Dyscalculia
What is it and why do not enough people talk about it?
Have you ever been overwhelmed by numbers? When the digits on the paper or screen didn’t make sense to you, or when you find it hard to combine them?
If you answered yes to those questions or if this is a thing you experience most of the time then you might have something called dyscalculia.
Dyscalculia is a learning disorder that makes it harder to do math, but also how to read, understand and work with numbers — which we do every day. Numbers are everywhere in our day-to-day life, it occurs in time, how we estimate, how we handle money, comprehend dates, read maps, take transport, and use passwords just to mention a few things.
Dyscalculia like all disabilities is hard to generalize and presents itself in different manners. It can also affect people that have lower numeracy. It has absolutely nothing to do with intellect.
In recent years dyslexia has been widely known to the public since it is common in 1 out of 10 people. We sometimes, unfortunately not as often as we should, try to design to help people associated with those types of disabilities to comprehend words and sentences.
But very often we completely forget about the people that have that similar challenge — but with numbers. Why is that?
Dyscalculia occurs in an estimated 3 to 6 percent of the population — and if you think about it, it’s a lot of people. And that’s the ones that are diagnosed, so the number might be even higher than we estimate it to be now.
In the UK, for example, that would be, according to today's date and the percentage, almost 2 million people that we miss out on. (And how easy is it to set that number in context if you have some form of dyscalculia?)
So we understand that dyscalculia affects a lot of people and that it is still not taken into account by so many services and websites — but there is a dire need for it to be recognized.
So how do we do it?
I see it as a collective contribution in so many fields to help spread awareness and design a better experience for the people that are overlooked. There is plenty of material and education regarding the subject out there, but it takes time and the opposing argument is that it affects more urgent work.
But, what can be more urgent than helping people understand and use your product and services?
If we educate and re-design today we can benefit from the effort later.
I don’t feel optimistic — will accessibility once again be overlooked, and rather forced by the 2025 European accessibility act to make people take initiatives that change things for people with dyscalculia?
I hope not, and I’m not going to stop trying to design for it before that even though I experience setbacks. Let’s instead choose to be optimistic and do it together!
Big thanks to UX Podcast that inspired this article: https://uxpodcast.com/305-dyscalculia-chatgpt/
