Refers to the ability or lack thereof of a population to information which will enhance the quality of life, justice, equality or opportunity. This term is used to describe issues related to infrastructure, censorship, transparency or inclusion. Improving access to information is one of the central goals of Information Society.

While accessibility is a wide concept, e-Accessibility deals mainly with aspects linked to the Information Society. e-Accessibility is one of the focuses of e-Inclusion. All citizens have the right to benefit from new opportunities that the Information Society offers. People with disabilities and older persons sometimes experience difficulties in accessing these new technologies and services, as some barriers can be inadvertently created by the Information Society itself. Accessibility problems can also be created by specific environment or social conditions. On the other hand, Information Technologies and Services can greatly help overcome other environmental or social barriers, encountered by people with disabilities and older persons. Accessibility problems concern specifically persons with disabilities and older people, but also anybody in specific environmental or social situations. Solutions to overcome these issues are therefore very wide and can be grouped in 2 categories: Mainstreaming Accessibility in goods & services, in particular through Design for All; Developing up-to-date Assistive Technologies.

Like spyware, this is software that installs itself on another computer without the owner’s knowledge, and in certain situations places advertisements on the screen.

The amount of information that can be sent through a connection (usually measured in bits-per-second). Bandwidth is the range between the highest and lowest frequencies on a channel; more commonly, the amount of data that can flow through a channel at the same time. In either case, the capacity of a telecommunications channel is measured by its bandwidth.

In information technology, biometric authentication refers to technologies that measure and analyze human physical and behavioral characteristics for authentication purposes. Examples of physical characteristics include fingerprints, eye retinas and irises, facial patterns and hand measurements, while examples of mostly behavioral characteristics include signature, gait and typing patterns. Voice is considered a mix of both physical and behavioral characteristics.

Short for Web log, a blog is a Web page that serves as a publicly accessible personal journal for an individual. Many bloggers differentiate themselves from the mainstream media, while others are members of that media working through a different channel. Some institutions see blogging as a means of "getting around the filter" and pushing messages directly to the public.

Short for Web browser, software used to locate and display Web pages. Most can display graphics and text as well as present multimedia information including sound and video.

The editing, removing, or otherwise changing speech and other forms of human expression. In some cases, it is exercised by governing bodies but it is always and continuously carried out by the mass media. The visible motive of censorship is often to stabilize, improve or persuade the society group that the censoring organization would have control over. It is most commonly applied to acts that occur in public circumstances, and most formally involves the suppression of ideas by criminalizing or regulating expression. Furthermore, discussion of censorship often includes less formal means of controlling perceptions by excluding various ideas from mass communication. What is censored may range from specific words to entire concepts and it may be influenced by value systems; common reasons for censoring ("omitting") information are the particular interests of the distribution companies of news and entertainment, their owners, and their commercial and political connections.

The traditional way of information or electrical flow, where cutting the circuit means the end of the flow. Different from packet switching, where the information is divided up and sent in individual packets, which can find alternative routes to their destination if one route is blocked or cut.

The Creative Commons enables copyright holders to grant some of their rights to the public while retaining others through a variety of licensing and contract schemes including dedication to the public domain or open content licensing terms. The intention is to avoid the problems current copyright laws create for the sharing of information.

Citizen Media, Participatory Media, or Democratic Media refers to any form of content produced by private citizens, which has as its goal to inform and empower all members of society. This includes inclusive production models such as public access, community technology centers, digital storytelling, e-democracy, citizen journalism, zines, Independent Media Centers, blogs, vlogs (video blogs), and podcasting (audio blogs).

With the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the international community recognized the inherent dignity of all members of the human family by providing everyone with equal and inalienable rights. Communication rights are based on a vision of the free flow of information and ideas which is interactive, egalitarian and non-discriminatory and driven by human needs, rather than commercial or political interests. These rights represent people’s claim to freedom, inclusiveness, diversity and participation in the communication process.

Viruses are small files that attach to e-mails or downloaded files and infect your computer. They can be harmless (they can place a funny picture on your monitor) or dangerous (they can go through your address book and send everyone within your address book the same virus). More dangerous viruses can wipe out your computer and all your information. Some viruses can take over your machine and send spam from your computer. Without your knowledge, you can become a spammer.

Defining consumer rights, drafting appropriate legislation, education and communication programs.

Connectivity is the ability to 'connect'. Connecting to the wider network of society involves the negotiation of many barriers. It involves social issues such as the digital divide. But connectivity also implies other technical factors such as the compatibility of computer systems, network connections and having the correct software.

Convergence is the principle that the various public media, such as radio, TV, the print media, CD players, stereos, video recorders, telephones and the Internet, are all coming together to form one information channel. It seems likely that a single, versatile “information appliance” will become widely available. Convergence of media and technology is significant because it could make those who control it quite powerful. It will also redefine how civil society communicates through the media.

A message given to a web browser by a web server. The browser stores the message in a text file. The message is then sent back to the server each time the browser requests a page from the server. The main purpose of cookies is to identify users and possibly prepare customized web pages for them. Web sites use cookies for several different reasons: to collect demographic information about who is visiting the Web site; to personalize the user’s experience on the website, and to monitor advertisements. Any personal information that you give to a website, including credit card information, will most likely be stored in a cookie unless you have turned off the cookie feature in your browser.

The opposite of copyright, but it has a specific use in relation to Richard Stallman's GNU Public License. See open content for a fuller explanation.

A set of specific rights regulating content use, manipulation, and distribution that the law grants content creators, leaving all other rights to the public. A copyright is intellectual property protection granted to literary, musical and artistic works, including drawings, poems, films, written publications, and software.

The art of protecting information by transforming it (encrypting it) into an unreadable format, called cipher text. Only those who possess a secret key can decipher (or decrypt) the message into plain text. As the internet and other forms of electronic communication become more prevalent, electronic security is becoming increasingly important. Cryptography is used to protect email messages, credit card information, and corporate data. Cryptography systems can be broadly classified into symmetric-key systems that use a single key that both the sender and recipient have, and public-key systems that use two keys, a public key known to everyone and a private key that only the recipient of messages uses.