Conference Program

Visual representations in educational materials are not neutral tools: they organize, hierarchize, and filter knowledge through choices of typography, color, iconography, and layout that are simultaneously cognitive, cultural, and political decisions. Yet the literature on visual design in education has focused predominantly on two dimensions — graphicacy, understood as the reader’s competence in interpreting visual signs (Balchin & Coleman, 1965; Friel et al., 2001), and inclusive design, oriented toward reducing perceptual barriers (CAST, 2024; Rose & Meyer, 2002) — without systematically addressing the dimension of epistemic justice in representation.

This contribution introduces the theoretical and operational framework of Graphic Design Equity (GDE), which analyzes visual design choices in terms of the equitable distribution of the conditions for understanding a graphic artifact and the reader's ability to recognize themselves in that representation. The term “graphic” is used in its semiotic sense: it refers to any visual representation choice that mediates access to knowledge, regardless of the production context. GDE does not replace existing concepts but radicalizes them toward a third level not yet formally articulated: beyond perceptual accessibility and cognitive usability, toward epistemic and symbolic justice — that is, whether everyone can understand and recognize themselves in what is made visible.

The framework is structured around three interconnected dimensions: a design dimension, concerning technical choices of typography, color, layout, and visual hierarchy; a social dimension, addressing the symbolic and cultural inclusion or exclusion of identities and perspectives; and an educational-scientific dimension, aimed at educating teachers and designers as ethical agents of representation.

Studies on the gender gap in STEM show that differences in spatial reasoning emerge and grow with age rather than being present from birth (Lauer et al., 2019), and that women with cognitive profiles comparable to men's remain underrepresented in STEM fields, suggesting the role of social and structural barriers rather than cognitive ones (Sokolowski et al., 2026). The analysis of 1,255 textbooks across 34 countries documented the pervasiveness of visual bias in school materials (Crawfurd et al., 2024), while experimental research has demonstrated that counter-stereotypical images significantly improve female students’ performance in scientific domains (Good et al., 2010). D'Ignazio and Klein (2020) have shown how every visualization embeds a perspective and a hierarchy of values that structure the possibilities of recognition available to the learning subject.

GDE is proposed as an analytical tool to evaluate existing materials, a design framework to produce more equitable visualizations, and an ethical and educational device for the training of designers. In alignment with Goal 4 of the United Nations 2030 Agenda (2015), which aims to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education, GDE intervenes at the graphic level as a semiotic infrastructure that shapes access to understanding, translating the principles of educational equity into operational design criteria.