Sabrina Dent: Freelance web designer, developer and internet marketer living in Cork, Ireland with one dog and a husband in no particular order.
Dyslexia, Dyscalculia and Design
My mother will, at the drop of a hat, tell you the story of how as a child, I very nearly didn’t get into my competitive fee-paying primary school because I stubbornly refused to put the blue peg in the red hole during what passes as an interview for three year olds. While my mother likes to see this as a testimony to my non-conformance and independent spirit, the fact is that I simply could not do it then and would very likely struggle to do it today at 37. My particular instances of Dyslexia and Dyscalculia are pretty mild, although a lot of this Wikipedia entry applies to me, particularly:
- An inability to read a sequence of numbers, or transposing them when repeated, such as turning 56 into 65.
- Problems with differentiating between left and right.
- Difficulty with everyday tasks like checking change and reading analogue clocks.
I was 13 before I knew that calm and clam were two different words. Sixteen was an interesting year in that for the first time I was excelling in a math class (geometry) but was still struggling to read the clock on the wall. And I still remember London’s The Big Number Change in vivid gory detail because at 22, it very nearly drove me over the edge.
Despite the fact that up until last year, I thought Tommy Collison was one of the Collision brothers, this is all generally a less cumbersome problem as an adult then it was when I was in school. Spell check, spreadsheets, calculators and a husband who doesn’t mind saying “Your other left” 27 times a day make life vastly easier. There are really only two things that regularly frustrate me in the real world: dialling long telephone numbers and sending even short text messages, both of which are a slow and arduous processes.
The internet, however, drives me insane on a near daily basis. Here are three things I commonly encounter that are often rendered badly on websites.
Exhibit 1: Logins
The fact these boxes are presented out of order makes it three times as hard for me to log into my bank, because I have to count off the numbers in my PIN on my fingers three times – quite often out loud, which rather defeats the security reason for re-arranging them in the first place. Bank of America, on the other hand, has a login system that entirely avoids this issue, with a pictographic site key that works well.
Exhibit 2: Telephone Numbers
There are worse offenders out there but still, there is no chance – zero – that I could dial that Swedish Swiss number. While Europe does not have the standard (212) 555-1212 format that the US and Canada have, some breakdown of the number is always possible, even if the decision on where to split it is entirely arbitrary. The German number is much more useful, except I don’t speak German (or Swedish, for that matter.)
Exhibit 3: Booking Calendars
This calendar system BREAKS MY BRAIN. As far as I’m concerned, I’m now departing Prague three days before I arrive. Trying to book tickets on Aer Lingus literally made me shriek with rage last week. Things that are presented side by side should match up. (I don’t know why; they just should.) Otherwise, vertically arranging calendars that have offset dates is vastly clearer, every time.
I’m a firm believer that good design makes a better experience for everyone. If your login directions are so complex that a low-literacy user can’t use your system, it sucks for everyone. If your calendar is so confusing that a mildly dyslexic person can’t book anything, it sucks for everyone. If your navigation is so convoluted that a blind person using a screen reader can’t browse your website, it sucks for everyone. In other words, solving 90% of the web’s user interface problems are not about “special” design, they’re just about good design.
And Christ knows, Aer Lingus could use some of that.
15 Oct 2009
| In: Crankypants + Design | Tags:dyscalculia, dyslexia, UI, user interface
Interesting post. To be honest for the bank login, I too have to count out the number in my head as I fill it in and the Bank of Ireland one is in sequence! Those things can wreck heads at the best of times.
I’m not a designer or any kind of expert but always, always the simpler things are the better.
By the way, I hate to tell you this but phone numbers from Switzerland are Swiss not Swedish :)
15.10.2009, 11:50 amMy sister’s ex-boyfriend had trouble with left & right. So when they were out in the car and she was navigating, she would say “my way” for left and “your way” for right. It occasionally confused other passengers but worked for him!
15.10.2009, 11:54 amI can understand your frustration. Whilst I don’t suffer from dyslexia (aside from the very mild dyslexia many people have), the majority of bank logins and calendar booking systems are most definately poorly designed.
Quite often, the well-meaning reason is to reduce click throughs. Unfortunately, this becomes a rule applied to everything and in many cases actually destroys usability, as opposed to enhancing it.
You end up with a terribly complicated page, as opposed to two or three pages which are easy to digest.
15.10.2009, 12:05 pmAerLingus online booking on a whole is a bad experience. I went to Prague at the start of year and had to pay in the airport for my baggage. Because when it asked on the website if I wanted to check in EXTRA baggage, I assumed it ment on top of the normal 1 bag. But oh no, it meant Extra on top of no bags. I dont know how I made the mistake ;) These problems happen, when a site is built from the systems perspective rather than the Users perspectives. I bet when they are testing they only use one Persona > Dave is a System Architecture who would like to book a flight ….
15.10.2009, 12:19 pmI agree with the Aer Lingus calendar. I took issue with it last time I was trying to book a daytrip to London. We just wanted the cheapest offer, so looked at multiple dates. I kept having to doublecheck that I wasn’t booking us a 5 day trip.
I wonder what percentage of the population would claim to have a mild dyslexic leaning. I myself don’t do left and right, as the many people who have been directed down to the local river rather than village could testify to. I also have great difficulty in lighting the correct gas hob on my cooker, and always have to study the pictures on the dials before lighting. I have the hob 5 yrs!
15.10.2009, 12:20 pm@Matt and @Paul: I think your points about where interfaces like these spring from are right on the money.
@Martina: Interesting about the hob (a stove top, for anyone reading from the US.) I actually consider my gas hob to be WAY safer than the electric one we had previously because I struggle with lighting the correct one as well. The visiual cue of, you know, the fire at least means I’m not melting empty pots or turning on exposed rings with a pot holder resting on them anymore. But I have never understood why the knobs are 1 2 3 4 instead of 2 x 2 which surely makes more sense for *everyone.*
I have a wonderful Smeg oven/hob which brings me daily joy – there are 9 different options for the grill/oven, so the perfect one is always available. Normally a Smeg oven would be way out of my price range, but this was marked down below half price because the dials were printed incorrectly.
So, to turn on the oven, you put the dial to “grill with fan”. To grill with fan you turn to “warming oven. And so on. Nobody can work it except me. It was a steep learning curve.
On the Aer Lingus website – I’m sorry for your trouble, but …. YEAH, PRAGUE!!
15.10.2009, 12:49 pmHey Sabrina,
As always a humourous take on a serious topic. A good approach for life in general I think.
But this dyscalculia is a new one on me. I always put my v. mild difficulties with left and right and analogue clock reading down to being taught them in Irish but not having it repeated at home. Mind you I can’t tell the time or give directions in any language ;)
I also have to think of the code number for each number in my PIN!
R
15.10.2009, 4:55 pmThis is a great post, one that I’ve already linked to off my blog. Hearing the perspective of someone who actually experiences these conditions *and* is a web developer is insightful. I’m hoping you post more about this.
15.10.2009, 6:58 pmOh wow, that was an interesting read. Especially after I had read the three bullet points at the top. It was then that I realised that those apply to me as well (to a certain extent).
I also do sometimes confuse left and right and even though I was for some part pretty good at maths back in school, I was always bad at mental arithmetic.
By the way as a native German speaker I often notice the 56/65 thing when I switch between German and English. Because in German we speak those numbers exactly the other way around, so 56 is “Sechsundfünfzig” which translates to “six and fifty”…
I could probably come up with a more examples of this kind but now I just want to say thanks so much for this post…
Greetings from Austria, Thomas
16.10.2009, 9:02 pmI’m pretty bad in remembering numbers, but other than that they are my friends and I never had problems with them. ;) However, I totally agree that long telephone numbers are way easier to read when they are split into smaller groups of figures. It also grates on my eyes when there are several phone numbers listed on a website and their formatting is absolutely inconsistent.
25.10.2009, 7:47 pmThe login system of you bank is really confusing. For my bank it looks like this: http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/1970/ingdiba.png
I think it’s a bit user-friendlier. What do you think about it? I’m not sure about whether it helps that you have enter the PIN by clicking on the numbers on the screen which are arranged like those on a ATM. But the way it is presented which numbers you have to enter is quite useful, isn’t it?
Great article as not enough knowledge is in the public domain. Would you be interested in creating an effective Persona for a Dyslexia and/ Dyscalculia so web developers, and product developers in general, have more information than what is available currently? Would be much appreciated.
22.02.2010, 12:01 am