About this glossary
Our Office recognizes that language evolves and that meanings change depending on context. We also recognize that language carries weight: words can foster inclusion or lead to alienation depending on how they are used. Our choice of words has real-world consequences.
Recognizing the weight of our language choices, we believe strongly that individuals and groups should be able to choose the terms used to describe them. This is a matter of autonomy, but it is also because you are best positioned to understand the nuances and implications of language that describes your own lived reality.
If there is language in this glossary—or on our websites, social media channels or publications—that you find problematic, out of date or otherwise in need of attention, please let us know! We welcome your feedback and will consider it carefully during our regular language reviews. Thank you for helping us be as respectful and accurate with our language as possible.
Note for screen reader users: The glossary list below may read as a “list of terms” by your screen reader. Please be aware that this list of terms are all clickable to their own definition pages. Further, as of the latest update, our tooltips throughout the website are read by JAWS, NVDA, and VoiceOver on the Google Chrome browser. At this time, VoiceOver will not read our tooltips when using Safari browser.
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- Ableism
- Absenteeism policies
- Accommodation
- Accused
- Age
- Ageism
- Ancestry
- Anti-oppressive
- Barrier
- BC Human Rights Tribunal
- Biases
- Binary/binaries
- Bona fide occupational requirement
- Classism
- Common law
- Community governance framework
- Complainant
- Constitutionally protected peoples
- Criminal Code
- Criminal conviction
- Critical race, disability and queer theory
- Data governance
- Data sovereignty
- Data stewardship
- Decolonization
- Discrimination
- Disproportionate impacts
- Duty bearer
- Duty to accommodate
- Economic inequalities
- Equity
- Evidence-based
- Family status
- Formal equality
- Gender expression
- Gender identity
- Gender policing
- Gladue reports
- Good faith
- Heterosexism
- Human dignity
- Human rights
- Human Rights Code
- Immuno-compromised people
- Implicit bias
- Indigeneity and Indigenous
- Indigenous identity
- Inequity
- Intersectionality
- Intervention
- LGBTQ2SAI+
- Marginalization
- Marital status
- Mental disability
- Microaggression
- Pandemic
- Physical disability
- Place of origin
- Poisoned work environment
- Political belief
- Protected characteristic
- Race
- Racialization
- Racism
- Reasonable
- Reasonable accommodation
- Religion
- Sex
- Sexism
- Sexual harassment
- Sexual orientation
- Social distance and self-isolation
- Source of income
- Substantive equality
- Systemic racism
- Two-Spirit
- Unconscious bias
- Undue hardship