JL Sorak talks about dyslexia and how sites handle mistakes

JL tells us about sites that don't make it easy to avoid mistakes, and don't handle mistakes well, make it hard for folks who are dyslexic. 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. This week I'm speaking to Jean Luc Sorak. JL is a software engineer at Holiday Extras in Kent, United Kingdom. Thanks for talking to me. JL. How are you? JL Very good. Thanks. Yeah. Thank you for having me on. Nic My pleasure. So let me ask you what is your disability or your impairment? JL So I have dyslexia and dyspraxia they often come as a pair. Just in case anyone isn't aware they're both learning difficulties dyslexia, primarily affecting reading and writing. But also that coordination organization and memory and dyspraxia primarily affects motor coordination, but also articulation, perception, and thought. I kinda like to think of them as alternate thinking styles. And I think this just better describes how our brains work a little bit differently. Nic Yeah. One thing I've heard many people comment on is that people should not equate dyslexia with stupidity because you can't have difficulty with the written word, but that does not affect your intellect. I assume you agree with that? JL Yeah, 100% there's lots of positives from having dyslexia or something like dyspraxia, as well as coming with lots of difficulties. So definitely. Nic What is the greatest barrier you encounter on the web? JL So the greatest barrier for me is when applications can't tolerate errors. So by errors, I mean mistakes, I tend to make more mistakes than a typical user. And I've relative difficulties with reading and avoid it at all costs. So often I don't follow the instructions properly, which can probably lead me down the wrong path quite a lot of times. And the idea of tolerating errors can be a bit high level. And I've got an example if you want to hear it. Recent shopping experience. Nic Yes, yes, absolutely. JL So recently, I was I was making an order for something quite boring with some new blinds. And when it took my payment I was redirected to paypal. And when it finished to take payment, it came up with a big tick or something like that. And I didn't bother reading the rest of the information on the page. So I just clicked off and presumed my payment had been taken around and I'd receive my order soon. But then three weeks ago  nothing arrived. I looked into it. And it turns out there was a button on that page to return to the merchant to the main site that that I'd ordered from. So the order wasn't actually completed. This is just an example of when that site didn't tolerate that error. were more my order was just lost because I failed to complete an action and it was my mistake, but the site should be helping users to recover from those sorts of issues. Nic Yeah, there's that old adage, you know, don't make me think. And I think that's probably... You didn't finalize the process, but the developers and the designers did not make it easy for you or anybody else to actually finish the process. JL Yes, I really like that idea of not having to think because a lot of the time you have multiple things in your mind. You're not focusing on that one action of taking payment on the site, you most of the time people are doing something else, whether that's listening to the radio in the background or TV or talking someone else. Nic Now, you were talking about ordering blinds which can be perceived as fairly mundane, but has there been situation where an inte