Alex Umstead discusses autism, flickering screens, and keyboard use

Alex points out that if we make processes more complex for users, they aren't likely to be able to finish things, or complete them properly. 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, what barriers they encounter on the web. Today I'm speaking with Alex Umstead. Alex is an accessibility professional in Philadelphia, and he has a background in disability studies. Alex, welcome on the show. Alex Thank you very much for having me. I'm glad to be here. Nic Awesome. Let me ask you, right off the bat, what is your disability or your impairment? Alex Oh, yeah, so I am autistic. And I actually will just deal right off the bat, I am using what we call identity first language, which is a lot of autistic people use that rather than person with autism. So I generally do as well. I also have Tourette's, which I will use person first language in that regard. And I was a preemie. So I also have although don't officially, so to speak, have a physical disability, I do have some motor and coordination issues that can come into play accessibility wise from that. Nic Thank you for sharing. What would you say is the biggest barrier you encounter on the web? Alex So it's, it's interesting, I think I actually have a lot of barrier. There's a lot of barriers I don't encounter. I guess, I guess I'm sort of lucky in that regard that the web is pretty accessible to me. At least in terms of things that would be like showstoppers, where things tend to get a little dicey, though, is like, I am not a so called keyboard only user, but I'm definitely a keyboard preferential user. So if something doesn't work properly with keyboard interaction, definitely slows me down. Again, that I think that's maybe partly a disability thing. But I'm, I'm not sure. And then one thing that's definitely disability related is if you know, if something has either a lot of a lot of motion going on, and I'm trying to read something, or let's say if the color scheme is such that it makes my screen flicker because because of my autism, I am more sensitive to like LED backlight or on older computers, fluorescent backlight flicker, then somebody who's not on the spectrum, then that can be a problem as well. Nic Right. In terms of keyboard access, you say it's not a blocker. But when I hear you describe it, what it sounds like, to me is that this is actually increasing the cognitive load, you have to, to experience when you're working on the web, would that be accurate? Alex I would say more the physical effort to I just, and again, I'm not 100% sure if this comes from the coordination issues, or just personal preference or not, but I know that for me to work most efficiently. Being able to simply navigate without having to constantly jump my arm over to my mouse and jump back to my keyboard and yarn over the mouse keyboard, and dragging and then getting tendinitis issues from dragging things over. You know, the more that I have to kind of move around doing that, the slower I'm going to get a task done. And I think we're actually where the cognitive piece comes in is, then if I have to do a task over and over, let's say, you know, to go through a longer flow in something, the more steps I have to go through, the less likely I am going to be to be able to put attention to all of the detail that I need to do. You know, Nic yeah. So I like that. I think that's an important aspect. The this idea that the harder we make it for people to use our systems, the less likely they are to be able to either complete it or complete it properly. Yeah. Alex One thing I one thing I do a lot when I, you know, have say repetitive tasks is I being a tech guy and somebody who likes to code, I tend to automate things. So if I, if I'm going to be typing the same word, what I use plugins to automatically ex