An engaging and informative chat with Priyanca D'Souza, a senior user researcher with multiple access needs.
We discuss dyscalculia, number anxiety, mental health and the impact of assistive technology on understanding numbers.
We also talk about intersectionality and the complexities of managing multiple access needs and common service barriers.
"We can't just ignore information about people because it's inconvenient or makes them too messy or complex. People are complex."
This episode is dedicated to Vicky Teinaki.
#Episode links
#Timestamps
00:41 (41 seconds)
Personal experience with numbers
Priyanca shares her mixed feelings about numbers, her struggles with practical use, and specific anecdotes about her difficulties with time and memory.
07:53 (7 minutes and 53 seconds)
Intersectionality and inclusive design
Priyanca talks about intersectionality in inclusive design, her lived experience with multiple access needs, and the challenges of addressing these in design processes.
10:11 (10 minutes and 11 seconds)
Assistive technology and its challenges
The use of assistive technology, its benefits, and the challenges it can present, especially in handling numbers and complex tasks.
14:34 (14 minutes and 34 seconds)
Mental Health and number anxiety
The mental health implications of number anxiety, including personal anecdotes and the broader impact on daily life and work.
29:07 (29 minutes and 7 seconds)
Designing for neurodivergent users
Tips and advice for designers on how to consider neurodivergent users, especially those with dyscalculia and number anxiety, from the start of the design process.
32:04 (32 minutes and 4 seconds)
Real life Implications and advocacy
Real life implications of design decisions and the need for advocacy for people with multiple access needs.
36:45 (36 minutes and 45 seconds)
Financial literacy
Navigating finances and learning to manage money with dyscalculia.
41:53 (41 minutes and 53 seconds)
Barriers in services
Some of the barriers Laura and Priyanca have experienced when using services.
51:54 (51 minutes and 54 seconds)
More design tips
More tips for designers on how to design services for people with multiple or conflicting needs.
#About Priyanca D’Souza
Priyanca is a Senior User Researcher in the public sector, specialising in Accessibility and Inclusion. She has recently worked on complex projects for GDS, Cabinet Office, Defra and Companies House.
She aims to use her lived experience of access needs to embed inclusive practices within teams to drive forward ethical and inclusive design which better meets people's needs. Enabling people to empathise with the barriers our users can face and finding opportunities to alleviate and change things to make experiences better.
She is fascinated by the impacts different barriers and conditions can have on cognition, behaviour, people’s interactions and experiences of the world. She has a background in Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology, which she combines with lived and varied practical experience.
#Transcript
Laura (00:00:00):
Hello and welcome to the Accessible Numbers Podcast, a show about designing services for people with dyscalculia and mass anxiety. I'm your host, Laura, and I'm a content designer with lived experience. Today I'm joined by Priyanca D'Souza. Priyanca is a senior user researcher in the public sector specialising in accessibility and inclusion. She has recently worked on complex projects for the government digital service, Cabinet office and company's house. She has a background in neuroscience and psychology, which is pretty cool. And as you'll soon find out, Priyanca is refreshingly honest about her lived experience and access needs. In this episode, we talk about dyscalculia and co-occurrence number anxiety and mental health, living with multiple access needs and the ways assistive technology can help or hinder how we understand numbers. For more on how to present numbers clearly visit accessiblenumbers.com. You can follow me on LinkedIn or Bluesky by searching Accessible Numbers. I can't wait for you to hear it. Enjoy. Priyanca, how do numbers make you feel?
Priyanca (00:01:10):
Thanks, Laura. I have mixed feelings about numbers. It's complicated, you could say. I feel like we need numbers for proportions in recipes, music, exchange rates, transactions, taxes, but I often can struggle when I have to use numbers practically. Over the last few years in particular, I've noticed my inability to remember passwords and pins and codes. You can tell me a code and I will forget it moments after you tell me the code. I did lots of maths in my education and I got myself to really understand statistical methods and formulas, so on paper, I'm okay at maths.
(00:01:56):
But I think there's a difference between when you're able to sit down and have time to work out a problem, say in an exam compared to in context and under pressure, having to manipulate numbers and do sums and work things out. There was a time in 2023 when I had my phone set to a time in the future, only 17 minutes or something like that, that it became quite complicated because I had to mentally subtract the time, which got a bit confusing because sometimes I'd forget that my time... I was like, what's the actual time?
Laura (00:02:40):
What happened?
Priyanca (00:02:45):
I think it was generally okay, but I don't know. I was just living in the future for part of 2023 for several months.
Laura (00:02:57):
Oh, wow. My car doesn't automatically update with the time, you know when the clocks go back and forward?
Priyanca (00:03:03):
Yes.
Laura (00:03:05):
It doesn't sound as intense as how you had it, but that does... It gets in the way sometimes when you think you're an hour later things. No, but I think you made a really interesting point though about how having dyscalculia or struggling with numbers doesn't necessarily mean you're not good at maths. You can be terrific at maths. You could be a scientist, you could work in astronomy, astrology or whatever, and you might struggle to tell the time. I actually met somebody who did work... I think he was a physicist perhaps or something. He contacted me after one of my talks and said, "Look, I do maths every single day as part of my job, but I really struggle to tell the time." And it's just really worth highlighting how everyone's difference is unique to them and what I struggle with as a dyscalculic, you perhaps maybe have a different way of dealing with things, so it's really key to highlight that message.
Priyanca (00:04:08):
I struggle with left and right. Remembering what those words actually mean. Obviously I know that I have to use the hand and north-east, south-west, but when someone gives you a string of verbal directions or when you are trying to give someone else directions, even though you know what they refer to. And I did neuroscience for most of my degree, and you're learning all these different things which are located in different parts of the brain and this is in the left hemisphere, this in the right hemisphere, and some things are backwards, but I still struggle with left and right even now, even after learning to drive.
Laura (00:04:52):
Absolutely. A lot of people might just think that having dyscalculia affects numbers and number interpretation, but it actually impacts spatial awareness and wayfinding as well. You make a really good point there about directions left, right. Finding yourself in space as well as a thing for me, so things like reversing a car or having things mirrored, it's funny because you wouldn't think that that was the case, but directions obviously you have the number element of a direction and you also have a spatial element of a direction as well, and then sometimes they can be together.
(00:05:37):
And so I have really poor wayfinding skills and it actually manifests online. Obviously there's directions offline, finding something, going for a walk but actually wayfinding online happens to be quite frustrating for me depending on how good the service is. When I say wayfinding, I mean I can get lost in tabs, get lost in information, especially if websites have really poor information architecture, it can be really confusing and disorientating to use a website that's full of information that has got poor signposting, so wayfinding online is actually a thing as well, and people with dyscalculia sometimes can struggle with wayfinding. It's really important to highlight all of the different kind of nuances around living with dyscalculia.
Priyanca (00:06:40):
I think I also having quite a limited working memory. If there's too much friction to do a task or there's too many buffers for you to do the thing that you're actually trying to do, then I will just forget what I'm doing and then I'll go and do something else. And there's so many things where it's like, oh, I started to do this, but I hit a blocker or a barrier where it told me my account was invalid and now I need to phone someone. And then it's like, oh, but it's like 8:00 in the morning and they don't open until 9:00. I will then go do something else and then I won't phone them for maybe months.
Laura (00:07:19):
Absolutely. Absolutely. Now, I followed you for a while now and we've had several attacks in the past. I follow you. It sounds quite weird, doesn't it? But I mean by that is on LinkedIn and when it was Twitter, obviously it's Twitter no longer, and I saw your talk at Accessibility Scotland, I think that was in 2023, and you had a brilliant talk on intersectionality in inclusive design. I just wondered if you could just talk about what that means for our audience.
Priyanca (00:07:53):
Yeah, sure. I was inspired to talk about intersectionality, partly inspired by noticing examples of where intersectionality or the coexistence of multiple access needs wasn't considered in the design process. And this is also inspired by my own lived experience as someone who has multiple access needs, so I'm neurodivergent but I also have a long-term health condition and a pain condition. If I'm filling in a form, it often asks if you belong to certain minority groups or have access needs, and often it only lets me pick one, so it's like there's an assumption baked in that you could only be experiencing a single barrier at a time.
(00:08:41):
It doesn't allow me to be a woman, to be working class Asian, neurodivergent, and to have a long-term health condition at the same time. It's like pick your favourite barrier. Sometimes I look at the context and think which of these barriers is going to affect me the most for this situation? But I feel like it shouldn't be on me to have to inaccurately change how I'm defining myself. And I think this isn't just a definitions thing, it also translates to provision of support and provision of actually addressing people's access needs as they are.
Laura (00:09:22):
You make a good point there around having to make a choice about which need is most important for this kind of service that you're working with or accessing, so you have to internalise all of these things. And almost reverse engineer-
Priyanca (00:09:38):
Yes.
Laura (00:09:40):
... what support you need by choosing the need, which is more a necessity for the service, which is completely weird and it's not fair whatsoever.
Priyanca (00:09:52):
When I was at university, I went through the disabled students' allowance process to get some assistive technology and some support, but some of the tools I was recommended when I was actually trying to use them to do my uni work were basically in conflict with each other and wouldn't work simultaneously. For example, the read aloud programme didn't cooperate well with the speech recognition programme or the mind mapping software couldn't be operated with keyboard controls or speech recognition. I love diagrams and I find them really helpful as a neurodivergent person, and I like how they map things out visually, but many of these programmes had not been designed to be operated by keyboard commands. And so much of assistive technology is built upon keyboard commands and keyboard operation or alternatives to using a mouse. That was quite frustrating really, that I couldn't use some of the programmes that I was recommended even though they knew that I had all of these access needs and that's something that should be considered.
(00:10:57):
I'm not like an edge case, I'm not an anomaly. I think it's relatively normal for people to have multiple barriers, multiple access needs, multiple health conditions like occurring in the same person and having lived experience of needing to use assistive technology every day for most of your life is quite different from being aware of a tool and what it does. You might recommend that someone uses a set of different tools, but actually considering how these tools might interact with each other if you're trying to use both of them at once. For example, if you're using something like Dragon, which is a speech recognition programme or you're using JAWS or NVDA as a screen reader programme, how is that going to interact with other tools that people need to use?
Laura (00:11:46):
What a vital point to make. And I do wonder whether these technology companies speak to one another. It doesn't seem like it, does it?
Priyanca (00:11:54):
Yeah, it almost seems... That's so true. It's almost like the incompatibility is baked in. Even for example, people trying to use Microsoft applications on iOS machines, they're like, oh, it feels like I'm crossing rivers or crossing hemispheres. It just doesn't feel natural, and I think... This is quite a quirky one for me, but I found that all of these different applications all have colour schemes that clash with each other, but to the point where I can find it quite visually overwhelming, so I'll just turn the colour off completely. That's maybe not really numbers, but it's more about sensory experience though, that it's like you're trying to find a way to do things in a way that's accessible to you and colour might even... It might start impacting you if you have to look at a screen a lot.
Laura (00:12:53):
Absolutely. This actually pays a nice route into dyscalculia and the co-occurrence with other neurodivergent conditions. According to the Dyscalculia Network, around 20 to 60% of dyscalculics might also have ADHD, dyslexia, autism, down syndrome, dyspraxia, many, many, there are a lot. And the way they describe it is they say dyscalculia can come with a friend.
Priyanca (00:13:31):
I like that. A plus one or two or three.
Laura (00:13:35):
Yeah, exactly.
Priyanca (00:13:36):
Dyscalculia is polyamorous.
Laura (00:13:41):
Myself, so I'm dyscalculic, I'm also dyslexic and dyspraxic, all those words are awful to say.
Priyanca (00:13:52):
They're so difficult to spell as well.
Laura (00:13:54):
Exactly. It's so ironic that these words are used to describe a neurodivergent condition and then the words themselves are unusable. I find it's really hilarious, me trying to spell all these words. I also have something called Irlen syndrome, which is a light sensitivity disorder. We were just discussing how the colour of something can be distracting and unusable, and I really struggle with this as well, which we'll talk about a bit later. How do you think that living with dyscalculia or mass anxiety can affect people with existing disabilities or neurodivergent people?
Priyanca (00:14:34):
I think it can have a massive impact on people's lives because numbers are absolutely everywhere in your lives, like managing a budget, managing time, and I think people who are disabled already have a lots of barriers. It might impact them, for example, if they're trying to get an education, trying to get a job. You might have an interview scheduled and if they haven't communicated the information in a way that's accessible for you, you might get the time wrong of that important date. I know that in my final year of university, I turned up to one of my exams a day early.
(00:15:14):
And it's better that it was a day early and not a day late, but I was so hyper... I had so many exams and I was so hyper focused on the actual revision that I had no sense of what day of the week it was anymore. I was just in this tunnel. I love the term, the spiky profile when it refers to neurodiversity and about people having exceptional strengths, but also having things that they really struggle with and actually acknowledging that rather than that superhero narrative, which I think it can place a lot of pressure, I think on neurodivergent people to not have weaknesses because everyone has things that they struggle with. I think mass anxiety and number anxiety might also make people afraid of certain experiences like travelling because they're worried about how they might get somewhere, how they might get back, how they might manage money.
(00:16:21):
Understanding bills and taxes and things are often quite scary. And I know a lot of neurodivergent people are self-employed, but the amount of admin that comes with self-employment is huge and having to do all your own expenses and taxes and all these different forms and insurances, to keep track of and when they expire and when they are due for renewal and contracts and invoicing, you might be amazing with words and you might not have accounted for all the accounting that needs to be done in order to pursue a career of things that you're actually good at. I think it can impact lots of different aspects of your life. I've found with my neurodivergence that as you get older, your life gets more and more complicated. I'm glad I'm no longer in education, but I feel like there's so many different things you need to keep on top of and you need to keep track of and it's difficult.
(00:17:32):
For example, so this morning I tried to access my library account to check when my books were due so I could renew them, so in order for me to not have fines, because I've previously completely forgotten that I've taken a book out and I've had it out for months, just completely forgot because during the pandemic, I think they paused those due dates because people couldn't access libraries. The conception of me of what two weeks is for something that is outside of work and is just something random, just like a random Thursday in the future, I would just completely... It's not something that has an indent on my mind, I just won't remember it. I probably should put things in my calendar. But there's things like that, I think it can also impact if you have to take a medication every day or creating those structures, creating those routines, creating rhythms, they might be more difficult if you struggle with numbers and it's like the conceptual sense of numbers beyond adding up and subtraction.
Laura (00:18:47):
You referenced the calendar there but calendars are really inaccessible to people like us. It's so curious because I always have the same thing, which is put it in a calendar or if I'm ever talking about appointment times and dates and how inaccessible they can be, people say, oh, just put it in a calendar.
Priyanca (00:19:08):
Just write it down.
Laura (00:19:10):
And actually looking at a calendar is really hard. And I think for a long time I was looking at calendars with the wrong year-
Priyanca (00:19:19):
Oh, no.
Laura (00:19:21):
... so I was putting things in the calendar for 2025 instead of 2024, and I use my phone calendar, the calendar on my phone, so it's not like a paper one that ends in December as you keep scrolling, and then when you enter a date for any reason, you can really easily get the date wrong. What I tend to do a lot of is if I'm entering my date of birth, I put my day the month and then I put this year 2024-
Priyanca (00:19:57):
Oh yeah, I've done that.
Laura (00:19:59):
... in the year, so many things... I have a list of, I must find it, of things I've applied for or appointments I've made trying to use my date of birth as 2024. Now, usually there's an error message that appears because they're like, "Hang on, you weren't born this year." But sometimes it's gone through and I get an email or a call and they're like, "Oh, sorry, your date of birth looks wrong." This notion of you could just simply use a calendar to help scheduling things for people who struggle with numbers that can in itself be a barrier.
Priyanca (00:20:39):
I've accidentally sent meetings, oh, I think it's on Google Calendar where even if it's a work calendar, it's easy to book things in on Saturday instead of Friday. And I've sent people meetings and then had to change the time. It's like, "No, we'll not be having a meeting at 10:00 AM on Saturday. That was an accident."
Laura (00:21:00):
Or like 11:00 PM instead of 11:00 AM.
Priyanca (00:21:06):
I think it's really easy to accidentally do things digitally more so than it is on physical things. I think on a physical calendar sometimes it's much more obvious what month you are looking at. October might have autumn leaves and it might have October and big text, whereas on a phone, everything looks like the same.
Laura (00:21:26):
Exactly, yeah which is-
Priyanca (00:21:28):
Every month looks like the same month, every day looks like the same day.
Laura (00:21:33):
It's just something to highlight for our audience listening is that even sort of things you would use every day, like a calendar we might think is usable, but for some people it's not. And that compounds when you're trying to schedule an important medical appointment for example, or meeting you just can't miss, and there's already an anxiety around is this even on the right date? Have I made this on the right date?
Priyanca (00:22:00):
Because often something will have... A meeting will start at 2:00 PM, but you might be preparing for it beforehand. Sometimes I'll put a time in my calendar and I was like, is that the actual start time or is that when I thought that I need to start getting ready for this thing? And the time that it takes to get... If you have to go somewhere in person, the time it takes to go somewhere is extra executive function.
Laura (00:22:33):
Exactly. Which leads me onto my next couple of questions around assistive technology. And it's funny that you say scheduling or trying to understand how long it will take to get somewhere because this is something that has really been a strand throughout my life, which is organising transport and travel for myself. Now, with the advent of ChatGPT, I'm actually using ChatGPT to help me to understand how long I have to get somewhere and to help me.
Priyanca (00:23:09):
Oh, wow.
Laura (00:23:09):
I tried this a few months ago.
Priyanca (00:23:12):
That's cool.
Laura (00:23:14):
I don't really know how to use it properly. I just go, "Look, I have to be at this place at this time and I live here. When do I have to set off?" I use it as a kind of assistive technology?
Priyanca (00:23:27):
I think that's a really good and constructive use of these tools and I think that's where a lot of the potential could be.
Laura (00:23:37):
It's not without its errors. I'm going to say that. I also think that a search engine is a kind of assistive technology, and the reason I say that is because I use search engines to do math, to also play back the number and the amount. If I'm working on a big number, say it's like in the millions or in the thousands, I really struggle to understand what that actually means. Or I'll say this a different way, I struggle to interpret the size of a number, so I'll post the number into a search engine and I'll say, "How big is this number? Or read this number aloud." And it will read back, so I do use voiceover. I used to use Dragon, not so much anymore. And purely to help me to understand numbers and the quantities of numbers, especially money. I know you've mentioned you use assistive technology, but what are some ways you've used assistive technology to help you understand numbers and can assistive technology get in the way of that sometimes?
Priyanca (00:24:46):
That's a really good question. I find that it can be difficult to dictate numbers to speech recognition, and this might have got better, but I know that Dragon sometimes lacks common sense. It can be very helpful and useful, but for transcribing or writing down alphanumeric codes or strings of numbers, it might actually be easier to just type them in. You have to just be very deliberate with how you pronounce things and that can actually be quite challenging in itself. And I think that's an aspect of assistive technology that people often don't talk about is the mental load and the cognitive load of using these things is like you still need to think when you're using them, it's not going to do your work for you.
Laura (00:25:41):
I think that's a common misconception with people who are really unfamiliar with assistive technology that it makes the experience better.
Priyanca (00:25:53):
Sometimes it's more complex.
Laura (00:25:57):
I think there's two things. There's the experience the person has of using the assistive technology and then there's the experience of them using a service online, and those two things are not the same always. I know I've observed friends and colleagues using assistive technology that is a pain in the bum, but it enables them to use a service online and is considered a success, but for them it's not that easy.
Priyanca (00:26:28):
I wish that entering numbers using speech recognition, using assistive tech was actually easier because it is something that I wish was a better experience. As a researcher, I've come across tasks being used in recruitment processes, which involved numbers which were not accessible. There was a task which was used as part of a recruitment exercise, and it involved a written question with numbers in a table. And so a sighted person is able to see, they can read down, they can find the numbers in different columns and subtract them. The actual maths itself is quite basic maths, but if you're using a screen reader, you're going to have to listen to all of those numbers.
(00:27:19):
And it changes the nature of the task completely to something that really relies on your memory. And for you to even find those numbers and to create almost like a virtual impression of that table in your mind's eye is much, much more difficult than someone just being like, okay, I'm subtracting this number from this number. I think people should consider when they are creating information, how someone who is interacting with that information and is using a tool like a screen reader or speech recognition that modulates the experience someone is going to have. How is a screen reader going to read this information, is a question I think people don't ask often enough when they're creating and publishing content.
Laura (00:28:14):
Absolutely, it's vital information that you've said there. And I do encourage people listening if they're able to, to actually go and have a play with assistive technology, which will never really bring you 100% of the experience, but at least testing your services using a screen reader or a dragon or another assistive technology might just help you.
Priyanca (00:28:40):
Especially if the task itself is complex and assistive technology almost adds a layer of challenge on top of the thing that you already have to do. It's like, oh, this application is challenging anyway and I'm anxious and stressed, but on top of that I need to use assistive technology to interact with this experience.
Laura (00:29:07):
It reminds me of, I think it was a discussion I had recently where we can sometimes fall into the trap of thinking somebody's using our service and everything in their life is great. And the only thing they're doing in their entire life is coming onto your, I don't know, online service and doing something and there's nothing else going on. And I've fallen into this trap a few times of not considering, okay, the environment and how the person is feeling. And again, assistive technology, what are they using, even if they're just zooming in?
Priyanca (00:29:47):
They might be doing it on a bus home from work because that's the only time that they have. Their internet might be intermittent, they might be doing it on a mobile phone, they're not going to have a massive screen. You might have lots of tabs open and having to switch between, like sometimes you have to do something because it's time sensitive and you are trying to do it on your mobile and you're like, this is really tricky.
Laura (00:30:15):
Absolutely. I sometimes will just wait until I'm at a computer or a bigger screen to do certain things because I know that... I use Zoom quite often as well. I have my settings on my phone to large or extra large, I can't remember, and not all the information fits on the screen or it just is endless scrolling to get the information you need.
Priyanca (00:30:42):
I think one of the points I wanted to convey about when I was talking about intersectionality was that real people can't descope parts of their lived experience and the complexity of real lived experience still exists even if we don't research or design for it. If you're in a team and they say, let's descope this, let's add it to the backlog. All of those people with those needs and barriers will still all be there, they just won't be supported. And often these people are not very visible because I think being visible takes energy.
(00:31:22):
For example, I remember having an experience with a train that wasn't especially accessible on my way home, and I remember telling my friend and they were like, "You should report it. You should write a letter." And I was like, "I'm exhausted right now and I've got to start work soon. I don't actually have the energy right now." And that's why a lot of these, I think, organisations will sometimes say we've not had any complaints, but it doesn't mean there's no reason for people to complain. It might just be that they are so weighed down by everything else going on in their life that they just don't have the energy to raise this.
Laura (00:32:04):
Far too often I've been in meetings where somebody has said, we'll wait to hear about feedback or we'll wait to see if this works. It's so disheartening because what you've described is so true. It's like the burden is on the user to make a complaint or to raise something, or-
Priyanca (00:32:28):
They put all of that weight onto the person who already has the least power in that situation. And I think marginalised and disabled people are often already shrinking to the least inconvenient versions of themselves possible. There are some things where I need to ask for help, and they're unlikely to be things that in my lifetime I'll ever be able to do by myself just physically. For example, I have to ask strangers to help me fill up a car. I have to ask strangers for help carrying certain things if they're too heavy because I'm going to be in pain otherwise. I've sometimes asked for help and people just be like, "Oh, I can't help," like staff. There's no one else around, so I would just then have to go on a forecourt.
Laura (00:33:17):
Oh, my God.
Priyanca (00:33:22):
Forecourt, like searching for someone, searching for a willing stranger who has time.
Laura (00:33:27):
Wow.
Priyanca (00:33:28):
But I think in the UK, I think people are generally quite helpful.
Laura (00:33:31):
Doesn't that just prove that those employees perhaps haven't had training or any support themselves in what to do if... Obviously there's the right and wrong thing to do in that situation, but maybe they themselves didn't feel empowered enough to help because they've not received the adequate training. And I just think it's just not mentioned at all. I imagine in that scenario, if you're working at petrol station or in a supermarket, I just doubt that this stuff ever comes up at all.
Priyanca (00:34:04):
I think as well, I think disability and accessibility is so much more than people in wheelchairs, but you still encounter people who have a very limited and almost quite an immature perception of what having an access need actually is. For example, someone may be able to walk, asterisk, but there might be lots of situations where they can't do certain distances or it's context dependent or they have an energy limiting condition that's sometimes okay, it's sometimes not okay. And I think a lot of support provision can be quite like binary. It's like you can either have support or you're not going to get any support when actually I think something that's much more flexible and adaptable would be more appropriate.
Laura (00:35:00):
You said earlier about the whole neurodivergent superpower rhetoric being quite limiting and I think... I tell you what, I can be a real angry person sometimes, and I think something that I barely see spoken about is how being neurodivergent affects your moods. And I think perhaps for me it comes from this deep feeling of shame and embarrassment, especially to do with numbers. Sometimes that can be quite moody around if I have to do a task that I know involves numbers and it's not like I'm rational at that point where I'm choosing to have that mood swaying or it encompasses emotions.
(00:35:54):
And the whole superhero thing I think really irks me because it's like, oh, you can be neurodivergent and you can do these things and you're always happy and you make life work for you. And sometimes I am just the worst person to be around because I'm neurodivergent. It's just that you can't split... Or maybe you can, maybe some people can separate what they're experiencing.
Priyanca (00:36:25):
Dissociation.
Laura (00:36:27):
Yeah, but I'm very bad at dissociating from my current experience which leads me on to a question around mental health. Someone told me recently that they thought that number anxiety was a mental health issue and I just wondered what you thought.
Priyanca (00:36:45):
I think because numbers are so crucial to our lives, like see money and time, I think if you have difficulties like understanding and using numbers, that's going to impact you. That could impact you in lots of aspects of your life, like if you're managing your finances or... It gave me anxiety actually when I remember seeing my credit card statement and I didn't understand what was on the bill and I had to contact Amex and I was worried because of their interest fees and everything, but it was actually I was in credit, I mean in debit, which is good. But even those words, credit and debit are not especially usable or accessible. I actually find them a bit confusing. And also things like energy bills and having a lot of information that you need to deal with in your life, which almost feels like it's in another language is really tricky. I can find it quite overwhelming. You were talking earlier about mental health or trying to do things that are incompatible with how your brain works.
(00:38:06):
I can come up with lots of ideas and I really enjoy that and I really enjoy... And I'm good at different tasks and activities, but if I have to sit and complete forms, lots and lots of forms which have quite strict criteria in each box, I remember having to do that because I had to do that in order to start working somewhere but the drain it felt on my brain. I actually felt dizzy afterwards. And it's like if you know that certain tasks are going to make you feel a certain way or they're going to be really mentally intensive and something can be mentally intensive and not... Someone who is neurotypical or isn't disabled, they might not find that form challenging. They might be like, it's easy, you just have to fill in loads of information and then it's done.
(00:39:06):
But for someone who struggles with that kind of thing, you might put it off because you find it makes you anxious, you might worry more about doing it wrong or completing it wrong or making a mistake. The amount of mental energy these things take I think is often underrepresented. We do talk about how mentally draining it is to do certain things.
Laura (00:39:32):
Absolutely. And I think in terms of numbers as well, I think it's installed in us from a very early age that we must be good at numbers and the only way we could ever be successful is to have a maths GCSE. And the only way to be successful is that if you could do counting or science based-
Priyanca (00:39:51):
Times tables.
Laura (00:39:51):
Times tables. Yeah, exactly. And I think for me, the mental health aspect comes from a deep shame and embarrassment around numbers and number anxiety, and it shows up for me in a few areas. The first is time, so I really struggled to tell the time and from being a kid, I think, I don't know, I actually don't think I was screened at all for any neurodivergent condition during school.
Priyanca (00:40:20):
No, neither was I. It was only as an adult.
Laura (00:40:23):
Exactly, yeah. I learned to live with the shame and embarrassment and making my world small so that it felt safe and comfortable, so not taking part in games because most games involve numbers, same with sports. Even something like a yoga class where you have to count can be quite daunting.
Priyanca (00:40:47):
Or even following along when they're like, "Do this with your left hand, do this with your right hand."
Laura (00:40:51):
Yeah, exactly.
Priyanca (00:40:51):
Like, where am I going?
Laura (00:40:56):
Yeah, exactly.
Priyanca (00:40:58):
Dance classes with the counting and the instructions.
Laura (00:41:02):
Exactly, so where you would not consider numbers to show up, they're there.
Priyanca (00:41:07):
But pervasive, they kind of creep in to lots of different aspects of things.
Laura (00:41:13):
Exactly.
Priyanca (00:41:13):
And I think as well with interpreting time and your perception and conception of time, if I see that... When I lived in Nottingham, if I could see that the tram was going to come in nine minutes and I was like, well, it's a 20-minute walk, I will just walk home, I would perceive that as faster because being in motion for me felt comforting, even though actually getting the tram would've been faster. But there's that waiting around time as well, which it can be uncomfortable for certain people.
Laura (00:41:53):
Yeah, absolutely, it can. And in terms of transport, there's always the anxiety around it being cancelled or rescheduled or moved to a different platform. I really dread, dread trains and if I get there way too early before the train needs-
Priyanca (00:42:15):
Yes.
Laura (00:42:18):
And then I'm staring at the board and hoping it doesn't. I have to first get to the train station and then find the platform and then I'm just glued to the screen hoping it doesn't change to a different platform because it just throws everything else off.
Priyanca (00:42:34):
Before I was in Copenhagen and they have two columns and I think one column is the number of the train and another column is which platform. And I got those mixed up. I went to the wrong platform basically because I just basically misread and I was like, why have they put those numbers next to each other? That's really confusing. But I dread platform changes. And also I think I can... If I'm early, then I think that there's comfort in being early because you're there. Last year I went interrailing and I remember getting the Eurostar back to the UK and I was so afraid of missing my train, I pretty much spent all... Because you have a seat reservation and you can only get on that specific train and you also have to go through bag scanners and everything. I didn't see any of Brussels. I just spent the time in the train station. I was the first person there, I was there for ages.
Laura (00:43:48):
Absolutely. And I think this is the mental health part of it, which is something is overriding that part of the brain which is, you must stay here and wait. And I think for me it's being told off for being late so many times and I think in the working world, maybe not so much now, but I remember getting my first job out of uni and how important it was to be on time and my time management's very poor and I was often late, lost a lot of jobs and I think now it's an emotional trigger. I have to prepare. I have to be there at least maybe an hour before the appointment. If you think about how much time is wasted just by being early because you're too afraid to be late it's-
Priyanca (00:44:35):
I'm very afraid of being late for stuff, especially work when I had part-time jobs as a student and stuff, I would often turn up early, but then I would just be like, okay, now I'm just like, I've got to then... I'll go outside because it's weird if I just go into-
Laura (00:44:56):
Then you end up meandering around.
Priyanca (00:44:59):
Hanging around.
Laura (00:45:03):
We've discussed in there some problematic, I'm going to call them, service patterns that aren't quite helpful. Are there any others that you've experienced? We've discussed in the past things like sensory information coupled with numbers and how unaccessible that can be.
Priyanca (00:45:24):
I think something that I find challenging is when you have to use a string of numbers or an alphanumeric code. And I think for me as a person trying to remember or use this code, there doesn't seem to be any rationale for this code. If it's something that I have to reuse like a pin to enter a building or a room or something and there's no kind of... If it doesn't resemble a date or a year or something memorable, I will really struggle to remember it properly, even if it's just been given to me, like moments ago. And I don't know if it's possible to make a code both secure and somewhat salient so that people can actually remember it and embed it in their memory. I think that will be much more useful than giving people strings of numbers that don't... I don't have the kind of brain that can just remember random numbers.
Laura (00:46:31):
And also why numbers and not words.
Priyanca (00:46:34):
Yeah, exactly.
Laura (00:46:37):
I can't remember. I used a really obscure piece of technology and it gave me a passcode, but it gave me four short words and I was like, "Oh my god, this is revolutionary." I don't know if that's more secure than numbers, I'm not sure. But usually when you think about authentication or passcodes, there's usually an element of time associated with that, like a countdown timer. I have an app on my phone that gives me about 15 seconds to remember the code and that sort of timer brings me so much anxiety. What I often do is I will wait for it to reset to 15 seconds so that I have a full 15 seconds to get the code right.
Priyanca (00:47:22):
Interesting. Or also captures. I don't know how this... I have always found those capture things where you've got to find traffic lights really difficult. It might just be me being bad at captures.
Laura (00:47:39):
Well, some of the captures include numbers and letters. Have you seen those as well?
Priyanca (00:47:43):
Yeah, some of them are really weird and difficult and I think they are to check that you're not a robot, but I feel a robot would be better at doing them. Something I have found that has helped me though, my phone can identify... You know when you get those 2FA messages or multifactor authentication?
Laura (00:48:03):
Yeah.
Priyanca (00:48:04):
It can identify the code and just offer to copy it automatically.
Laura (00:48:08):
Yes.
Priyanca (00:48:09):
And I love that. That's such a useful small feature. I think there have been a lot of useful small hacks like the phone automatically identifying that text and copying it. And also Google Lens I find really helpful, like I'll take a picture of something and then I'll use Google Lens to select. It can be words as well as numbers, but if it's a long code like my passport number and then I can just copy and paste it rather than having to write it out myself. That's something-
Laura (00:48:44):
Yes, I love the, I think it's called maybe auto complete or something like that where you're sent a code and it automatically enters it into-
Priyanca (00:48:55):
Yes.
Laura (00:48:59):
I love those. Another one for me is like a pin reveal.
Priyanca (00:49:05):
I have to use that every time because I don't use my pin very often, so I don't remember it.
Laura (00:49:11):
Likewise, which is quite... Well, to be fair, when I used to have to enter a pin, I got my account suspended because I'd entered the pin too-
Priyanca (00:49:19):
They swallowed the card.
Laura (00:49:21):
Yeah.
Priyanca (00:49:23):
I've entered the banking app pin instead of the card pin because there's so many passwords. I feel like biometrics has meant that I actually engage with online banking much more than I did when it was all based on codes and pins, because having to enter three different codes is really challenging. I have to do it for work every day just to get into my laptop, but that's different. But for doing something that's outside, even if you need to do it, if there's too much friction, it becomes hard and I must do it often.
Laura (00:50:05):
Exactly. And that plays on the mental health aspect where for example, when we're talking about money and how important money is to people to feel like you can't access it for some reason is really stressful. The bank account scenario that I experienced was that I lost... Oh, I forgot my pin code so many times at my bank marked me as fraudulent, so I couldn't actually get a bank account with another bank for a long time afterwards because I was-
Priyanca (00:50:36):
Oh, my gosh.
Laura (00:50:36):
Yeah, so I was without money for a while and it was an incredibly stressful time. And now when I'm faced with a money challenge or I have to use my bank, that trauma comes back the stress of it all. I think this is with every information type, but let's not forget that people aren't looking at something with a completely clean slate. They might have tonnes of experience in the past, negative and positive to do with numbers and that might impact how they engage with your service.
Priyanca (00:51:08):
And also past behaviour is a good predictor and indication of future behaviour and if they've previously had a traumatic or just really unlucky or unfortunate experience that's going to impact how they perceive your experience. Even if they've never dealt with you before, that person has dealt with other services and other organisations and they might come with certain expectations or assumptions.
Laura (00:51:37):
Absolutely. Well said. I think that's what people ought to consider as well is the previous experience. It's very uncommon for somebody to use a service once.
Priyanca (00:51:51):
They're born. They use a service. They die.
Laura (00:51:54):
Yeah, exactly right. You're a user researcher and you're currently working in UK government, and I just wondered if you had any tips or advice for some of the ways that us designers can consider people with dyscalculia and math anxiety or people who are just nervous about numbers from the very start?
Priyanca (00:52:18):
I think if you are in a design team, I don't think you can expect other stakeholders to necessarily be aware of all the different access needs there are out there or the barriers that people might be facing. I've encountered questions before when trying to do research with people with hearing accessibility needs and deafness is a much more well-known disability than dyscalculia or number anxiety. I think advocating for the need to do the work and showing people why it's valuable is important, so they understand the rationale. I think including people who have dyscalculia in user research sessions, I think can be massively interesting and also useful for your teams so they can understand how, especially if your service requires people to use and manipulate numbers or comprehend numbers or understand numerical content. I think you can learn a lot from... I've said this for other circumstances as well, but you can learn a lot from people who might find it more challenging to do that specific thing.
(00:53:42):
You can also screen for things in screeners when you are putting together your participant recruitment criteria. You can look at symptoms of conditions like dyscalculia, Irlen syndrome, dyslexia, dyspraxia, and identify some screening questions and include these in your screeners. Some of the people on panels, they might not actually have a diagnosis of dyscalculia. And the thing is, it is actually quite difficult to get diagnose with various different neurodivergent conditions, but it doesn't mean that someone doesn't have that condition. Something I feel quite strongly is ignoring something doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. Not being diagnosed, recognised or treated for something doesn't mean that those difficulties don't exist and not considering or serving the needs of people who need the help isn't going to make them just disappear. We can't just ignore information about people because it's inconvenient or it makes them too messy or complex because people are complex. It's very likely that a decent proportion of your users are going to be neurodivergent, whether they are doing a specialist profession, whether they're internal staff, whether they're scientists, you're likely to have people with access needs.
Laura (00:55:12):
Absolutely. Well said again. And just on that point about official diagnosis versus self-identified, I actually think there's no difference. I think it's incredibly difficult to access official diagnosis, like you've said, and especially for dyscalculia, which seems to be really behind. I put a post on LinkedIn the other day with some stats around just how many people need help with numbers and it's staggering. I think it's something like four million people in the UK need help with numbers. And because the word dyscalculia is such an ugly word, I've come across people who don't want to say it because it sounds-
Priyanca (00:56:00):
How many people in the UK can even spell dyscalculia?
Laura (00:56:02):
Yeah, exactly. Exactly, so how are you supposed to find help if you can't actually spell the word or search for it?
Priyanca (00:56:11):
You might not have heard the word, you might not have been in circles or conversations where it's even something that's been talked about. I only found out about the condition that I was subsequently diagnosed with because I was studying those conditions at university, otherwise I might not have actually come across those things. I think they are more talked about nowadays, but I think dyscalculia is still something that people don't really talk about. You are, which is brilliant.
Laura (00:56:38):
Well, I hope after these conversations people feel a bit more confident. And I just wanted to say it doesn't matter if you don't have an official diagnosis, but you recognise these things within yourself, please don't be afraid to self-advocate or advocate for yourself. I think for me, the biggest thing in all of this is for people to just understand that numbers aren't easy and it's not always just about maths. Like I said in the beginning, you could be really comfortable with maths, but you might still have dyscalculia, you might still struggle with numbers in other ways. Was there a topic that we didn't cover today that people should check out?
Priyanca (00:57:23):
I feel like we often see advice or guidance on how to design with people who have a particular need, like a visual access needs or how to design for people who have autism but I think it's not uncommon for people to have co-occurring compounding barriers. And I think boiling a person down to a single characteristic, which may not even be relevant in that situation can mean that we miss the point entirely. For example, you might come up with a solution for people with visual access needs and then you might come up with a completely separate solution for people who have autism. It might be like, we've got a building for you with visual needs. We have a building for you with autism. That means that if you have multiple barriers, then there's no solution for you. And I've often encountered this in my life. I had to go to someone separate for issues relating to my physical access needs and had to go to a different person because I was neurodivergent, in different buildings.
(00:58:39):
But I think I've often also tried to get help for things, and this is where you talk about mental health as well, and I've been told, "You're not eligible to use a service because you're too complex." And that means that you don't get any treatment. And I'm like, but you can be having more barriers or you might be experiencing more difficulties because you are complex. It can be really frustrating if you're told that your problems are not vanilla enough or basic enough for a computer or binary understanding. And I think those people tend to fall through the gaps more because they are harder to define. And I think that's why what you're doing is really important because you're raising awareness of difficulties with numbers and the importance of making numbers accessible because I don't think it's something we really talk about. There are so many figures that impact everything from how much our shopping costs, how much our groceries are, inflation, and I don't think we actually have the literacy for that. It's not something that we are really taught.
Laura (00:59:51):
Absolutely.
Priyanca (00:59:53):
There's so much financial stuff that as an adult I'm like, how do I plan for having a pension? There's so many questions like this, which I don't actually have the knowledge for. You might not have come from a family that knows about this stuff.
Laura (01:00:15):
Absolutely. I think a lot of financial knowledge is actually passed down through family. I'm like you, I grew up working class, my parents didn't actually complete school education and I was left to manage money in finances from a very young age myself also having dyscalculia.
Priyanca (01:00:36):
That sounds really difficult. That's like proper hard mode because you might also be thinking, okay, I don't really know the full extent of what I'm doing, but I seem to be the most equipped person in this boat, so you're also responsible for other people's financial decisions.
Laura (01:00:59):
And that's something perhaps we didn't talk enough about, which is who is responsible for the money? Because it's probably not who you think it is. And the reason I say that is because I've been looking into how many children are now responsible for family finances. And there are a couple of reasons for this. And it could be that they've moved from the UK, sorry, to the UK from elsewhere. And they are learning English at school and they are often children who will translate on behalf of the parents, so they are like the ones to maybe download the app because they know English. And it could also be young carers as well are often burdened with financial responsibilities, so if there's ever a case to make numbers clearer, think about these young people who are responsible.
Priyanca (01:01:54):
You might have actual children. Children might be users of your product.
Laura (01:01:58):
Yeah, exactly.
Priyanca (01:01:59):
I think as well, on one hand, you might feel like you're forced to grow up faster because you might be having to do these things for your family who can't do them themselves. But also when you do actually become older, you're like, there's so many things I don't know. And yet you're trying to bear the responsibility of trying to do a good job while also being like, oh, I don't actually have all the information that would be helpful. And all the skills and all the executive function.
Laura (01:02:36):
Exactly. And I think there's a big assumption that people will just know, so we're not taught about money at school. Maybe you get taught about it at university if you're lucky enough to go, but there's just this massive assumption that people understand personal finance and everyone is hunky-dory. No one speaks up about being confused because then you're labelled as stupid. But in reality, we actually don't get taught about personal finance really at all, that I'm aware of, so we're just left to figure it out for ourselves and for some of us it's quite hard. It's been an absolute pleasure, Priyanca, to talk to you. And thank you for being so open and honest about your lived experience. I think it's not always easy to do and every time we talk about a lived experience, it stirs up feelings and things like that. I just wanted to say massive thank you. If people listening wanted to follow you, get in touch with you, how can they find you? What socials are you using right now?
Priyanca (01:03:41):
I'm on Bluesky. My username is just my first name, Priyanca, which will hopefully be featured here. I don't know if I should spell out my name.
Laura (01:03:53):
I'll link to you.
Priyanca (01:03:56):
It's always something where phone calls can take so much longer because I have to spell out my first name. I've got to spell out my surname. My surname has a special character in it, which just makes everything more difficult. That could be a whole other episode.
Laura (01:04:13):
Yeah, it could, couldn't it? I'm not a typo campaign. If you think you might have dyscalculia or maybe you've been recently diagnosed, you can find help and advice for children and adults on the Dyscalculia Network. Search Dyscalculia Network or visit dyscalculianetwork.com. If you want to work with me and make the numbers in your service accessible visit lauraparker.design. Big thanks to Steve Folland for editing and producing this podcast.