Dacey Nolan talks about epilepsy and her barriers on the web

Dacey says, among other things "If you're going to include animated GIFs, I would recommend them not playing by default, but allowing the user to click a play button." Thanks to Tenon for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Transcript Nic Hi, I'm Nic Steenhout. And you're listening to the accessibility rule sound bites, a series of short podcasts. with disabled people explain their impairments in what barrier they encounter on the web. First, I need to thank Tenon for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Tenon provide accessibility as a service. They offer testing, training and tooling to help fix accessibility fast. Today I'm talking with Dacey Nolan. Hi, Dacey, how are you? Dacey Good. How are you? Nic I'm good. We were on a panel discussion about the state of accessibility recently, and now we're on my podcast together. We just can't get away from one another. Dacey No, there was a lot of fun. And I learned so much he had really great perspective on accessibility. Nic Thank you. Let's go for this. What's your disability or your impairment? Dacey Yeah, so I was diagnosed with both ADHD and epilepsy. But today I'm going to be talking about my experience with epilepsy. So for those that don't know, Epilepsy is a neurological condition that affects the nervous system. So when nerve cells or neurons send information to your brain, they do this by releasing electrical impulses. If the electrical activity suddenly increases, it's called a seizure. So this can occur with many neurons are rapidly releasing those electrical impulses. So this can cause uncontrollable symptoms. And in most cases, it is life threatening, if the person is unconscious and hits their head, or there is something called unexplained death and epilepsy. So when most people hear the word seizure, they probably think of what's called a grand mal seizure, which is the unconscious and the violent muscle contractions or convulsions. There's so many different types. I actually have what's called juvenile myoclonic epilepsy. So you get it when you start going through puberty. And that accounts for 7% of the types of epilepsy and is actually the most diagnosed. So we're very, very, that's a put in perspective, all the different types. So there's also different types of seizures. So again, the grandma being one with the convulsing, there's also one called absent seizure, and it used to be I think, call it was called something else. But that's mistakenly for daydreaming, there's also gelastic and Christic seizures, which is uncontrollable, laughing and crying, and then tonic clonic, which is like muscle stiffening. So for me, I have grand mal  seizures, where, you know, I'll go unconscious and have the convulsions as well as I do have muscle spasms, so my arms will like, move without me actually like doing anything. And they'll be like really big jerks. Like sometimes, like if I'm putting makeup on in the morning, my arm will like fly away, and I have mascara all over my face. So each person is different in regards to what type of seizures they have, but also what triggers their seizures. So my triggers includes stress, lack of sleep, alcohol consumption, certain sounds, and I am photo sensitive. So photo sensitivity, that's a weird word to say,  is when seizures are triggered by flickering or flashing lights. Nic Thank you. Now I want to actually sidestep the main purpose of the show and I'd like to maybe do a short PSA as to what should someone do when they come across someone who's in the middle of a grand mal seizure? Dacey Absolutely. Thank you for asking. Especially there's so many misconceptions. I know, when my mom was growing up in the 80s, they used to tell people to hold their tongue. If y'all have heard of that, that that's completely false as person with epilepsy, having a grand mal seizures, not going to severe their tongue, it's physically impossible. But what you do is first and fo