“In addition to providing insights into areas of communication not commonly recognized ... [we] can, at the very least, provide fresh perspectives on our own—what we understand to be (and practice as) simply the 'norm''” ~ Bruce Horner, Cynthia Selfe, and Tim Lockridge.

Get ready for some trad. scholarship here, if ya wanna experience it or think it. Look above! We even have an epigraph by some famous people describing what we wanna do with equity. No pressure on you, pressure now on us!

Rhetorical equity is about recognizing and valuing different ways of knowing, speaking, and interpreting. Williams et al. in their work exploring digital writing and cultural rhetorics explains it like this: “The point is not to erase differences among these methods so that we might gather under one banner, but to write a(nother) network for social justice within, across, or through writing, rhetoric, and literacy studies.” Rhetorical equity focuses on offering access to various forms, languages, and formats of texts so that people can engage with content in ways that connect with their own experiences.

So we know this is a reach, a temptation, but it is fun to think about: Taylor Swift sings, I think there's been a glitch, oh, yeah Five seconds later, I'm fastening myself to you with a stitch, oh, yeah. She might be singing about equity: how equity is often a stitch, an addition to something that was glitchy. We're hopin' interfaces can be considered as less stitchy-glitchy and more equity-innate.

We hope interfaces and our kind of uncreative writing can assist with Ore's observation in her conversation with leaders in the field of cultural rhetorics and teaching: “Being in that room sent me a clear message: that there was room for me in the field. That in that very room sat the elders who had fought to create space for Latinxs in the discipline of rhetoric and composition.” However, this is just the starting point. Rhetorical justice goes beyond just making things accessible by rethinking the systems that decide what knowledge is produced, who produces it, and how it’s shared.

Reading not your thing? How about math?

Rhetorical Equity = Technogical Equity (like access for different devices and people with disabilities) + Access to Diverse Formats + Recognition of Different Ways of Knowing

And here's a table🥳. *Our discussions about rhetorical equity are based on Muhlhauser and Salvati's; Muhlhauser, Krauss, and Sheffield's; and Muhlhauser, Fowler, and Schafer's previous articles on the topic and/or illustrating rhetorical equity in action. Check the works cited for more info.

What would you define as equitable? Here comes a buncha questions we wanna think about more in general. Just ways equity can be, well, manipulated. Would you say discrimination is equitable? No? Why not? Is it because you are thinking about race, or maybe disabilities? Well then, you're probably right, but we're not rulers of the universe, so what do we know? Ok, but that’s not the type of discrimination I’m talking about. What about discrimination against someone’s age? Like how when we go to a restaurant and the waitress won’t let us order from the kids' menu because we're “adult”. Sure, but ask Sydney's sister, she’ll tell you that she's more of a child than her 10-year-old brother (oh sorry 11, he just had a birthday) So if we believe that we're children and the waitress still won’t let us eat off the kid's menu is that equitable? Or what if we only want a smaller portion of a meal? Or what if we're broke college students who just wants to have a cheaper meal? ☹ What about this discrimination? Is this type equitable? Should restaurants give cheaper meals to people with a smaller budget? Or is that not equitable to the rich people? So should all meals be free? But then that’s not equitable to the restaurant because they have to make money. So, should we make all meals the same price? That would solve it, right? No, because what about the ingredients? They all cost different amounts, so not every meal can be the same amount. Ok, umm, so what do we do? Do you have any ideas? Ya me either… oh I know we should just let people order from the kids' menu if they want to! That solves the problem. Thank you for coming to our Ted Talk.

At any rate, back to interfaces. There have been a buncha articles Muhlhauser co-authored that have distiguished rhetorical equity from rhetorical equality and technolgoical equity and equality. You can find them all in our works cited. But none of them really deal with how an interface, (even if it's not practicing rhetorical equity per se in having a bunch of ways to experience a text) is more fair to author's and audience's intended meanings

And though Alex Jennings is reflecting on her experiences in academia and how to negotiate what get made out to be disparate identities, her motivation describes what we are trying to communicate with regards to audience meanings:“I try to untangle the differences between performance and embodiment because as we navigate spaces where we try to combat racism and inequity, it still seems like we are barely outrunning the bureaucratic puppetmaster” (in Hsu et al.).

Yes! An audience's intended meanings. Relax a little on the author's intended meanings, on those puppetmasters. You'll get this idea more as you navigate through the text. The gist is this: There are interfaces that more or less "lock down" information, lock down meaning so an audience is less likely to engage in constructing meaning. So that's author-equitable. When the interface is more open to change, to being dynamic and encouraging an audience to put meaning together, that's audience-equitable.

So that's what we've done. We've mades some interfaces that tempt audiences into accept meaning. And we've got some interfaces that tease author's into thinking what they've said is locked down.

If rhetorical equity asks how we share space, rhetorical justice asks how we shape it [Explore the shift → in Realignments.]”

Here's a summary of our thinking about equity and justice: Equity is the ask. Justice is the experiment.