Equality and equity are two important ideas that help us understand how to make things fair for everyone. Here's one way that helps me think about the difference between equity and equality:

Equality is fairness through uniformity, and equity is fairness through a recognition of individual needs.

If everyone gets the same—equality—this is fairer than some people getting something and others nothing. However, if a group were to go bike riding, as in the sketch, if everyone had the same bike, then it might work well for one person but not fit at all for a child or a shorter person. And if you had extra gear, young children to handle, or a disability, getting the same bike might not work at all.

In contrast, equity considers each person's individual needs to give everyone the same opportunity. Since getting the same bike doesn't meet everyone's needs, this might involve getting a bike that is the right height, or has a child seat to allow a parent and child to ride together, or other adaptations to accommodate someone with a disability. This way, everyone can ride comfortably and safely. Equity is about understanding that everyone has different needs and making sure those needs are met so that everyone has a fair chance to succeed.

Thinking about it this way helped me understand the difference between equality and equity, two concepts I had never clearly distinguished.

By focusing on equity, we can ensure that everyone has the support they need to do their best, even if it means giving different kinds of help to different people.

I am self-educated in this and don't consider myself an expert, so I'd be happy to receive guidance or links to articles for further education if you have them.

Also see: the curb-cut effect, one-size-fits-men, how to draw a bike

Equality and equity

Braille is a tactile writing and reading system for the blind and visually impaired. It was invented by Louis Braille when just 15 in 1824. Respect! I don't know about you, but when I've tried braille on signs occasionally, it's always seemed difficult to train my fingers to differentiate the shapes and the dots. Perhaps it would have helped if I'd known how it worked.

Braille is based on a pattern of 6 dots, like a 6 on dice, with different letters, numerals, or sounds being different combinations. It doesn't match the shapes of written letters though, instead breaking the alphabet up into groups of 10. The first 10 letters are combinations of the top 4 dots. The following 10 letters repeat the combinations and add dot 3 in the bottom-left. Then the remaining letters, except w start again adding with dot 6 added. W wasn't in Louis Braille's original French alphabet so appears tacked on at the end.

Since its invention, it's gone through multiple iterations and languages, and there are combinations for punctuation (some common ones formed by shifting down the original 10 combinations), numbers, accented letters, maths symbols, and more. There is also agreed-upon shorthand where a letter may mean a common word eg l for like, and there are contractions where a symbol may mean a sound or set of letters like 'ch'.

The sketch shows the Latin alphabet for modern English braille.

Braille

We're all different sizes, and there is no one-size-fits-all, but when it comes to the chosen size it turns out that that size mostly fits men better.

Caroline Criado Perez in her book Invisible Women shares how so much of the designed world fits men better than women — examples include piano keyboards that make playing more technically difficult and more prone to injury for smaller hands, stab vests that didn't take account of breasts, crash test dummies for car seats tested only with males, toilets that always lead to queues, phones that don't fit female hands or pockets, and voice recognition that picks out male voices more easily.

It's a stark reminder of how we need to do more to design with more of the world in mind rather than the default reference male. 

Read more: The deadly truth about a world built for men – from stab vests to car crashes.

See also brilliance bias and the curb-cut effect.

One-size-fits-men

Brilliance bias is the tendency for people to think of 'brilliance' as generally a male trait. With fewer women generally recorded in the history books, the brilliant people that come to mind from a young age tend to be men.

Underrepresentation has consequences. Careers that are generally understood to require 'brilliance' to succeed, such as maths, physics, or philosophy, are likely to have fewer women working in them. Even at school age, attitudes start to shift in both girls and boys. For example, having an interest in games that require you to be 'really smart' or whether, when asked to draw a scientist, we draw a woman or a man. We need to stop teaching brilliance bias, and we need to celebrate the many female role models we have.

My sister shared with me a page on drawing famous faces that showed 49 men to draw, and an example of the board game Guess Who having as many women to guess as it has men with facial hair as an attribute.

Caroline Criado Perez's eye-opening book Invisible Women taught me about brilliance bias, including the examples here.

Brilliance bias

The Gini coefficient, or Gini index, is a common way to gauge income or wealth inequality within a population.

The coefficient gives a single number showing how equal a distribution is. For example, in a population where everyone earns the same amount the Gini coefficient would be 0 — total equality — and in a population where one person earned all of the population's money, the Gini coefficient would be 1 (sometimes expressed as 100%) — maximum inequality. In practice all countries' Gini coefficients are somewhere in between, at around 0.25 to 0.5 after taxes.

Like any simple measure the Gini has its difficulties, like being easily misinterpreted when compared, but is still widely used. The BBC has a short piece on its history and an alternative measure called the Palma ratio.

Of course, we have some high profile zillionaires at the moment. You might like this old sketch of wealth inequality in America.

The Gini coefficient

The curb-cut effect illustrates how when we design to benefit disadvantaged or vulnerable groups we end up helping society as a whole.

Angela Glover Blackwell explains how campaigning by students with disabilities in Berkeley in the early 1970s led to adding curb cuts to the Berkeley sidewalks to make access easier for those in wheelchairs. Yet it wasn't just people in wheelchairs that it helped. Curb cuts also made life easier for people pushing children in strollers, people using trolleys for deliveries, people pulling a suitcase, those wheeling bikes or on skateboards, and it also helps save lives by guiding people to cross at safe locations.

Another example is adding closed captioning to TV that helps anyone watch in a noisy bar, a waiting room, or watching an airline safety video. Or a classic example of universal design in the OXO Good Grips range originally made to be comfortable for holding a peeler even if you have arthritis.

It's also a useful analogy for "how laws and programs designed to benefit vulnerable groups, such as the disabled or people of color, often end up benefiting all," (PolicyLink) whether that be increasing broadband access, improving public transport or taking cuts out of curbs.

Here's a short, fun video of Gary Karp explaining the curb-cut effect.

Thanks to my patron Quintin Balsdon for sharing it with me.

Inclusion sketches