Meet the Fable Community: Donna B.
- Pronouns: She/her
- Time zone: EST
- Languages spoken: English, some French
Donna is in her fifties, is autistic, and has ADHD. Her neurodivergence changes the way she sees and perceives websites and apps. She also has photophobia, which results in increased sensitivity or intolerance to light. Donna uses a Windows desktop computer and Samsung Android phone to navigate digital experiences.
Donna’s background and interests
Donna is an avid mountain biker, kayaker, and community-builder. In 2021, Donna founded a charity called Making Prom Happen, a donations-based event in Peel Region, Ontario, Canada that holds a yearly pop-up event. Graduates in grades 8 and 12 can attend the event to shop for prom formal wear and accessories at zero cost. She also volunteers with Cat Lake Friends of Animush, a charitable organization that holds free veterinarian clinics in fly-in, First Nations communities.
“We service the whole community, from Sunday through to Friday,” she says. “We do spay/neuters, wellness checks, and provide lots of other services, including teaching communities how to care for their pets and deliver their own first aid.”
Donna’s assistive technology and adaptations
On her desktop, Donna uses the TD Accessibility Adapter. It automatically mutes colors and stops any motion on websites. She will also turn on her screen reader as a last resort, if her vision is really struggling or a digital experience isn’t accessible. Donna also keeps her Samsung phone set to maximum dim and uses the built-in Enlarge Display mode.
To support her vision requirements, Donna relies on different glasses depending on the day—from blue-light lenses to prescription glasses with brown shading to dark sunglasses. Without the right pair of glasses, her eyesight becomes blurry making it impossible to focus or read.
“I found an optometrist who specializes in people with neurodivergence,” she says. “When I told her what I was experiencing she told me I needed bifocals. It’s a game-changer because that little line across the glasses tells my brain–okay, we’re switching now. The difference is amazing.”
Donna’s top accessibility pain points
When Donna encounters white text on a red background or red text on a white background it’s actually painful to read. Her accessibility tools don’t do enough to mute the colors so she will often wear her sunglasses to make everything dimmer. She also has trouble reading if words are in certain fonts or italicized. If a digital experience is painful, she has no hesitation moving on if she has the choice.
“If I’m reading a long article I’ll copy the text and place it into Word so I’m no longer on the website,” she says. “But that requires extra steps, so I do it with great resentment. And if I’m on my phone, those workarounds aren’t available to me.”
What Donna wishes more design and product teams knew about digital accessibility
Donna believes the concept of neurodiversity is so new to many people that they don’t necessarily understand the accessibility limitations. She wishes all product teams would understand that many disabilities are invisible from the outside. Thinking above and beyond WCAG helps to center digital usability for the widest range of people with disabilities.
“When I ask people who don’t know me if they think I have a disability they’ll say no,” she says. “I tell them, ‘I do have a disability, so how can you know if someone else does or doesn’t?’”
Why Donna chose to work with Fable
When Fable asked Donna to be part of the community she jumped at the chance. She loves what the community stands for and appreciates being able to contribute to the company’s authentic approach to accessibility testing.
“I did one engagement where the company was creating a persona of a neurodivergent person and they wanted to know what they had missed,” she says. “When I got out of that meeting I felt like I was 100 feet tall because I was able to contribute and find things they hadn’t thought about.”
