Kelly Hussey talks about speech input and visible element separation

Kelly says "if you have long tables and lists actually put borders on them", so she knows what she's picking up. Thanks to Tenon for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Transcript Nic Hi, I'm Nic Steenhout. And you're listening to the accessibility rules sound bites, a series of short podcasts where disabled people explain their impairment and what barrier they encounter on the web. First, I need to thank Tenon for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Tenon provides accessibility as a service. They offer testing, training and tooling to help fix accessibility fast. Today I'm talking with Kelly Hussey. How are you, Kelly? Kelly I'm good. How are you? Nic I'm good. Thanks for joining me on this podcast. We've spoken on Twitter and social media before but it's good to have a live chat finally. Kelly Yes, and thank you Dr. Prendergast for introducing us. Hi. Nic Absolutely. Thank you, Cathy. Let me jump right in and ask you what your disability or impairment is? Kelly I have cerebral palsy. And my main issues when it comes to accessing web and software is my hands suck at being hands is the joke I always make. And visual processing is an issue at times. Nic Alright, so given that your, your hands suck at being hands, what, what would be your greatest barrier on the web? Kelly Um, I don't know if this counts as a web barrier, because it's not the website fault. Dragon does not like to dictate into anything but... But word and notepad and it's frustrating. And you know what? I dropped off again didn't I? Nic No, no, you're you're in your I don't have your video but haven't got your audio. Kelly Okay. Coolio. Because videos... But yes. So my issues are dragon does not like dictating into websites, even with the dictation box. And also websites that put like tables and things up without clear boundaries of what, what is in what cell can be very annoying, Nic Right. I like that you're talking about Dragon Naturally Speaking as an issue, because I think it's important that we we look at technology as a whole rather than, you know, just websites. So if you're having problems using the web, because your preferred input method is speech to text. And that doesn't work, then that to me is most definitely a big barrier for using the web. Kelly Yes. Yes. I mean, it's not a huge deal, because I just typed into notepad, then copy and paste. Nic But doesn't that increase your cognitive load, though? I mean, why would you have to do that and take more time than to actually just do it straight? Kelly Yes, it does, definitely increase the cognitive load well. Well, the reality is, I have like this habit, tracker to do list after they use and one of the habits I have is actually remember to open Dragon for like, social media things. Because I, because I, because I can type a bit. So I just want to, like, type of quick things. Sometimes I forget, you know, this will take up half the time if you actually open the thing that lets you do it faster, Nic Yeah. So what if you were able to speak directly to a designer or developer? What message would you have for them? Kelly Well, the dragon thing I think, is more of a Nuance thing. So yeah. Mostly the idea of if you have like, long tables and lists actually put borders on them, so I know what I'm picking up. Nic Hmm. I like that. Make sure that tables and lists are obviously separated from one another. Kelly Yes. Nic Fantastic. Kelly, thank you for your time. Thank you for sharing your experience and we'll see you around on the web. Kelly Okay, that was good. Coolio.