Ravelry and accessibility: Remaining accessibility problems

(Last update was April 1 2021 5:03pm ET.)

  • UPDATED: The baseline new design is still causing eyestrain, nausea, dizziness, and headaches/migraines for many. Possibly seizures as well, although data is presumably not available on that, since it's unlikely that the people who did experience seizures from the new site have returned to test whether there's any improvement. Notably, this inaccessible design is still the default, meaning that it has to be seen by users (thus putting them at risk) before they can select any changes or preferences that would work better for them. Specifically:
    • Any of the alternative modes (to date: Herdwick, Balwen, and system-adjustable).
    • Any of the accessibility-related settings, such as getting rid of the drop shadows.
  • NEW: The elimination of the Classic Ravelry option has, for many users, brought back a whole mess of accessibility problems that they were previously able to avoid by using Classic. Important note: There was widespread reporting from users that Classic was not identical to the pre-redesign Ravelry. It looked extremely similar to many people, but it, like the redesign, still caused health issues. (I remember seeing a post in one of the forum threads explaining how the staff had technically achieved the toggle, and that this hack was not the same thing as truly reverting back to the original look; if I find that explanation again I will post it here - however, this tweet by @sdeutsh summarizes the issue.)
  • The skip-to-content keyboard navigation improvement will not work for Safari users unless they first change their settings to enable it (it is apparently possible to override this on the website side via CSS, but this has not been done).

No comments: