Devon Persing talks about depression and brain fog

Devon tells us how depression can cause brain fog and it impacts everything she does on the web. Thanks to Tenon for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Transcript Nic: Hi, I'm Nic Steenhout and you're listening to the Accessibility Rules Soundbite, a series of short podcasts where people with disabilities explain their impairments and what barriers they encounter on the web. Thanks to Tenon for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Tenon provides accessibility as a service. They offer testing, training, and tooling to help fix accessibility fast. Today we're talking with Devon Persing who is a accessibility specialist. She works with Shopify. Devon, thanks for coming on the show and talking a little bit about the barriers you encounter on the web. Devon: Thank you. Nic: Let me ask you, what is your disability or your impairment? Devon: I have depression and anxiety. I got formally diagnosed when I was in college. I was 19 and looking back I know that I was exhibiting symptoms as a kid, but that was when it was crystallized into a professional telling me that I had something. It's something that I definitely go through cycles where it's worse or better, but it definitely impacts how I interact with the world and with digital spaces. Nic: That's actually something that's interesting because most people wouldn't think that depression would have an effect on interacting with the digital world. What would you say the biggest barrier is that is related to depression and anxiety? Devon: I think for me the biggest thing is brain fog. On days when I'm low energy for whatever reason, it can be many things. I can be tired. I might've had to do a lot of intensive gear switching the day before. I'm mostly introvert, but I do a log of teaching and training. If I've had a big week where I've done a lot of training sessions, I'm drained and then it's just harder to do pretty much everything. I have a harder time remembering things. I have a harder time processing information and understanding information that's in front of me. Devon: As a result, I rely heavily on things like to-do apps and auto complete things like 1Password. But people probably don't think of those as assistive tools but definitely are. I tried to offload as much of that cognitive admin level thinking, keeping track of things as much as I can so I can dedicate my brain space to the stuff I'm actually trying to accomplish. Because otherwise I'll forget things or I will obsess over them so I don't forget them. And then they are taking up space that I need to be using for other stuff. Nic: That's so good. Well it's not good that you're dealing with that, but it's good that we're able to tell our listeners about this because it's an important aspect of accessibility that we tend to forget about. What would be one message you'd like to tell designers and developers about accessibility? Devon: I think that it's not something to fix. It's not something to design and build something and then say, "Okay, is it accessible", and to go back and test it, it's very important to include it from the start of the process. And it's also very important to think about those edge cases. I guess the the 80/20 rule that people often focus on working for the majority. I think it's really important to make sure that you're not creating barriers first. And that's difficult because there's no one solution for that. It's very much about the context of the thing that you're making, making it flexible enough that people can adapt it to their different needs and then also building it in a way that is not going to conflict with different types of tools they're trying to use. I think thinking about it as early in the process when you're making it work as you can is really important. Nic: It certainly is. Devon, thank you for this pearl of wisdom and I'll catch yo u around on the internet. Devon: Okay. Nic: And