My wife is trying to drown her troubles.

The joke’s on her, I know how to swim.

Neuro-divergence is one of the least discussed disabilities from a technical and design perspective. Sensory and motor disabilities have detailed technical requirements for assistive technology. But that kind of guidance is more sparse for neuro-divergent users. Their needs are incredibly diverse, and they don’t typically rely on standardized accommodations like screen readers or other dedicated tools. Unlike deaf or hard-of-hearing users, you can't just add captions and call it accessible. Neurodivergence includes ADHD, Dyslexia, Autism. It doesn’t have a neat set of assistive technologies attached to it, which means there very few specs to follow when building software that truly supports neuro-divergent customers.

When I was working on Kindle, I helped create something called the Reading Ruler. It helps readers keep their place when shifting focus to the next line of the text. It is a digital version of the old “ruler on the page” method you might have seen a young or older reader use. It’s simple, but effective in helping people keep their place in long pages of text. The feature speeds up reading and reduces frustration for a lot of customers.

That experience stuck with me because it was one of my first insights into the world of accessibility and revealed how supporting customers with disabilities depends on being able to adopt their perspective. A few weeks ago, I wrote about how games can be great training for accessibility design. The same principle applies here. Games are full of examples where designers have to anticipate what someone might forget, overlook, or struggle to understand.

For instance, I play a card game called Forest with someone who consistently forgets to draw a card after they play one. The turn structure could not be simpler: play a card, then draw a card. And yet both of us still sometimes forget. Even “obvious” steps get lost when your attention is pulled in different directions. That’s why many modern card and board games include reminder cards or turn-order aids. They’re tiny tools, but they reduce cognitive load and keep players from feeling lost. The best designs don't need these aids at all. In the best case, the next steps are obvious given the current conditions.

Once you start noticing it, you realize that writing game rules is really technical writing. Designers aren’t just inventing mechanics. They’re balancing complexity, comprehension, memory, and flow. They’re constantly thinking: How many things is a player holding in their head at once? What’s the minimum someone must remember to keep the game moving? How easy is it to forget a step and can the game recover if a step is forgotten. This video does a great job explaining how to think about balancing cognitive load. It isn’t about disability directly, but the core idea of managing cognitive load is absolutely relevant.

If game design feels too abstract, think about cooks in a restaurant during the dinner rush. They’re preparing multiple dishes simultaneously, sequencing them so a table’s food is ready together, tracking substitutions and allergies, and mentally checking ingredient levels. They’re coordinating with other kitchen staff, listening for new orders as they come in, prioritizing on the fly, and all the while making sure nothing burns. It's a big stack of things to keep track of.

That stack is what many neuro-divergent folks experience not just in special situations, but with everyday activities. Spoon Theory tries to explain this. Created by disability advocate Christine Miserandino in 2003, it frames a person's daily energy as a limited number of “spoons.” Every task uses a spoon. When you’re out of spoons, you’re done. No matter what’s left on the list you're at the point of fatigue. Many people have enough spoons (or ways to recharge them) that they barely notice the drain. But for some neuro-divergent people, their limited number of spoons runs out fast, and tracking how many they’ve used helps them understand why they’re exhausted by things others don’t think twice about.

This connects directly to accessible software design for neuro-divergent users. When we create software, we’re deciding, sometimes unintentionally, how many spoons it takes to get something done. How much working memory are we demanding? How much information does someone have to remember? If we pile on too many things for a user has to keep track of, mistakes happen. People slow down. They get frustrated. They abandon tasks. Cognitive load is a usability challenge that needs to be overcome by anyone making a product.

So how do we build better for neuro-divergent users? A lot of it comes down to allowing for customization and keeping track of spoons. Many users already know what helps them, and they’ve configured their devices or browsers accordingly. Our job is to honor those preferences. Here are a few areas to consider:

Building for everyone means building for people whose preferences and needs aren’t the same as ours. When we design with neuro-divergent users in mind, we make the experience better for everyone, not just a subset of users. Many users who encounter barriers don’t consider themselves disabled and they’ll blame themselves for not “getting it.” Offering customization and reducing cognitive load gives all our customers a better chance of feeling successful, supported, and delighted when they use our products.

For more about building for neuro-divergent users and the Spoon Theory, checkout these resources

Thanksgiving is done and dusted and that means the starting gun has fired for holiday shopping. If you’re looking for ideas, I’ve asked my daughter (age 12) to list her top 3 games we’ve played together this year.

The Swanklyosaurus was born of Thalan Wymefeather. A result of the Arcanavian Artificer's misguided attempt to create an elegant way to travel. After years of coaxing druidic magic into the bones of an dinosaur egg, and weaving avian essence through it, the mage expected a regal servant as graceful as a swan, and resilient as stone. What hatched instead was a creature with shimmering white plumage draped over a squat, boulder-like frame, a sweeping neck ending in a beak capable of snapping spear shafts, and a tail-club adorned heavy as a battering ram. Terrified of its mismatched majesty, the wizard abandoned it in a cave.

You can find more for the Swanklyosaurus for free over on Patreon.

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