ADHD Awareness Month

Every October is Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) Awareness Month, an occasion to raise awareness and support for people with ADHD. ADHD affects attention, impulse control, and executive function, and often co-occurs with other conditions such as dyslexia, anxiety, and autism.

The W3C Web Accessibility Initiative’s user story for Stefan, a student with ADHD and dyslexia, describes how multi-step tasks, dense text, and busy pages can make it hard to maintain focus. Animated adverts and pop-ups distract him to the point that he forgets what he was trying to do, and he often loses the thread on long pages without headings. He works around this by using browser reading mode to strip away clutter, text-to-speech to follow content by ear as well as eye, and pop-up blockers — though these don’t always work. Mobile apps tend to be easier than desktop sites because there’s less on screen.

Websites that work well for people with similar access needs use a simple, consistent layout with plenty of whitespace, break content into short sections with descriptive headings, avoid auto-playing video and intrusive pop-ups, respect the user’s browser settings for font, text size and line spacing, and provide a search that handles misspellings and offers suggestions instead of returning no results.