Albert Kim talks about OCD, PTSD, and web accessibility

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 cont