According to Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4, target 4.5 on inclusion and equity:

All people, irrespective of sex, age, race, colour, ethnicity, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property or birth, as well as persons with disabilities, migrants, indigenous peoples, and children and youth, especially those in vulnerable situations or other status, should have access to inclusive, equitable quality education and lifelong learning opportunities. Vulnerable groups that require particular attention and targeted strategies include persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples, ethnic minorities and the poor (SDG 4 High-Level Steering Committee Secretariat, no date).

Vulnerabilities have a dynamic dimension and can vary by place (Ainscow, 2005). Vulnerabilities can refer to poverty, ethnicity, disability and remoteness.

‘… many types of vulnerability are not outwardly apparent … making it impossible to distinguish neatly between students with and without disabilities or special needs’ (UNESCO, 2020a, p. 66).

Many countries identify specific groups as vulnerable in constitutions, social inclusion legislation, education legislation or documents directly related to inclusive education. The group most identified is people with disabilities, but women and girls, rural or remote populations and the poor are also commonly recognized. Few countries link recognition of specific groups with a mandate to collect data on their inclusion in education, however (UNESCO, 2020a, p. 67).

‘Characteristics that expose individuals to risk do not affect everybody the same way. For instance, life at the intersections of disability with race, class, gender, sexual orientation and gender identity expression is more than the sum of each vulnerability’ (UNESCO, 2020a, p. 73).

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) is developed through the W3C process in cooperation with individuals and organizations around the world, with a goal of providing a single shared standard for web content accessibility that meets the needs of individuals, organizations, and governments internationally (World Wide Web Consortium – W3C, 2012).

Web 2.0 refers to:

… web applications that facilitate interactive information sharing, interoperability, user-centred design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web. A Web 2.0 site gives its users the free choice to interact or collaborate with each other in a social media dialogue as creators of user-generated content in a virtual community, in contrast to websites where users (consumers) are limited to the passive viewing of content that was created for them. Examples of Web 2.0 include social-networking sites, blogs, wikis, video-sharing sites, hosted services, web applications … (Wikipedia, 2010).

The term ‘Web 2.0’ can be traced back to Tom O’Reilly and the O’Reilly Media Conference in 2004.

Web-based learning refers to the type of learning that uses the Internet as an instructional delivery tool to carry out various learning activities. It can take the form of (1) a pure online learning in which the curriculum and learning are implemented online without face-to-face meeting between the instructor and the students, or (2) a hybrid in which the instructor meets the students half of the time online and half of the time in the classroom, depending on the needs and requirement of the curriculum. Web-based learning can be integrated into a curriculum that turns into a full-blown course or as a supplement to traditional courses (Zheng, 2008).

The notion of well-being incorporates a person’s quality of life. It is, at the same time, a multidimensional concept (OECD, 2020b) with a social and economic dimension, a psychological and mental health dimension, a philosophical dimension and an educational dimension (Mashford-Scott, Church and Taylor, 2012). It includes a sociological focus on external living conditions, a psychological and public health focus on person-related indicators, such as self-efficacy or self-esteem, and a focus on subjective experiences and subjective feelings of happiness or satisfaction.

Well-being is close to the notion of ‘good life’, which refers to a person’s quality of life, and not the quantity of skills they have acquired. It is about enjoying ‘being’, judged by what it brings in the life of others, and the capacity to derive joy from life, which everyone can achieve (Kittay, 2019).

Well-being depends on culture, historical circumstances, socio-economic class and other variables, which illustrate the differences in how well-being is conceived. The notion of well-being has been reshaped during the COVID-19 pandemic in relation to mental and emotional health, among other things.

In a rights-based approach, children can be active participants in defining their well-being and the ways to achieve it (European Agency, 2021b, p. 103).

(See also ‘Mental health’)

A whole-school approach is one that involves all members of a school community (i.e. learners, staff, parents and carers, community members) and seeks to include all areas of school life. It recognises that real learning occurs both through the ‘formal’ curriculum and through the ‘hidden’ curriculum and learners’ experience of life in school and community.

W3C is:

… an international community where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards. Led by Web inventor and Director Tim Berners-Lee and CEO Jeffrey Jaffe, W3C’s mission is to lead the Web to its full potential (World Wide Web Consortium, 2015).