Myriam says “Most people don’t even consider that people like me could have an issue with their website. They don’t even think about it.”
Transcript
Nic
Hi, 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 to Myriam, Jessier. Hi, Myriam, how are you?
Myriam
Hello, I’m excited to be here.
Nic
Glad you’re excited to be here. It’s been a while that we’ve talked about having you on the show. And finally, it’s happening. Let me ask you this, what is your disability or impairment?
Myriam
So I never thought about it as a disability. I have ADHD. And I see this as sometimes a really frustrating impairment, and sometimes a really nice thing to have.
Nic
I think most people wouldn’t understand the frustration. But how is it nice?
Myriam
You can launch me in a Canadian field with grass. And I will find you four leafed clovers super fast. If my partner loses a tiny little screw from his very expensive bike, and he spends an hour and a half looking for it. He comes to me and I find it within 10 minutes. I pick out patterns randomly.
Nic
Picking up patterns randomly. That’s cool. All right. So frustration and benefit. What would you be? What would you say your greatest barrier or pet peeve as regards to ADHD and web accessibility is?
Myriam
Most people don’t even consider that people like me could have an issue with their website. They don’t even think about it. And my problem is that sometimes I will look at things and go, nope, my brain just goes, No. So a concrete example of this is if I go on specific governmental websites, and I have to fill out a form online that is on a page, and that form is just all over the place for me, I physically cannot force myself to fill it out. I just can’t.
Nic
So what do you mean by all over the place? Do you talk about layout or content or labeling? And how do you fix that?
Myriam
The answer is yes to all three. So if you see me use a website, it’s rather interesting, because I will use my mouse to scroll up and down super fast to figure things out, and then my eyes will go left, right, left, right, like very, very fast trying to pick out certain things. And I know that most humans do that, but maybe not to that extent, and not with the same amount of frustration that I have. So whenever labels don’t make sense, as in, they’re not necessarily very clear, my mind will skip to something else. So I will miss out a few steps.
Nic
Does the frustration have a concrete impact? Apart from Oh, I’m frustrated with this thing?
Myriam
I give up very often, I will leave a website and find something else that maybe answers the question faster for me from my brain. Or I will try to genuinely like I said, scroll up down Ctrl+F to find a keyword because I’m desperately seeking information, and I’m not finding it. So this means that the way I navigate is a bit unexpected compared to most humans, I will not necessarily follow the proper steps. I may forget to fill out a little bit of something and then get rejected by the machine or a human reading whatever I submitted, because I’m discounted since I couldn’t follow the exact steps because not all of them made sense to me.
Nic
Hmm. That makes sense that it doesn’t make sense for you. What message would you have for designers or developer apart from obviously, you know, build your forms so they make sense.
Myriam
This is the portion where I get to talk about another impairment I didn’t know I had until well, I met accessibility experts. Please don’t design things in parallax. I mean, I have ADHD, but I have also a slight impairment that makes me want to vomit when things move too fast on the web. And these things go together hand in hand for me because in parallax, I’m supposed to somehow magically figure out where I’m supposed to go, how to find the information while still wanting to vomit. Oh, this is not a good combo. So if I had to give another piece of advice as some folks try to go a bit faster than what you would expect they are used to muddling through because they function differently. And I know we all muddle through, but the way I muddle through is kind of impressive to people who do not have my impairment. It’s grandiosely unexpected and weird. So what I what really, really helps me personally, I’m not an ambassador of everyone dealing with the same impairment. Be clear on your subheadings I need a visual anchor that’s telling me I’m in the right spot. And very often subheadings are vague or confusing or contain one word.
Nic
So I like this idea of, you know, designers, developers, don’t make your users sick. That’s seems like a good start, doesn’t it? And clear headings, I’ve been harping on about headings for a very long time now. And it just, it’s interesting to have people come back over and over different end users to say, hey, you know, headings are important. I use headings to navigate, I use headings to understand. And if your heading text is not clear, well, why do you have headings to start with?
Myriam
That’s another problem very often headings are missing. And I’m just wondering, why are you leaving me this this wall of text to figure out my brain just can’t parse it. Another element is some fonts cause me real issues, very, very real issues. There are some fonts that I, I mean, I wish I could read them patiently. But I cannot parse them. I literally have to copy paste the content into Google Docs.
Nic
Which fonts? And what would be a solution for that? Because I guess fonts that don’t work for you might work very well for other people. So how, how do we fix that we make sure that our font choices work for everyone.
Myriam
This is a portion where I don’t have the answer, because my solution has always been to copy paste things into google doc to be able to parse it patiently. And just put my mouse over it and just go step by step if I need to genuinely concentrate. And that is very hard for me. So what I would say about the fonts is I know that some fonts will work better for some folks, but it’s very often a combination of the color, the size and the font, and the spacing that causes me issues. So if the text is very scrunched up, you can tell I’m a designer clearly scrunched up is my professional term. No, But joking aside, it’s genuinely difficult for me to parse this through. And I don’t have a magical answer for this. But now I want to dive into a rabbit hole and figure this out.
Nic
Would implementing user preferences, or letting users easily override style sheets, be an option, you think?
Myriam
One option that I found already that I really, really enjoyed was the ability to make letters larger. So I don’t have problems reading, in terms of my eyes work well, but if I make it bigger, there’s more spacing, I actually can breathe and dive into the content. So just having this helps me.
Nic
Yeah. Yeah, it’s it’s not a question of the eyes mechanic, but it’s a question of the perception of the fault. And space helps. Yeah.
Myriam
And another element that is unusual, I guess is I never pondered what people could do to fix things for me. Because from the start of the web, I started navigating in 97. I had issues. And nobody was here to tell me that this was not normal. I just got used to it. So I don’t have solutions because I learned to just satisfice. That’s it. And remember my four leaf clover talent. So sometimes when I’m hyper focused, well, I’m going to find that information very fast. Maybe not on your website, but I can Google for my life.
Nic
Yeah, maybe I’m Thank you. That’s been super fun. We’ll see you around on the web.
Myriam
Thank you very much for having me.