Thread by @wipinsanity

@ravelry The more I read this, the worse it sounds. This is also a one-two gut punch to people with disabilities: framing the staff as hard-working heroes who want to make things accessible but it's rllyrlly tough...

@ravelry ...While simultaneously implying to the unaware, non-disabled audience that the complaints are unreasonable because look how amazing everyone else thinks the new site is.

I'll get more specific.

@ravelry Point one: "There is no magic bullet for designing websites to accommodate the wide range of vestibular disorders and visual needs"

@ravelry With a little accessibility jargon thrown in for extra reassurance of expertise, this makes it sound to the uninitiated like full accessibility is some impossible unicorn to accomplish. This. Is. Not. True.

@ravelry Companies all around the world, every day, manage not to give lots of their users headaches with their site designs. Of COURSE balancing different user needs isn't easy - taking accessibility into account means extra work, and there's a lot of cool stuff designers mustn't do.

@ravelry But a sort of 'magic bullet' does exist: it's to build accessibility into the core of your design concept from the beginning. Ravelry didn't do that. And now, predictably, they have a mess, and are saying that patching up what they've got is nigh impossible.

@ravelry Point two: Accessibility is mostly about adding alt text.

At least, I must assume this is the intended communication point, because most of the first paragraph about accessibility was devoted to alt text.

@ravelry And that's...not...what accessibility is. I mean, yes, it's important, but it's not even close to the whole thing. You don't just add alt text and - bam! - magically your site is good for screenreaders.

@ravelry Reports have been coming in from users that the site is fundamentally unusable by screenreaders, e.g. they can't even read the text on the homepage. Adding alt text is not going to fix that problem.

@ravelry Point three: Ravelry has record-breaking signup and usage stats because of the redesign.

@ravelry Coming right after points one and two, this is a real kick in the teeth to disabled users. It makes them feel a) like they have nothing to complain about (despite clearly having a lot to complain about), and therefore...

@ravelry ...b) Rav staff are heroes because they're doing some accessibility fixes; and also c) the likelihood of Ravelry continuing to fix accessibility problems is slim to none since apparently the accessibility problems aren't affecting the bottom line.

@ravelry There's some additional disturbing information to be found in this blog post which I suspect was communicated rather unintentionally.

@ravelry First thing: Ravelry has been tracking its accessibility audit score for only a month, when Livia's 'story of the new look' blog post clearly states that the redesign has been going on for over a year.

@ravelry Nothing says 'accessibility was an afterthought' to one's audience like saying testing accessibility was slapped on at the last minute after everything was basically done.

@ravelry Also, as the accessibility experts I partner with say, simply running an automated audit does not give you the whole story of whether your site is accessible. You need (knowledgeable) human assessment, too. Mom and Pop shops can get away with just automation. But Ravelry? No way.

@ravelry Second thing: "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."

@ravelry The use of the present continuous tense here ("are writing") tells us that giving the new components accessibility at the core is something which is only happening now, i.e. *after* the new design has been launched.

@ravelry So from this, I take it that the plan of action was:
1. Figure out what the new visuals are going to be.
2. Roll out the new visuals. (The site will be just as non-compliant with accessibility as it was before, but it'll at least look niftier.)...

@ravelry ...3. Create a new design system and new components which have accessibility built in.
4. Migrate the new visuals over to the new design system and components, thus achieving full accessibility and more maintainable code and pages in the future.

@ravelry In this, two extremely serious mistakes were made:
a) Accessibility only comes in halfway through the process; during the technical part, rather than at the design part.
b) New visuals were chosen which actually pushed the level of accessibility BACKWARDS. Badly.

@ravelry You know that classic "do no harm" principle that doctors are supposed to follow? Accessibility on a site should be like that too. Companies aren't supposed to make things *worse* with a redesign.

@ravelry And even if the redesign hadn't worsened accessibility, it's still not okay to launch a big design change without positively impacting accessibility, and expecting people to wait until the new design system and components are written "from scratch". (It sounds like a long wait.)

@ravelry Third thing: On June 1, Ravelry tweeted that they had record-breaking sales numbers in May because of the PANDEMIC. But on June 26, Ravelry blogged that they had record-breaking sales numbers in June because of the REDESIGN.

https://twitter.com/ravelry/status/1267485684836831235

@ravelry (Or at least, it sure sounds that way, since they pointed out a correlation between the redesign launch and the doubling of signups, and then immediately talked about how great the June sales numbers are looking.)

And this kind of disingenuousness is, frankly, slimy. :(

@ravelry To sum up: I don't believe for one single second that Ravelry INTENDED to harm disabled users. But I do believe that they weren't *considering* them. Now, that's admittedly bad. But the key is, what people *do* when confronted with evidence of this unconscious bias.

@ravelry Do they admit the mistake? Express contrition? Put action to their words and immediately start fixing their mistake without making excuses? If yes, then that's a path forward.

@ravelry But if there is no such admission; if defences are raised, if excuses are made; if no true attempt is made at understanding the core problem, but instead attempts are made to downplay the problem...that's when things go south.

@ravelry I *get* how tempting it is to get that defensive, and to justify to yourself the path you WANT to take. But when you do that, you hurt people. And in Ravelry's case, when you do that, you're going against your core principles. Which makes it even worse.

@ravelry Which brings us to where we are now. So, @ravelry: Please listen very carefully. The path you have been taking so far is not good. It is not bringing resolution. It is not making people happy. You are hemmorrhaging goodwill and brand loyalty.

@ravelry Yes, accessibility improvements are happening on the site. (Yay.) However, it's not enough yet, and the behaviours and excuses that accompany them are very disturbing. Users are literally pleading with you to do better because they know you can.

@ravelry You can keep trying to smooth this over, and y'know what, it'll probably work! I expect a massive percentage of your audience has very little appreciation and understanding of accessibility. They're going to believe you when you say you're doing your best and things are great.

@ravelry But...do you really want to go down that path? Screwing over a marginalized group like that? Please. Apply the same principles of anti-bigotry to ableism as you've been to homophobia & racism. Recognize what you're doing, and stop it. Acknowledge it to your community. And fix it.

@ravelry In hindsight, apologies: using the phrase "extra work" upthread implies that ignoring accessibility is the default, when of course my whole point is, the exact opposite should be true. What I truly meant by "extra" is, "compared to what non-compliant folks are USED to doing.")