12 Days of ADHD 8: Intermission
Sunday 24th October, 2021

October is ADHD Awareness Month. I've decided that I'm going to use that as a writing prompt, and to set myself a challenge. For the next twelve days, I'm goinga to write something about my experiences learning about ADHD as a very recently diagnosed adult.

After writing at length into the wee hours two nights in a row, I'm pretty mentally tired today and actually sleepy for once, so I'm going to seize this opportunity to fall asleep at regular people hours. I have things I want to write about, but nothing I can get done quickly. So today, I come with no content, and this post is essentially cheating, but the idea is to stick with a habit as opposed to worrying too much about the quality of output of said habit.

However - I did get some feedback about the readability of this blog and have since implemented a light mode. Was interesting to hear from another person who experiences Palinopsia (the ghosting/after-effect thing related to visual snow) that they are the opposite to me, in that bright text on dark backgrounds are quite difficult for them to focus on.

I also have been reading voraciously about visual snow still, and thinking of extra adaptations I could make to make it easier and more enjoyable for me to read again. I realised today that the easiest thing for me to read on is in fact my smartphone! The narrow width screen, and ability to scroll so that the line I'm reading is always at the top, helps a lot with reading, as I'm not getting "lost" between the lines due to so much aura, glow and after-image in the gaps between lines and words. It's a shame that it is a light emitting source - even with an orange filter, reading on my phone will keep me awake. Which is unfortunate because it is so much easier for me to read with than paperback.

I have a kindle, and that's okay, but it just feels like another book to me. Wouldst that it had "highlight the line I'm on" or continuous scrolling (as opposed to page turning) on the older Kindle Paperwhites!

I went down a rabbit-hole researching e-readers and their accessibility features whilst writing this, so may have some more fleshed out thoughts at a later date. I'm starting to wonder whether using some of the tricks, techniques and tools that dyslexic people use may help Make Reading Comfortable Again for people with noisy vision.