Holly Schroeder talks about essential tremors and worsening vision

Holly Schroeder explains that when a touch target is too small she may not be able to complete a task because she doesn't have the fine motor control to tap her finger on the right area of the screen. 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 disabled people 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 I'm speaking with Holly Schroeder. Hi, Holly. How are you? Holly I'm great. Thanks for having me back again. Nic Yeah, well, first conversation was good. So let's have another one. Holly I sounds like a party to me. I'm in. Nic Alright, so last time, we spoke about how you had working memory issues and ADD and how those two are related to one another? What disability or impairment would you like to discuss today? Holly Well, so I am a person who has multiple disabilities, which I don't think is really particularly unusual, especially as you age. So today, I thought we could talk about, I have a movement disorder, which the official name for it is called essential tremor, although I don't particularly find it essential. If you'd like to learn more about essential tremors, there's a really nice nonprofit called the essential tremor Foundation, and you can look them up on the web. And what that means is that, for me, I have tremors in both hands, I have "no no" head tremor, which means that my tremor makes it look like I'm just very gently saying no. nodding my head "No." I also have facial tremors on both sides of my face, that are only typically activated when I'm trying to do particular tasks. And then sometimes I have internal tremors as well. But along with that tremor package comes movement disability that, in essence makes me pretty clumsy. So I I fall down more than your average person and bump into things a lot. I am the CEO of knocking things over. All you down. And I think that the another thing I'm over 40 so and I've always worn glasses, but between 40 and 42 most people get the the gift of bifocals in their life. I'm an overachiever, I got trifocals. So now in addition to my movement, my tremors now my vision has become a factor in digital space. Nic Hmm. So talking of digital space, how do those conditions affect your use of the web? What's your greatest barrier on the web related to that? Holly So in terms of vision, just things literally being too tiny for me to read, even sometimes using the accessibility tools. It's difficult for me to figure out where I'm supposed to be. I mean, it's certainly an improvement over having no tools. But with my tremors, if I'm having a bad tremor day, or I forgot to take my medicine or something like that, or I'm in a stressful condition that will make them worse. Things like touch targets not being large enough, or tasks like completing a CAPTCHA can be maddening. Nic So the tremors mean that you're having problem placing your mouse specifically on one small area of the screen. Holly Right, exactly. Or if I'm on my phone, and I'm trying to... My brain saying I want to touch this spot. My hand isn't always cooperating. You know what my intention is, and then what my hand does doesn't match up. So for example, earlier this week, I'm not sure why tremors are kind of a funny thing. They have kind of an ebb and flow typically. But I was trying to mouse to do something. And every time I went to go grip my mouse, my tremor got worse, which made it more difficult for me to navigate and I ended up using the keyboard to complete the task I was trying to do because every time I touch the mouse that just my hand wasn't tremoring until I tried to use the mouse.