Diversity Question

Hello,

We received an issue to try to incorporate gender diversity into our
personas. We have tried to do this but would like to discuss whether the
gender neutral plural causes reading difficulties.  Please review the
proposed persona below my signature before Thursday so we are prepared to
discuss this.

More information about the importance of pronouns and how to handle them is
at https://www.mypronouns.org/how

Thank you,

Rachael

Tal: A Student who has Dyslexia and Impaired Eye Hand Coordination

   -

   Problem:
   -

    As a slow reader it takes me ages to read through badly structured text
   and I often miss important information.
   -

   Works well:
   -

    The newsletter has headings so I can find the important information
   quickly.

Tal has been a student in Israel for the past year. Tal’s Fashion Design
course is challenging but fun. Tal loves the creative aspect of the diploma
and would rather be drawing than writing. Tal has moderate dyslexia, which
affects their ability to cope with complex text. Tal sometimes finds
working out how words are pronounced when they have many syllables.  This
can make it hard for Tal to grasp the meaning of some paragraphs. Tal often
has to reread content. Tal has several projects to complete as part of
their portfolio. The one that worries Tal most involves a written
assignment to research Post-war fashions and their impact on today’s
designs.
6.3.1 Tal Scenario 1: Logging In

Tal's use of the library catalogue when using the college computers often
fails at the first attempt. This happens when Tal can not remember their
password. Tal keeps putting in ‘afib61’ rather than ‘afid16’ and can not
see the mistake. The error message on the webpage does not help because it
announces that the username or password are incorrect. Tal is not sure
which one is wrong. Luckily, when Tal is on their own laptop, the browser
settings allow Tal to save their password and they are able to
automatically log in.
6.3.2 Tal Scenario 2: Finding Accessible Content

Having navigated the online library system, Tal finds a paper on the
subject they want. Tal downloads it in pdf format. Tal likes to use a
text-to-speech app to read the content aloud, but when Tal tries to
highlight the text nothing happens. Tal discovers the document is actually
an image and yet there is no warning this is the case. Tal can not find an
alternative accessible version of the paper. This means Tal has to use
optical character recognition to virtually scan the paper. It is not
totally successful leaving Tal with gaps in the information. Tal finds the
process makes it even harder to complete the assignment on time.
6.3.3 Tal Scenario 3: Filling in a Form to Ask for an Online Journal Article

Finally, Tal finds an online journal that has another article, but there is
a form that has to be completed in order to cite the paper. Tal starts the
process, but realizes they do not know the author’s name. Tal returns to
the web page with the article to copy and paste the name. Sadly, when Tal
comes back to the form, all that they filled in is lost. Tal has to retype
the whole thing again.

(Adapted from MOOCAP Erasmus + Persona CC-BY-4.0
http://gpii.eu/moocap/?page_id=33)
6.3.4 Tal Scenario 4: Overlooking Important Information

Tal is a very slow reader and often sounds out words. Tal has low auditory
processing skills so cannot speed up the text to speech app. To manage
their busy life, Tal tries to scan and skip through the massive amounts of
content, emails and newsletters to read the key parts. Sometimes however,
Tal cannot find important content because it is buried inside lots of other
content. The headers and visual layout of the content does not always guide
Tal to the information they need.

This all means that Tal worries about missing something important and
sometimes that happens. For example, Tal’s daughter's elementary school
published a weekly newsletter with interesting stories about activities and
important announcements. It contained information that school was ending
early one day, but it was buried under less important information about the
school activities. Because it takes Tal so long to read each word, they did
not manage to read the whole newsletter and did not know that their
daughter was coming home earlier than usual. As a result, Tal was not home
in time and their daughter was left waiting outside for over an hour.
6.3.5 Scenario 5: Pressing the Correct Button

Tal struggles with impaired eye hand coordination, so precise movements are
hard. Tal often touches the wrong button or number when typing on a small
phone screen. With Tal’s letter recognition difficulties this makes typing
in codes or text very unreliable. Tal also confuses left and right so often
presses the off button in place of the volume. In most phone interactions,
Tal makes some form of mistake, such as loading a new video when trying to
expand the screen of the window.. To use an application successfully, Tal
feels it needs to have a consistent back or undo function.