkamp et al., 2020).

Digital Literacy – Having the skills necessary to access information and participate online such as using a computer keyboard, navigating to a website, or using a search engine. (McArthur et al., 2018).

Disability – An umbrella term covering impairments, activity limitations, and participation restrictions that are not just related to health but are also complex reflections of the interaction between features of a person’s body, and features of the society in which he or she lives. Walking, seeing, hearing and cognition are all considered essential in determining disability. (Hinsenkamp et al., 2020).

Dis/ability – A term used by dis/ability studies academics and activists to counter the word ‘disability’ (spelled without the slash). Some argue that the use of the term ‘disability’ (spelled without the slash) suggests that a person is represented, or identified, by what they cannot do, rather than what they can do; and it ignores the various individual and collective processes that intersect with disability. (Goodley, 2018).

Discrimination – In its most current use, it refers to the differentiation between people based on gender, colour, sexuality, dis/ability or class. (Rai, 2018).

Empowerment – To increase the ability of an individual or community to do things for themselves. (Park & Allaby, 2017).

Engagement – Forms of one-way or two-way information exchange between stakeholders and researchers/innovators. This may include forms of communication, consultation, or participation. (Giannelos et al., 2021)

Environmental equity (environmental justice) – The extent to which all groups of people in a region or country (regardless of race, ethnicity, economic status, or income) receive equal treatment and protection under environmental statutes, regulations, and practices. (Park & Allaby, 2017).

Ethics – The philosophical study of moral values and rules, that inform decisions about wrong and right. (Park & Allaby, 2017).

Ethnicity – The term ethnicity was coined in contradistinction to race, which is often seen in biological terms. Members of an ethnic group may be identifiable in terms of racial attributes, but they may also share other cultural characteristics such as religion, occupation, language, or politics. Individuals who consider themselves, or are considered by others, to share common cultural characteristics that differentiate them from the other collectivities in a society, and from which they develop their distinctive behaviour, form an ethnic group. (Scott, 2014).

Exclusion – A process by which individuals or households experience deprivation, either of resources (such as income), or of social links to the wider community or society. (Scott, 2014).

Equity – Fairness arising from the equal use and allocation of resources. (Park & Allaby, 2017).

Equality – The state of being the same in terms of quantity, value, or status. (Park & Allaby, 2017).

Feminism – The view that women and men should be treated equally and the advocacy of women’s rights. Feminism encompasses a wide range of political and social movements, theories, and positions which share the focus on women and women’s rights from diverse perspectives. (Griffin, 2017).

Gender – Gender refers to the characteristics of woman, man, or other identities that are socially constructed. This includes norms, behaviours and roles associated with being a woman, man, or non-binary gender identities, as well as relationships with each other. As a social construct, gender varies from society to society and can change over time. Gender interacts with but is different from sex, which refers to the different biological and physiological characteristics of females, males and intersex persons, such as chromosomes, hormones and reproductive organs. Gender and sex are related to but different from gender identity. Gender identity refers to a person’s deeply felt, internal, and individual experience of gender, which may or may not correspond to the person’s physiology or designated sex at birth. (WHO, n.d.).

Inclusion – The action or state of including or of being included within a group or structure. (Mayhew, 2015).

Intersectionality – A perspective of power relationships that considers the various social variables (such as sex, age, ethnicity, dis/ability, immigration status, nationality, and physical/mental/emotional conditions) that have an effect on individuals’ spheres of influence, perceptions, and actions. (Kuran et al., 2020).

Justice – Fairness, the quality of being fair or just. (Park & Allaby, 2017)

Representation – The substitution of an individual or class in place of a person (such as a sibling of a severely ill person who is not able to express her/his own preferences). Representation needs to be fair, but the precise meaning of fairness is context dependent. This may mean that some contexts require additional efforts to include particular stakeholders. (Giannelos et al., 2021)

Social exclusion – Exclusion from the prevailing social system and its rights and privileges, typically as a result of poverty or the fact of belonging to a minority social group. (Hinsenkamp et al., 2020).

Socio-economic groups – Different groups of persons where the members of a particular group are, on the one hand, reasonably homogeneous and, on the other hand, fairly clearly distinguished from members of other groups in respect of their social, economic, demographic and/or cultural circumstances and behaviours. (Hinsenkamp et al., 2020).

Socio-economic status (SES) – An economic and sociological combined total measure of a person's work experience and of an individual's or family's economic and social position in relation to others. When analysing a family's SES, the household income, earners' education, and occupation are examined, as well as combined income, whereas for an individual's SES only their own attributes are assessed. (Hinsenkamp et al., 2020).

Vulnerability – the susceptibility of suffering risk and damage due to relative disadvantage that is the result of an intersection between different factors such as social class, race, gender, sexual identity, age, and disability among others. Vulnerability is not a static condition, nor will it be the same to all members of a social group. Finally, it is important to note that social vulnerability is not a natural condition but the result of systemic inequalities and oppression. (Kaijser & Kronsell, 2014; Kuran et al., 2020; Tierney, 2019)