Evidence-based conclusions about ADHD

Among the many many novelty-seeking obsessions I've had over the years, one of them was meditation. I got REALLY deep into it. Started doing it everyday. That was the closest thing to a miracle cure for my ADHD I've ever tried. I was just practicing two skills: awareness of the contents of my attention, and the ability to shift that attention back to an object of my choosing. At first, I'd get an hour after a 25-30 minute sit where I could just focus and do the things I wanted to do. With daily sits in the 25-60 minute range, I started to get continuous awareness of attention. It was like a superpower. I could actually listen to people when they spoke without getting excited and interrupting them, or getting distracted. So much of my life changed for the better. Then... I ran into some of the dark side of meditation. "Dark night of the soul" kind of stuff where tons of repressed emotions started involuntarily resurfacing, and I started getting tension headaches for the first time in my life. Ultimately I just had to stop.

And now I'm back to where I always was... trying to figure out what to do. Can't do stimulants because my blood pressure runs spuriously high. I need to checkout the non-stimulant meds, but I just haven't gotten around to it.

Yeah, the site hurts my ADHD brain to read too:

- The font is simultaneously too big and too small, inconsistent in sizes and styles between headers and sections. The handwritten font used in a few places is basically illegible to me.

- The margins/padding are too small - the text comes riiight up to the edge of my screen! Argh

- The carousel sections could just be..... all shown as regular paragraphs, one under each other... without the distracting animation... Not great for working memory, having things you want to read going in and out of your visual field! Let me scan the whole document!

- The page is full-width, all sections get as wide as possible - meaning you can have lines of text which are like 40 words long! (Longest I counted was one of the reddit AMA questions - 41 words). The line length should be limited to like 75 characters maximum. [1]

- Lots of stuff is too close together (not enough vertical padding) - like the reddit AMA questions. Why are those in an accordion and collapsed by default? What are the borders between them for - do they show the top of one or the bottom of another?

- Why do the "Source" buttons pop up a modal dialog with a snippet of reddit thread which is styled entirely different to the rest of the site? Again, why not just show all of that information on the page to begin with?

- A long page which you just have to scroll is _infinitely_ more readable than a user interface where stuff is popping in and out of existence everywhere and depends on user clicks. What if you're dyspraxic / you don't use a screen reader but your carpal tunnel's acting up?

The accessibility options provided by UserWay are a nice touch, but the little human icon at the bottom right isn't immediately obvious what it is (at least give it an "Accessibility" label). Make it _above the fold_ - top of the page. Make it one of the first things someone who would _want_ the accessibility options would spot!

I think that sites like this, where it does look like the _intention_ is to make it accessible and readable by as many people as possible, could take inspiration from the UK Gov Design System [2] and read about the principles underpinning it [3].

I've experimented in the past with making my personal blog more readable for "people with brains like me" [4]. It's certainly personal taste / meeting my own personal needs, but how I lay out information on that blog (very narrow, very linear, minimal interaction needed) is a lot different to how the ADHD Evidence Project site lays stuff out (very wide, multiple columns, stuff inconsistently in and accordions and popups)

[1] https://baymard.com/blog/line-length-readability

[2] https://design-system.service.gov.uk/

[3] https://www.gov.uk/guidance/government-design-principles

[4] https://odj.me/blog/2021-10-22-a11y

(This turned into a long comment because I'm going to send the link to u/sfaraone on reddit as my feedback :-))

I would argue that even if the effects diminish over time (and it’s true, they do), the benefit of being able to focus in class in those early formative years will pay dividends down the line. Being able to pay attention means you don’t have to play catch-up in math/English/etc later in life. The knowledge you gain in those years doesn’t go away once you stop taking meds.

I’m just speaking as someone who didn’t get diagnosed until I was in my late 20’s. Getting diagnosed and prescribed meds was truly life changing and it’s frustrating thinking back and knowing school didn’t have to be so difficult.