So the new Ravelry design launched a week ago. The actual design doesn’t bother me; they can make it look however they want. I think it is a little too childish, but, whatever. This is what bothers me, a lot:
- There is no evidence they did any sort of accessibility planning or thought about accessibility at all during the design process
- Beta testers say they reported issues regarding the new design causing headaches/nausea and this was clearly ignored
- Once the new site was shown to give a significant number of users health problems, some very serious (seizures, migraines, nausea, visual problems) they made a few minor tweaks and let you opt-out of the new design - but you have to navigate to that page through the new design which some people physically can’t do
- They have not apologised or explained, at all
You can’t have the first word on your Twitter bio be ‘inclusive’ then be this fucking ableist. I’m disappointed and I’m sad, because I loved Ravelry. I would really never have believed that they would act, and respond, like this.
Yes, they’re a small team and they worked hard on this etc etc etc. But they are MAKING PEOPLE ILL. If they’d immediately rolled back the changes and said ‘we’re so sorry, we fucked up’ then that would be something. But no apology, and only the barest minimum attempt at mitigation. It’s all very, very poor.
Please be advised that the Ravelry website is currently a risk for people who have seizures/migraines/headaches/vertigo and be wary.
So far on tumblr, I’ve seen next to no discussion about these issues, and they’ve been happening for a solid week now. A quick search of “ravelry” on here shows me petty preference posts (“ooh new yarn emojis!!” or “omg I don’t like the colors, just because”) but people are nearly silent about the legitimate accessibility problems the site’s new contrast and white screen space is causing. I’ve read multiple reports of flare ups, from seizures to migraines to blurry vision, caused by even a couple minutes of exposure to the site.
So far Ravelry has “pulled a tumblr.com” by acting like the change is irreversible, and they’re using silence in response to pushback as a professional facade.
There’s more active discussion mostly on instagram and twitter, so finding your fiber craft circles there can help you see the broader scope of the issue. Better yet, make some noise on here and don’t let this become a haven for people whose only concern is aesthetics.
Actual friends of mine have been affected by this.
Reblogging again bc I rediscovered something from instagram. User evanitaewm has ravelry theme fixes in their linktr.ee (in their bio near top of page) that may be helpful
I have to admit that I’ve been pretty silent here on tumblr….because I’ve been dealing with things going on Instagram but @subversivelystitched is totally correct-we need to talk about it here.
The redesign has sent several people into full blown seizures. Has sent people to the hospital (which is bad enough on it’s own) but is even worse right now as hospitals are epicenters for Covid19.
Ravelry took forever to respond to any of these (100% legitimate concerns) and when they did respond, it was with a half-assed non-apology that pointed out how “good everything was for 92% of their users”. Which is crap.
And before anyone comes on here and says “but it’s a free website, you can’t expect them to hite someone for accessibility programing”. The website makes revenue- they get a percentage of sales from the patterns that designers sell on their platform. People have always donated to website as they loved the Ravelry team and the community they have built on there.
So yes. I will hold Ravelry up to the higher standard. Even as they continue to fail. There is no excuse to continue to cause pain and harm when literally hundreds and thousands of people have been publicly voicing how it’s hurting and the very easy way to fix it : roll back to the old design until the new one is fixed.
Additionally, the Ravelry team has made it increasingly difficult to give proper feedback and have shut down the thread on Ravelry, even has gone so far to block and delete certain vocal people on there. That is a clear sign of them not wanting to listen.
