The possession of the skills and cultural content to comprehend written, oral, and visual information.
The ability to read and write but, more specifically, the ability to read, write, and calculate at above an eighth-grade level, which is considered the minimum for an adult to operate effectively in modern society. Someone who is unable to do so is termed functionally illiterate. In recent years the term has been extended to new fields; people who can readily work with computers are called computer literate—a term that applies to many young children, although sometimes their parents are computer illiterates.