Myriam Jessier talks about ADHD and the barriers she encounters on the web

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