Why iFocus

Time is currency, and your attention is even more valuable because it is both; your time combined with your focus. You have a limited amount you can spend at once, and yet there seems to be an unlimited amount of things incessantly seeking our attention. It’s enough to make a neurotypical person feel overwhelmed. Try multiplying that feeling a few times – that’s approximately what it can feel like trying to navigate the internet with a cognitive difference such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, anxiety, and Autism. Maybe you know someone affected by one of these; chances are you do, and you might not even know it. They might not even know it.

My background is in marketing and design, but the more I learned about marketing, the more I disliked it. Something felt wrong, intentionally manipulating others, hijacking their thought processes to impose my client’s message on them – usually “buy my product or service.”

Feeling ethically compelled to distance myself from marketing, I became more selective about my employers. I started working in the education industry and found this was a much better environment for my talents. I began learning much more about designing for accessibility, which opened my eyes to a whole new world. Through my family, I had some knowledge about differences such as autism and colorblindness, making me aware of differences in perception such as certain colors don’t translate as expected to some people.

Then a couple of years ago I was diagnosed with my own differences – one of those is that I have ADHD. It’s funny because I thought everyone else was struggling to stay focused, just like me.

Looking around me, it seemed everyone else was as easily distracted as I was – a sea of people of all sorts and ages glued to a little device in their hand, in various stages of utter immersion.

With so many people living in a state of constant distraction, I’m puzzled why blatant executive function hijacking (implemented online with such things as pop-ups, animated ads, auto-played sounds, etc.) seem to be the status-quo rather than an accessibility issue.

I realize there is a lot of money to be made by distracting people into a purchase, but if we are to support universal accessibility – internet for all – cognitive differences should always be considered. When developing accessible user experiences, be sure to prepare layouts that support accessibility options like reader modes, screen readers or other immersive reading technologies.