Glossary entry

Legibility

Glossary entry in Core concepts. Definitions, checks, and evidence for Legibility.

Quick takeaways

How understandable a system’s actions, reasoning, and ownership are to the people affected by it.

Definition

How understandable a system’s actions, reasoning, and ownership are to the people affected by it. Legibility complements explainability for accountability and transparent design authority so people can find who decided, why, and how to respond. Legibility is discoverability of who/why/what-next; it does not guarantee the system can be changed.

Structural
Scope
A. Core concepts. These terms define the Ethotechnics discipline itself and set expectations for moral system design.
Genealogy
Moves transparency from disclosure to actionable understanding for the people impacted.

Related concepts

Also tagged: Structural

Ethotechnics Moral Behavior (of Systems) Ethical Load Path Ethotechnic Audit Conviviality Ethotechnic Maturity

Example corpus

  • Residents receive a plain-language notice that names the office, rule, and appeal path behind a zoning decision.

References

Copy citation (APA/BibTeX)

Cite this glossary entry Formats: APA, MLA, Chicago, BibTeX, RIS

Version

v1.4.0

Last updated

Sep 18, 2026

DOI

Pending Zenodo deposit

APA

Ethotechnics Institute Research Team. (2026). Legibility. Ethotechnics glossary. https://ethotechnics.org/glossary/legibility

MLA

Ethotechnics Institute Research Team. "Legibility." Ethotechnics glossary, 2026, https://ethotechnics.org/glossary/legibility.

Chicago

Ethotechnics Institute Research Team. "Legibility." Ethotechnics glossary. Sep 18, 2026. https://ethotechnics.org/glossary/legibility.

BibTeX

@misc{glossary_legibility,
  title={Legibility},
  author={Ethotechnics Institute Research Team},
  year={2026},
  howpublished={Ethotechnics glossary},
  url={https://ethotechnics.org/glossary/legibility},
  version={v1.4.0}
}

RIS

TY  - WEB
TI  - Legibility
AU  - Ethotechnics Institute Research Team
PY  - 2026
UR  - https://ethotechnics.org/glossary/legibility
ER  -

Scholarly metadata

Authorship

Contact: research@ethotechnics.org

Publication details

  • Published: Dec 3, 2025
  • Last updated: Sep 18, 2026
  • Version: v1.4.0
  • DOI: Pending Zenodo deposit

License: CC BY-SA 4.0

Credit Ethotechnics Institute, include the term title + version, and link to the glossary permalink.

Archive: Wayback Machine history

Changelog

  • v1.7.0 · 2026-09-18 — Added Non-Finality, Consequential Contradiction, and The Excluded Case, and generalized the falsified denominator into the falsified ledger — completing the five concerns and the fallibilist ground they stand on.
  • v1.6.0 · 2026-09-18 — Added Human Non-Substitutability, Safe Incompleteness, Anti-Conversion Rights, Abstention, Constitutional Debt, Discretion Migration, and Corrigibility Rent — the person-side principles, the three abstentions, and the rent concept.
  • v1.5.0 · 2026-09-18 — Added Exception Absorption, Exception Learning, Case Corrigibility, Structural Corrigibility, Institutional Learning, Corrective Debt, and the Workaround Presumption, formalizing the historical turn: reading institutions through their failure trajectories rather than their stated controls.
  • v1.4.0 · 2026-09-18 — Added Residual Complexity, Complexity Displacement, Falsified Denominator, Closure Without Remainder, Constitutional Governance, and Post-Optimization Rigor, embedding the foundational contention of burden redistribution.
  • v1.3.0 · 2026-09-11 — Added Attestation, Liability Record, Carve-Out, Delegation Chain, Composed Latency, and Silent-Harm Discovery, each bound to the standard clause that requires it.
  • v1.2.0 · 2026-09-08 — Added The Non-Conversion Principle, Exit Cost, and Jurisdictional Path Dependence, each linked to the theory essay that argues for it.
  • v1.1.0 · 2026-01-09 — Expanded scholarly metadata, operational tests, and provenance notes.
  • v1.0.0 · 2025-12-03 — Initial glossary release with stable permalinks.