Albert stresses the importance of letting users control their experience, through settings and various controls.
Transcript
Nic
All right, I’m Nic Steenhout and you’re listening to the accessibility rules soundbite, a series of short podcasts where disabled people explain their impairments, and what barriers they encounter on the web. Today, I’m talking with Albert Kim. Hey, Albert, how are you?
Albert
I’m good. Thank you for having me, Nic.
Nic
Well, thank you for coming. We’ve been trying to organize this session for a while, and we finally connect. So this is this is exciting.
Albert
Yeah, it’s very exciting for me as well.
Nic
Let’s dive right in. Let me ask you, what is your disability or your impairment?
Albert
I have PTSD, OCD, anxiety, depression, dyslexia and ADHD. I know it’s kind of a lot, but that’s what I have. And because of some of those conditions, I always have a medical condition of chronic gastritis and TMJ, which are very common among people with anxiety and ADHD.
Nic
So how does how does that impact your use of the web? Is there any condition that has created a bigger barrier? Or is there anything specific that, you know jumps to mind in terms of Well, I can tie this condition directly with this barrier on the web?
Albert
Yeah, I think I’d have to be a little bit general at first, but overall, obviously, the impact will be on my mental health. And one thing is that, I guess most sensible thing is triggering content for my PTSD, anxiety. When I see contents without any trigger warning, and it’s a violent, or it triggers my traumas, I get very anxious and stressed out, and I get my chronic gastritis symptom very, really, really bad.
Albert
And also, another thing is, for me, this is something that not many people really think about, but it is OCD. I know, OCD has a preconception that many people think it’s about like cleaning and organizing. Actually, for me, my OCD is on completion. It might sound not really clear at first, but when I say completion, I feel like I have to say everything completely. I feel like I have to complete tasks completely. So what that really entails is a profound impact in my daily life. So when I’m navigating web, especially when I’m like shopping, or trying to sign up for an account, and oftentimes, many social media accounts ask for what your interests are, and topics of interest. And then it’ll be an endless scroll of list of things that might sound similar sometimes like computer science, computer engineering, software engineering, I guess, all similar topic, but it’ll be an endless list of interest, topics of interest that I can select. And I get up, I would have a compulsion to completely express everything of my interest, so cycled through that endless scroll until the bottom to be able to finish that and I ended up consuming several hours just to sign up for an account.
Albert
And another thing is that with the shopping, same thing, when I’m going through like endless Scroll of items, and I’m trying to compare different things then and it’s not based on like, there aren’t them there aren’t like there’s no limit to one page, but it’s an endless scroll. Then I spend hours hours just scrolling down to completely go through the whole list. Yeah, it impacts me pretty significantly and I just sit down in my chair, scrolling through webs for hours and hours without even going to bathroom or eating. Yeah,
Nic
That’s… I’ve always been annoyed by page that don’t have an actual bottom that you can scroll endlessly. I’ve often said we shouldn’t have those. But your experience really makes a strong point for that. I’d like to go back to you were talking about PTSD being a big barrier, because then you have triggers and it can really retraumatize you. Because PTSD can be, you know, the triggers can be very varied from, from one person to the next. How do we how do we avoid triggering people? How do we create content that avoids these triggers for all the possibilities that are out there?
Albert
I think the technology already exists. And the first thing that comes to my mind is parental control. Right. So any kind of sexual or violent images, there are, most of by law, we require such tool to exist and to help our children. And having that freedom to choose which content that you can see, rather than the content being imposed to you, is important. So, such filters are like, I know that a lot of times we talk about, isn’t that like censorship, but it’s not about censorship, it’s about actually giving users freedom to choose what they want to look at. So if you don’t even have an option to choose which content you want to filter out, then it’s not really a sensor, it’s not even giving a choice. In the first place, I don’t even have an option to choose. So yeah, such content filtering or not bait, not contents, not filter the bait by the designers, but giving the users which content they want to filter out.
Albert
That is more important. And obviously, because PTSD and anxiety is triggered by many different factors for different people. And it’s very hard to generalize those triggers for everyone. So it’s really important for users to be able to choose. And one thing I can think about is parental control, as an example
Nic
I love that, I really liked the approach of giving user controls and this concept of parental control whether or not, you know, it’s a parent using it for a kid or a user making those settings for themselves. I think it’s very, very powerful stuff.
Nic
Hey, Albert, if you had one message for designers or developers around accessibility, what would you like them to remember or think about?
Albert
I think, think about the end user, not the compliance. So see beyond WCAG compliance, and actually think about the experience of the users, the people who will be using your product, because we often have a really this catch up game for Wii CAG. But as we all know, will take is not complete, especially for people with neurodiverse people. A lot of the WCAG compliant compliance focuses around physical disabilities, blindness, Deaf, motor disability, but we are very, very far away from including neurodiverse people in the WCAG. So when we are actually talking about accessibility, it’s really just beyond that standards and just compliance. It has to be including the people at the very end. Who will be using your product. Lawyers and and judges who will look at your product to determine the lawsuit.
Nic
I really love that. I think it’s really powerful to think about the user. The guidelines, they’re there to help us they’re here to guide us, but it’s certainly not the target. It’s the starting point. I love when when other people express that in different ways because it’s so true.
Nic
Albert before we wrap up, is there anything else that you’d like to share with the audience?
Albert
I think one more thing that I want to address is, is trying not to assume the end user what the experience of the end user would be. Especially for neurodiverse people, users, it’s really hard to generalize. For example, I have maybe if you have an OCD, and or an presume that all the other users with OCD will be OCD about just organizing and cleaning. It’s really a huge mistake. I often have that. I go through that a lot. When I share that I have OCD people ask me, Oh, do you organize your like over clean or wash your hands a lot? Like, that’s not like for me, I have a lot more than that. That also does a lot more than that. So and try not to colloquially just use that word. I must have OCD for this or whatever. Like it really downplays the weight and the actual impact of the medical diagnosis. People’s lives. Yeah, absolutely.
Nic
Albert, thank you so much for being a guest on the show. I really enjoyed talking with you. I’m sure the audience will actually learn quite a bit from what you had to share and we’ll see you around on the web.
Albert
Thank you.