ADHD, diagnosed at 27, so I can absolutely relate.

Adhd, Ocd, Asd here. Also Talkback reads it as B.V.I.

I know some folks that are autistic (self included, although I am self diagnosed). We run zoom calls for trivia and chat. if you are interested, I can connect you. It is better to have a name for the struggles we have instead of an unknown. Having a name gives it boundaries, limits it. Allows us to work with it or around it. Glad to hear you were understood and not dismissed. Welcome to the Neurodivergent community.

Yes. Autism and ADHD diagnosis at age 40 through questionnaires as the usual tests are very visual. I also am taking medication, methylphenidate, for my ADHD and it is wonderful! It is so so good for my brain not to be a mess constantly and to be able to just manage things a lot more easily, articulate what is going on, especially with the autism on top of it, and more importantly to articulate what I need. The other thing to keep a look out for is rejection sensitivity dysphoria. I don't have an official diagnosis for this as it is not necessarily officially diagnosed by people, but it is very common among people with ADHD and the medication really does help. It is as if any kind of criticism or rejection is like you broke the world and feeling things like that since childhood really causes issues. It is like you are wondering when the next hammer will strike, wondering when you are going to be hit next, and you will do anything to stop that level of pain. This is a big issue because it makes you a lot more vulnerable to abuse due to people-pleasing in order to stop the pain. It also makes it more difficult to know your boundaries and to set your boundaries and people will take advantage of this both consciously and unconsciously. Hope this helps.

Lol, I was wondering what the title meant.
I was diagnosed with ADD at age 18 and went through vision loss a few years later so it’s not completely the same as your situation, but I can definitely relate to what you mentioned about validating the issues you faced early on. I struggled a lot in school, and knowing why and being able to recieve medication and treatment was great.
For me personally, it was a bit of a journey to find the right medication and dosage. Of the three big A D H D meds, I found they had varying effects on me, ranging from not really helping, to kind of helping, to really helping but giving me crippling side effects, such as zero appetite, constant on edge jittery feelings, horrible irritability, and so on. Im looking at you Concerta, lol. So it may take some trial and error to find what works best for you, type and dosage.
In regards to vision impairment and A D D, it can be kind of difficult. If I lose focus while Voiceover is reading a text, I have to go back and read it again, often multiple times. This definitley happens a lot when you have sight, but it’s different somehow when using screen readers. Also I struggle with writing a lot, I get halfway through a sentence or paragraph and lose focusand have to arrow back up and see what I wrote and what I was thinking. Again, this happens to the sighted as well, but it’s just more difficult with a vision impairment.

My son! He’s 14 and we only just started suspecting ADHD (he’s not officially diagnosed but that’s because everywhere is backlogged to heck) but so many things we had just assumed were “blind things” are like “huh maybe this is also an adhd thing”

Then filling out behavioral health intakes like “does your child look at people when they speak?” And it’s like. Well yes but also no.

I'm completely blind and also have ADHD. I've found that if it's not my blindness, it's the ADD that makes things difficult, such as losing things, walking and not paying attention to where I'm going, etc. It hurts when people chalk this up to my blindness, because that's not the case at all.

Was diagnosed with ADHD (inattentive subtype, afaik this was formerly called ADD) last year. It certainly explains a lot of behaviors/issues I've had, both during childhood and as an adult, but I still often feel like I'm not "ADHD enough", if that makes sense. (I know this is not a healthy mentality and I'm trying to get rid of it). For example, I had crazy violent meltdowns until my early teens, and stereotyped behavior (couldn't do reciprocal conversation, would talk incessantly about my "special interests" etc) so everyone figured I was on the spectrum. I've done away with all that, so I'm assuming it was just a result of blindness, which can look a lot like autism particularly in children. (There's quite a bit of research on this subject out there).

My inattention doesn't manifest in a way where I have *difficulty* concentrating on things, necessarily; rather, I just sort of "bounce" (get distracted by something else or just space out and daydream) whenever sustained mental effort is required. I'm *capable* of exerting that mental effort, and I will when a deadline is looming, but normally just...don't. It's so bad that I will either find a distraction that doesn't require a lot of mental effort/focus, or sit there doing nothing for extended periods of time (hours, occasionally) and then feel shitty because I haven't accomplished anything. (I don't mean "doing nothing" in the sense that I'm relaxing; it can get pretty stressful. I am just literally at a loss for what to do). Sometimes I still haven't finished an hour-long podcast I started in the morning by the end of a day where nothing much of importance happened. Schoolwork usually gets put off until the day before it's due (I often get good grades on individual assignments despite this, so I'm clearly on point when I actually apply myself). I'm 25, and *still* unemployed. Failed out of college twice. Like that.

I've always considered myself to be a lazy/ineffective underachiever because of this, and I've made it a point to try and be kinder to myself by not dwelling on how it's my "fault", while still recognizing that I really need to improve/get my shit together. I've been trying meds for several months now, and think I may have found one that helps. I too would not be surprised to learn that ADHD and things of this nature are underdiagnosed in disabled people, since a good number of people still seem to think we're incapable of doing *anything* worthy of note.

TLDR yeah, same. Sorry for the wall of text.