simplify

Problem Statement 👀

People with ADHD, autism, or cognitive processing challenges often struggle with overwhelming interfaces on websites like social media, dashboards, and news sites.

Inspiration 🧠

From watching a television show starring an attorney who has Asperger’s, our curiosities were sparked on how autism is represented in online spaces. On further research, we realized that this area is underserved when it comes to accessible websites for neurodivergent users–designing for neurodiversity is important yet often disregarded.

As we continued our research, our passion for this project grew. We learned that accessibility principles for neurodivergent users include using clear language, easy-to-read typography, predictable formatting and layouts, intentional color choices, and avoiding pop-up ads, moving images, and flashing graphics. With this, we knew what we needed to highlight in our extension.

What it does 💻

Simplify is a Chrome extension that aims to minimize distractions and create an easier viewing experience for neurodivergent users, especially those with autism or ADHD. Right now, the extension works best on cnn.com, as that was where we spent our time tailoring our extension to.

How we built it 🛠️

For the frontend UI, we used HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for the popup interface. We used Chrome Extensions API (Manifest v3) to communicate with browser tabs, inject scripts, and handle user interaction. We used content scripting to modify the actual content of the webpages (changing fonts, disabling distractions, etc).

Challenges we ran into 😰

First, we had to limit the scope of our project. A little while into working we realized that we had to narrow down what website(s) we wanted to implement our extension on—we were originally trying to accomplish too much in a very limited amount of time.

Implementing a (seemingly) small new change such as a text magnifying feature would suddenly somehow wipe website headers that were previously there, or bring back the images that we had been trying so hard to get rid of. Since we’re using CSS, everything is especially connected to one another so implementing changes took a lot of care and time. Additionally, we did not use website scrapers, meaning we had to implement creative workarounds to fit our limitations.

Accomplishments that we're proud of 💛

SIMPLIFY! We’re proud to have been able to create something we can show and share. We're leaving HackDavis 2025 with great memories and a project that we’re really proud of.

What we learned ✏️

We learned how to make a Chrome extension! We started with zero knowledge of how extensions worked and are proud of how far we’ve come in developing our project in a limited amount of time. With this being our first hackathon / experience of this sort ever, being able to work productively with a team and see a project through from idea to MVP was exciting for us—the energy in bouncing ideas off of each other, working on different parts of the project and then coming together to share and collate what we have, discussing our problems, crying over our problems—the experience from start to finish was bonding and memorable. We also learned that sponsors and directors are real people with real experience. When we were stuck with trying to unhide the website’s header, we turned to 2 sponsors and 2 directors for help and it gave us a fresh take on what we were doing and new ideas on how to solve our problems. Watching them process and work so quickly with what we gave them was inspiring as well.

What's next for simplify 🌱

We want to add more features that will help users, such as a grayscale feature to mute the vibrancy of colors, a high contrast mode, wider options for fonts, and more. Beyond that, we want to expand our extension so that it can seamlessly be applied to a wider scope of websites, such as other news sites, Amazon, and Reddit.