6 ms·

The biggest disability I wish people would explore in their accessibility is issues with impulse control. So much of the web is designed to keep us hooked and I

The biggest disability I wish people would explore in their accessibility is issues with impulse control. So much of the web is designed to keep us hooked and I firmly believe that people that have issues with impulse control have a good handle on the obvious stuff moreso than people who don't because we are aware of the concept of choice more. But what about when it's your credit account that is sabotaging you by design? Can't cancel the account unless you call a phone number and talk to somebody. But if you want to increase your credit limit, you can just click a button on the website and validate how much you make a year and boom, you have a $7000 limit when you get $900 a month. So if you have a phone phobia and an issue with impulse control and you maybe stress spend, you now have a system totally against you by design. It's great to explore the world as someone with visible disabilities. Also do so with neurodivergence.

sergioisidoro 3y ago
I'm skeptical about calling it a disability, because a lot of these mechanisms and dark patterns are made to prey on everyone's nature. Some people may more susceptible to those stimuli, but I don't see it a disability, but as natural neurodiversity. These are plainly predatory and unethical marketing practices, for everyone!
- concordDance 3y ago
  A lot of disabilities are a sliding scale with fuzzy grey areas. E.g. visual impairment goes all the way from "struggling to distinguish colors" and "vision is distorted enough that it's impossible to correct to 20-20" to "can't see hand in from of face"
- Retric 3y ago
  Pay to win video games really are ultimately targeting a small demographic as a tiny percentage of the audience results in the majority of their income. The thing is they don’t know who specifically is vulnerable ahead of time, so they cast a wide net.
- coldtea 3y ago
  Neurodiversity is a nicer sounding term, to mask the fact that underneath there are certain life affecting disabilities - often severely life affecting (if it was just harmless "natural neurodiversity", it wouldn't translate to reduced life expectancy. Not to mention millions of cases which need constant assistance to make it througn everyday life). That it also targets "everyone's nature" doesn't mean it's not a bigger issue for people with certain neurodiversities affecting impulse control more. Same way a badly maintained road might also inconvenience a perfectly abled walker, but it is far more burdensome to a disabled person.
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    > if it was just harmless “natural neurodiversity”, it wouldn’t translate to reduced life expectancy. Without disagreeing that the space of neurodivergence includes some life affecting disabilities, this generalization would also prove that race is not just harmless “natural diversity” but that being of a non-dominant race is also a “life affecting disability”. There are other explanations for correlation with reduced life expectancy than individual disability.
    - concordDance 3y ago
      > that being of a non-dominant race is also a “life affecting disability”. One thing worth noticing is that a society tends to be designed for the convenience of the dominant ethnicity, people of a different culture are going to have a somewhat harder time.
      - exoverito 3y ago
        [flagged]
      - red-iron-pine 3y ago
        cultures can be taught; no amount of learning is going to make a black person white, or make either japanese.
    - coldtea 3y ago
- DoughnutHole 3y ago
  Whether or not something is considered a disability is really matter of severity. I believe this applies to both physical and mental conditions. If someone has reduced mobility in their arm due to some past injury that might not be considered a disability if its impact on their life is low. If that impairment is so severe that they have functionally lost use of that arm then it could easily be considered such. I don’t consider my ADHD a disability, but it is an impairment with regards to impulse control. But someone else’s condition could be much more severe. Someone with bipolar disorder or manic depression can easily go through a bout of extreme suggestibility which can wreak absolute havoc on their life. Categorising many mental disorders as harmless “neurodiversity” feels like a form of forced positivity imposed to alleviate the stigma of some disorders at the cost of dismissing the serious impairments inherent to others.
  - kayodelycaon 3y ago
    I’m am bipolar and neurodivergent doesn’t even scratch the surface. Hypomanic episodes are expensive because I have barely any impulse control. No amount of defense in depth can stop me from getting access to money. I have to use a different strategy: I prepare for these episodes months in advance. I needed a new car, so I set myself up to be fixated on a new Prius when the episode got bad. Nothing less than new would do because I wouldn’t have the presence of mind to vet a used one. This put a hard limit on the financial damage. The highest trim Prius with all of the options is cheaper that many other cars I could have bought. The end result was a car $10,000 over my maximum budget. It has far too many buttons, but it didn’t ruin me and I love the car. All in all, a successfully managed episode. This is one of hundreds of problems I deal with and plan for.
    - HWR_14 3y ago
      Can you not get some trusted 3rd party (I assume a lawyer or accountant is the professional option) to limit you. Legally prevent you, for instance, from spending X (or borrowing money) on a car?
      - kayodelycaon 3y ago
- HumblyTossed 3y ago
  Respectfully, you are not trauma informed if you feel this way. Plenty of kids in foster care who have been traumatized by bios have impulse control issues due to their mal-developed amygdala.
  - concordDance 3y ago
    The impulse control issues could also be genetic, inherited from the parents.
  - HWR_14 3y ago
    I'm skeptical but curious. Trauma caused mal-developed amygdala which causes impulse control issues? That sounds like one of those things that could be true or hokum. Like, would it show up on brain scans. And do they commonly do those on people? That said, I'm sure you have a direction you can point me - at least some search terms for Google.
    - HumblyTossed 3y ago
      Simply Google childhood trauma effects on the brain. Yes, it shows up on brain scans. Children in abusive households, be it physical, emotional, neglect, etc are in near total fight flight or flee mode constantly. This absolutely effects the amygdala.
joker_minmax 3y ago
This also ties into a problem with usability in general. I don't need an impulse control issue to accidentally click ads or accidentally allow notifications on websites. But clicking the wrong thing could cause huge problems in anyone's life when things are made near impossible to use for anyone without 20/20 vision and years of experience. That's why it's so difficult for elderly people to use these things - even Google Chrome now is a nightmare without even going onto a website. But oops now you're subscribed or scammed.
93po 3y ago
Impulse control in general is something that would vastly improve nearly everyone's life to a massive degree. Don't instinctively reach for your phone. Don't add cookies to your shopping cart. Don't thoughtlessly lie to get out of an uncomfortable situation. Don't open hacker news. I have spent the past couple months with my time off work working on this all day every day. It's made a massive improvement in my life, my habits, my routine, and working towards the things that are meaningful in my life. Obviously I'm not faultless - I'm still here on a quick break.
- Tanoc 3y ago
  I tend to have pretty good impulse control, aside from reading and wanting to eat certain foods. And being aware of that makes it frustrating when I see people engage in harmful or negative behaviours such as ordering from Doordash and paying twice as much as a steak dinner for a basic burger. It seems so easy to me personally to refrain from doing so many of these things, and that makes it that much more apparent to me how many systems in modern life are so heavily exploitative of and designed to destroy impulse control. A lot of people had their willpower eroded over time and never noticed, and because of that they see nothing is wrong. It's not a great thing to witness actual fully grown adults being just as impulsive as their five year old children.

sergioisidoro 3y ago

I'm skeptical about calling it a disability, because a lot of these mechanisms and dark patterns are made to prey on everyone's nature. Some people may more susceptible to those stimuli, but I don't see it a disability, but as natural neurodiversity. These are plainly predatory and unethical marketing practices, for everyone!

concordDance 3y ago
A lot of disabilities are a sliding scale with fuzzy grey areas. E.g. visual impairment goes all the way from "struggling to distinguish colors" and "vision is distorted enough that it's impossible to correct to 20-20" to "can't see hand in from of face"
Retric 3y ago
Pay to win video games really are ultimately targeting a small demographic as a tiny percentage of the audience results in the majority of their income. The thing is they don’t know who specifically is vulnerable ahead of time, so they cast a wide net.
coldtea 3y ago
Neurodiversity is a nicer sounding term, to mask the fact that underneath there are certain life affecting disabilities - often severely life affecting (if it was just harmless "natural neurodiversity", it wouldn't translate to reduced life expectancy. Not to mention millions of cases which need constant assistance to make it througn everyday life). That it also targets "everyone's nature" doesn't mean it's not a bigger issue for people with certain neurodiversities affecting impulse control more. Same way a badly maintained road might also inconvenience a perfectly abled walker, but it is far more burdensome to a disabled person.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > if it was just harmless “natural neurodiversity”, it wouldn’t translate to reduced life expectancy. Without disagreeing that the space of neurodivergence includes some life affecting disabilities, this generalization would also prove that race is not just harmless “natural diversity” but that being of a non-dominant race is also a “life affecting disability”. There are other explanations for correlation with reduced life expectancy than individual disability.
  - concordDance 3y ago
    > that being of a non-dominant race is also a “life affecting disability”. One thing worth noticing is that a society tends to be designed for the convenience of the dominant ethnicity, people of a different culture are going to have a somewhat harder time.
    - exoverito 3y ago
      [flagged]
    - red-iron-pine 3y ago
      cultures can be taught; no amount of learning is going to make a black person white, or make either japanese.
  - coldtea 3y ago
DoughnutHole 3y ago
Whether or not something is considered a disability is really matter of severity. I believe this applies to both physical and mental conditions. If someone has reduced mobility in their arm due to some past injury that might not be considered a disability if its impact on their life is low. If that impairment is so severe that they have functionally lost use of that arm then it could easily be considered such. I don’t consider my ADHD a disability, but it is an impairment with regards to impulse control. But someone else’s condition could be much more severe. Someone with bipolar disorder or manic depression can easily go through a bout of extreme suggestibility which can wreak absolute havoc on their life. Categorising many mental disorders as harmless “neurodiversity” feels like a form of forced positivity imposed to alleviate the stigma of some disorders at the cost of dismissing the serious impairments inherent to others.
- kayodelycaon 3y ago
  I’m am bipolar and neurodivergent doesn’t even scratch the surface. Hypomanic episodes are expensive because I have barely any impulse control. No amount of defense in depth can stop me from getting access to money. I have to use a different strategy: I prepare for these episodes months in advance. I needed a new car, so I set myself up to be fixated on a new Prius when the episode got bad. Nothing less than new would do because I wouldn’t have the presence of mind to vet a used one. This put a hard limit on the financial damage. The highest trim Prius with all of the options is cheaper that many other cars I could have bought. The end result was a car $10,000 over my maximum budget. It has far too many buttons, but it didn’t ruin me and I love the car. All in all, a successfully managed episode. This is one of hundreds of problems I deal with and plan for.
  - HWR_14 3y ago
    Can you not get some trusted 3rd party (I assume a lawyer or accountant is the professional option) to limit you. Legally prevent you, for instance, from spending X (or borrowing money) on a car?
    - kayodelycaon 3y ago
HumblyTossed 3y ago
Respectfully, you are not trauma informed if you feel this way. Plenty of kids in foster care who have been traumatized by bios have impulse control issues due to their mal-developed amygdala.
- concordDance 3y ago
  The impulse control issues could also be genetic, inherited from the parents.
- HWR_14 3y ago
  I'm skeptical but curious. Trauma caused mal-developed amygdala which causes impulse control issues? That sounds like one of those things that could be true or hokum. Like, would it show up on brain scans. And do they commonly do those on people? That said, I'm sure you have a direction you can point me - at least some search terms for Google.
  - HumblyTossed 3y ago
    Simply Google childhood trauma effects on the brain. Yes, it shows up on brain scans. Children in abusive households, be it physical, emotional, neglect, etc are in near total fight flight or flee mode constantly. This absolutely effects the amygdala.

joker_minmax 3y ago

This also ties into a problem with usability in general. I don't need an impulse control issue to accidentally click ads or accidentally allow notifications on websites. But clicking the wrong thing could cause huge problems in anyone's life when things are made near impossible to use for anyone without 20/20 vision and years of experience. That's why it's so difficult for elderly people to use these things - even Google Chrome now is a nightmare without even going onto a website. But oops now you're subscribed or scammed.

93po 3y ago

Impulse control in general is something that would vastly improve nearly everyone's life to a massive degree. Don't instinctively reach for your phone. Don't add cookies to your shopping cart. Don't thoughtlessly lie to get out of an uncomfortable situation. Don't open hacker news. I have spent the past couple months with my time off work working on this all day every day. It's made a massive improvement in my life, my habits, my routine, and working towards the things that are meaningful in my life. Obviously I'm not faultless - I'm still here on a quick break.

Tanoc 3y ago
I tend to have pretty good impulse control, aside from reading and wanting to eat certain foods. And being aware of that makes it frustrating when I see people engage in harmful or negative behaviours such as ordering from Doordash and paying twice as much as a steak dinner for a basic burger. It seems so easy to me personally to refrain from doing so many of these things, and that makes it that much more apparent to me how many systems in modern life are so heavily exploitative of and designed to destroy impulse control. A lot of people had their willpower eroded over time and never noticed, and because of that they see nothing is wrong. It's not a great thing to witness actual fully grown adults being just as impulsive as their five year old children.