Skip to main content

What Ravelry’s Post Tells Us About Accessibility in America

In terms of being inclusive of voices from historically marginalized people, Ravelry has been doing a great job in recent years. Though Ravelry is not a political entity and is instead a forum for knitters, crocheters, and other people who dabble in the fiber arts, they have taken steps to highlight people of color and to prohibit what they consider hate speech from Trump supporters. (Though some might say this latter move infringes on free speech, as a private business they are exercising their own right to free speech. However, that’s a topic I’m not going to address in this post.) On June 26, 2020, Ravelry issued a statement concerning accessibility. I’ve copied the relevant points below, though the original post is longer:

Ravelry's new design launched just last week, and we already have so much to share with you. Today we want to talk about readability and web accessibility, some site news and announcements, post-launch updates and fixes, and a new feature for Pride. ️‍

Readability

When it comes to Ravelry's readability, we know that the increase in contrast and white space and the change of color palette has been a vast improvement for some while being a degradation for others. For those of you who are having issues with the New Ravelry design, we’re truly sorry that aspects of the site are not usable for you. Your experience on Ravelry matters so much to us, and we're working hard to make our site work as well as possible for all of you. There is no magic bullet for designing websites to accommodate the wide range of vestibular disorders and visual needs, and we are being as thoughtful as possible in our approach and research in order to make the best decisions we can to help the most people.

We are currently conducting a readability survey and have sent it to specific groups of Ravelers with different visual needs. When we have more complete data from the readability survey, some of the post-launch changes we made may be adjusted based on that data.

Web Accessibility 

Since early May, we have been using Treo.sh to track changes in our Google Lighthouse Accessibility audit score. This score does not paint a full picture, but it is helpful in making sure that there are no regressions as we write new code and replace old code. It is also affected by photos that do not have alt text (photos only have alt text if the uploader adds a caption). On pattern pages, we saw a drop of 2 points out of 100 on launch day and have since boosted the score by 23 points beyond what Classic has.  Again, these metrics can only tell one small story, and some pages are still behind Classic by one or two points, but the goal is to track progress and avoid regressions.

There is still work to be done, and this is part of our phased approach. We are being deliberate about making real improvements to the accessibility of Ravelry. As Livia wrote in The Story of the New Look, the goal of this phase was to retain our existing HTML while visually aligning the look of Ravelry with a new design system and new components, which we are writing from scratch with accessibility as a core feature from the start, as one should be doing in 2020.

……….

Post-launch Updates and Fixes

Since we launched Ravelry's redesign last Tuesday, we've been working  to make changes, fix bugs, and adjust elements of the site based on feedback from you.

Here are some of our updates from this past week:

 Our login screen is now still; when not logged in, you can press the play button (at the bottom left) to see the balloons and clouds animate, and pause it again whenever you like.

 If you participate in our groups and forums, you probably noticed that reply button formatting, borders, dividing line, reactions, line height and more were changed to provide a better reading experience.

 In your settings (also linked through your Profile dropdown), there are two new options in the accessibility section, and available for everyone using New Ravelry:

You can toggle black drop shadows on and off site wide.

You can choose whether text on Ravelry displays as Inter, your system font, or Helvetica, which data shows is a very legible font for those with dyslexia.

Just this morning we improved Advanced Search for screen readers, beyond what the Classic site provided. If you have feedback on using a screen reader with Advanced Search, please get in touch!

We launched a new bug reports system for the new Ravelry that will allow us to collect problem reports much more efficiently (and thus, implement fixes more quickly!). You’ll see the option to report a bug in the Profile drop-down menu in our new design. Including your email address is optional, but if you do choose to include it, we can follow up with you if we need more info and you may also receive a notification when it is fixed (we don't announce all fixes). If you have a bug to report while using in the Classic site, you can do so with our monthly Classic Bug Reports thread on the For the Love of Ravelry forum.

We created a new form for feedback about Ravelry's new look; you can fill it out here! it is also linked on the front page so that the majority of Ravelers who do not use the forums and have been contacting us via other means will be able to easily access it. This feedback form, rather than the forum threads, is how we will gather and track feedback about the New Look change going forward. If you have additional feedback or questions about Ravelry's new look or the survey itself, please feel free to email us.

We added an option to change back to the Classic Ravelry site; you'll find the toggle in your Ravatar/Profile menu (the toggle to switch back to our new/current Ravelry will also be in the Ravatar/Profile menu while in Classic view). We will not make changes, updates, or add new features to the Classic site, so it will retain the same look and browsing experience that folks are used to. If you utilize the Classic site, we set a cookie so that the specific device that you used Classic on will get the Classic login page. The cookie, and thus the setting, is long-lived, but your browser cookie settings may override this. 92% of active Ravelers are using our New Ravelry site, and we're working to keep improving it so that it is the optimal Ravelry for 100% of you soon. We have committed to giving six months' notice when it is time for us to retire Classic.

...........

When I read this post, I got excited! “Accessibility” hasn’t reached the “hot-button word” status in the same way that “diversity” has, so to have a company acting transparent about their endeavor to be accessible was encouraging. Then I saw an Instagram post that took a different view of Ravelry’s statement. This Instagrammer stated that they were taking their account down from Ravelry, not because they were annoyed with Ravelry being so liberal that they were “bending over backward” for needy disabled people, but because the site wasn’t doing enough. This Instagrammer took the stance that Ravelry was just doing lip service to people with disabilities and wasn’t taking quicker action. Instead of commending the statement, “There is still work to be done, and this is part of our phased approach. We are being deliberate about making real improvements to the accessibility of Ravelry,” the Instagrammer claimed that Ravelry should have taken disabilities into account when designing the site to begin with, and in the time being that they should default back to classic mode (an opt-in instead of opt-out approach).

Before getting more in-depth with my response to the points this Instagrammer made, I want to explore what Jay Dolmage terms “The Most Generous Interpretation.” Instead of immediately going on the defensive and pointing out how people misunderstand disability, The Most Generous Interpretation searches out the good intentions of the individual or institution in question (144). In Ravelry’s case, the post makes me believe that they did have disability in mind to some degree when revamping the website, as they refer to an “increase in contrast and white space.” High contrast is supposed to help people with visual impairments, so this doesn’t seem to be simply an aesthetic choice.

Also, in Ravelry’s defense, there are a lot of various disabilities to consider when designing anything! Though the site advanced in terms of visual impairments, they missed a chance to include people with other sensory impairments. Whereas this diversity is what makes disability culture so vibrant and invigorating, those who don’t appreciate diversity may view disability as too much of a challenge even to bother accommodating anything. I view this point as the reason why I got excited about Ravelry’s statement. Though the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was passed three decades ago, enforcement is so sporadic that many companies put off accommodations or only do the bare minimum. With this transparent statement, and with The Most Generous Interpretation in mind, Ravelry seems to be doing more than the bare minimum for people with disabilities.

Returning to where I agree with the Instagrammer, I do think that various disabilities should have been accounted for in the first place when designing the new website, and the reason disabilities generally aren’t accounted for in the first place is because of the lackluster enforcement of the ADA and because many businesses don’t view people with disabilities as a viable market.

As far as the ADA goes, before the document gets into detail about how a business should be accessible, they provide an exception: “Full compliance with the requirements of this section is not required where an entity can demonstrate that it is structurally impracticable to meet the requirements. Full compliance will be considered structurally impracticable only in those rare circumstances when the unique characteristics of terrain prevent the incorporation of accessibility features” (Department of Justice 6). This exception is reasonable at face value. We wouldn’t want a building to collapse and harm people in an endeavor to make it accessible, because then the building would be accessible to no one upon its collapse. However, this exception also provides language businesses can easily hide behind in avoiding restructuring their building for accessibility purposes. What does “structurally impracticable” mean in terms of terrain? Consider how a person reluctant to make an area accessible can interpret this term. This, and especially other ADA language concerning financing accessibility renovations, smacks of “Give accessibility the good ol’ college try! Then if you think you can’t do it, just give up because it’s too much effort or cuts into your profits.” Another possible point of contention comes with the phrase “To the maximum extent feasible.” The document applies this phrase “to the occasional case where the nature of the existing facility makes it virtually impossible to comply fully with accessibility standards through a planned alteration” (Department of Justice 22). Carrying out this phrase means that if an area can’t be made accessible to wheelchair users, it should be made accessible to those with other impairments. Though a “maximum” is here to include all persons with a disability, there is also the minimum of nothing.

Though I’d like to give these terms The Most Generous Interpretation, in reality people can apply the most reductive interpretation in an effort to save themselves the trouble and the money.

The irony with these two selections is the wording of “rare circumstances” and “occasional case.” When researching this issue, I came across multiple articles vilifying people with disabilities who were phrased as “serial suers.” One man in Florida sued businesses over thousands of infractions, yet he was styled as a money-grabbing villain, not a victim of a broken-down system that doesn’t enforce the ADA or an advocate for disability rights (LaGrone). I assume that the wording I’m pointing out in the ADA is meant to encourage businesses to strive for the utmost in accessibility by anticipating that there will be very few cases where accessibility can’t be provided for all. However, as the case stands now, America hasn’t reached the level of accessibility where the language of the ADA can hold true.

Right now, 30 years after the ADA has been passed, I don’t have much sympathy for businesses or other institutions that ignore or are ignorant about accessibility because it’s their own fault if they don’t appeal to part of their customer base. To quote one such business owner: “I never in my wildest dreams thought a website would have to have accommodations . . . My builder knew about ADA compliance for my physical location. My web developer did not” (Behnken). Though web accessibility isn’t clearly laid out in the ADA and its inclusion is currently being contested, why not make a website accessible anyway? This business owner knew about ADA compliance, but didn’t think to apply it in any other way, which shows she was willing to put in no more than the minimum effort required. Should this business owner be sued due to her website being noncompliant? Perhaps not. Should she have made her website accessible in the first place because she’ll get more customers that way? Why not! I appreciate the desire to own a business, and I love shopping at small or locally owned businesses, but part of the challenge for business owners is to know all of the risks involved and to follow guidelines, the ADA included.1

Perhaps one reason business owners don’t think about being accessible is because they don’t think people with disabilities are a viable customer base. After all, there is the common (mis)conception that disabled people are on welfare or get disability benefits from the government.2 However, statistics speak otherwise. The U.S. Census estimates for 2018 states that there are 40.5 million disabled people living in America. That’s a large number on its own, but then consider their family members who recognize the importance of accessibility, which boosts the number of potential customers. Furthermore, there’s the economic clout of this demographic: "Organizations such as the National Organization on Disability estimate that Americans with disabilities represent more than $200 billion in discretionary spending — not including their extended families and support networks, who are also a significant market segment" (ODEP). 

These numbers refer to only a year, so consider how much of an impact a loyal customer can have. A business may think that they only turn away a couple of disabled people per year, but over the years those numbers add up. There may be only one serial suer that makes the news, but there could be many more customers lost due to ADA noncompliance that don’t come forward. Businesses that are not accessible turn away both one time and repeat customers due to what could be a one-time fix. Accessibility isn’t a constant drain on resources. Once an area becomes accessible, the renovation pays for itself through drawing in disabled customers and their families/loved ones.

Rather than viewing accessibility as a financial burden or another hoop to jump through, the business should consider people with disabilities as a viable consumer base. If a business wants a profit, why wouldn’t they want every customer possible to have access to their goods and services?

1. In fact, given the necessity of online shopping due to the COVID-19 lockdowns when I wrote this post, accessible websites are more crucial than ever.

2. Another damaging misconception is that people with certain disabilities don't use the internet at all. This is especially true for the blind community.

Comments

Post a Comment