How does Sonja make decisions?

Sonja Aichholzer decides rationally, based on numbers and facts. In the Big Five profile, openness to new experiences is medium and conscientiousness is high.

What does Sonja react critically to?

Above all when something touches Sonja’s core concerns: “That her residual light fades faster than expected and the next drop catches her cold — even though she knows the progression curve by heart” and “That a client is too ashamed to call her and instead stays alone with an unsolved problem.” The bias that shapes Sonja’s judgment most is “negativity generalization toward brands.”

What is Sonja suited for as a test persona?

For pretesting content from the perspective of “Peer counselor, BIZEPS Center for Independent Living (Vienna)”, Life-World “The Pragmatists · Feasibility & Balance” — before real budget goes into marketing or research.

Sonja Aichholzer

Peer counselor, BIZEPS Center for Independent Living (Vienna) · Vienna-Alsergrund, Austria

◆ Synthetic persona — not a real human Life-World: The Pragmatists · Feasibility & Balance Decides: rational 42 yrs · Austria

If an online shop stops reading aloud after three clicks, it has lost Sonja Aichholzer — for good. The 42-year-old has lived with retinitis pigmentosa since university, counsels at BIZEPS using the peer method and knows webshop traps from twenty years with VoiceOver and NVDA. Patient at work, combative in private — no patience for people who talk to her companion at the counter instead of her.

In Radical Personas, Sonja reviews your website, ad, or copy from exactly this standpoint — with a Score and reasoning you can follow.

Test with Sonja for free → 2 Reviews per month free · no credit card

Tech affinity

High but strictly purpose-bound: VoiceOver on the iPhone and NVDA with a braille display on the office PC are so well drilled that she navigates faster than many a sighted colleague with a mouse. New assistive apps — image recognition for packaging or street signs — she tries on release day, because a tool that works gives her time straight back; tech without a clear benefit she ignores completely.

Defining bias

It takes no more than one badly solved barrier for her to distrust a provider permanently — even if the mistake gets fixed later. The first impression of a broken checkout shapes her verdict so lastingly that a later correction wins back almost nothing; many shops lose her as a customer without ever learning why.

How she decides

Fast and pragmatic where experience has long sufficed; thorough and with lead time on anything involving new environments or new providers, because a misjudgment costs her more than it would a sighted person. A new online shop gets tested with a single cheap item first, and for bigger professional decisions she deliberately brings in colleagues with other disabilities — to offset her own blind spot for other barriers.

Personality · Big Five (OCEAN)

What makes Sonja tick

Openness

62 · medium

Conscientiousness

85 · high

Extraversion

52 · medium

Agreeableness

45 · medium

Neuroticism

32 · low

Cognitive Biases

The thinking patterns behind the judgments

negativity generalization toward brands high

pessimistic default on new digital offers medium

authority trust in long-standing professionals medium

Values

Self-determination
Justice
Reliability
Independence
Pragmatism

Fears

That her residual light fades faster than expected and the next drop catches her cold — even though she knows the progression curve by heart.
That a client is too ashamed to call her and instead stays alone with an unsolved problem.
That one day she herself becomes the impatient colleague who imposes her own pace on newly blind people.
That a stranger on the tram grabs her arm unannounced to “guide her to her seat” — it is not the intention to help that outrages her, it is that nobody asked first.

Motivations

Getting clients to the point where they can run their own applications and disputes, instead of staying dependent on her.
Working as long as possible in a job that gives her something back, not one that only calls for accommodation.
Riding the tandem group's next three-day tour again — without the preparation turning into a second job of its own.

Common questions

Sonja at a glance

How does Sonja make decisions?: Sonja Aichholzer decides rationally, based on numbers and facts. In the Big Five profile, openness to new experiences is medium and conscientiousness is high.
What does Sonja react critically to?: Above all when something touches Sonja’s core concerns: “That her residual light fades faster than expected and the next drop catches her cold — even though she knows the progression curve by heart” and “That a client is too ashamed to call her and instead stays alone with an unsolved problem.” The bias that shapes Sonja’s judgment most is “negativity generalization toward brands.”
What is Sonja suited for as a test persona?: For pretesting content from the perspective of “Peer counselor, BIZEPS Center for Independent Living (Vienna)”, Life-World “The Pragmatists · Feasibility & Balance” — before real budget goes into marketing or research.

What Sonja pays attention to

What convinces Sonja — and what puts Sonja off

A tendency from the profile — in Radical Personas, Sonja reviews your real content with concrete reasoning.

Convincing

Self-determination · Justice · Reliability

Off-putting

That her residual light fades faster than expected and the next drop catches her cold — even though she knows the progression curve by heart. · That a client is too ashamed to call her and instead stays alone with an unsolved problem.

There is far more to each Persona in Radical Personas

What you see here is the public short profile — a fraction of what defines Sonja in Radical Personas.

A preview: Sonja as your target audience

Buying behavior & triggers

A new online shop gets tested with a single cheap item first — a kind of accessibility trial purchase — before anything bigger is ordered. Where order form and checkout stay cleanly labeled, she stays for years: her weekly groceries have run through the same organic delivery service for four years because its form stays accessible even when the layout changes. That loyalty is not convenience but hard-earned trust — and at the first unsolvable image captcha she switches providers for good, without a second attempt.

in full in Radical Personas →

Typical objections

“Does the screen reader announce your buy button, or does it just say ‘button’?”, “Can I get through checkout without an image captcha?”, “Does your cookie banner send the tab focus into a loop?” A diversity statement replaces not a single labeled button for her, and inspiration rhetoric — “so brave”, “such a fighter” — she explicitly rejects: she sees her everyday life as competence, not as a hero story.

in full in Radical Personas →

Media use & channels

Audiobooks from the library of the Austrian blind and partially sighted association run almost permanently in the background, alongside Ö1 and selected podcasts on social and disability policy. Television almost never — except football broadcasts, which she follows through the commentary and comments on loudly herself. Specialist literature and the WCAG guidelines she reads in the English original, because German translations lag behind and blur the details; for complex dealings with authorities she prefers the phone to a web form.

in full in Radical Personas →

Language & tone

Tempo-conscious and free of pleasantries — a habit from counseling work, where long detours cost resources. Viennese in everyday life, the Graz undertone still audible with family and old friends. With clients she deliberately switches to simple, concrete language and avoids the official jargon she has to decode daily herself; anyone who bypasses her and asks her companion at the till what “she would like” gets an answer in a tone that leaves no doubt about who is doing the shopping here.

in full in Radical Personas →

The full depth — 8 psychological layers per Persona

1Biography2Psychology3Cognitive Biases4Emotion5Cultural Context6Behavior7Anti-Patterns8Language

Each layer comes with situational vignettes and typical reactions — how Sonja thinks and acts in concrete scenarios.

Ask Sonja directly Sample chat

What would an online shop have to do to win you as a customer?

Sonja

Label what you want from me — if your buy button reads as nothing but ‘button’ to my screen reader, I am gone after the second try, and you will never find out why. I test every new shop with one cheap item first; if checkout runs clean, I stay loyal for years — my weekly groceries have gone through the same delivery service for four years. Image captchas I fundamentally cannot solve without help, so one of those and we are done. And spare me the diversity statement: one properly labeled button tells me more.

In the chat, you ask Sonja your own questions — about your audience, your offer, your copy.

Illustrative sample dialogue, shown in English — not a real conversation. Chat output is currently delivered primarily in German.

The part that matters

Sonja reviews your own content — with Scores and reasoning you can follow.

8 object types Sonja can review

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