@@thespian72 Also looking for this. I find it very frustrating when a presenter says they will leave a link, and the link simply is not there. (If the presenter cares not enough to follow through, why should I bother to visit their sponsor links???)
They did. I was one of them. They just didn't want to hear a bad word about it. They didn't listen to the testers, just like they didn't (and don't) listen to the users.
@@possum4774 Oh wow, I didn't know they actually did a beta test. I remember the whole thing going down and UI/UX designers who specialised in accessibility wondering why they hadn't done the beta. So sad they didn't listen to any of the testers, it could have solved so much for them... I'm sorry you had to go through the testing to only be ignored. The whole thing was such a sh*t show.
Ravelry just doesnt seem to understand that the site has outgrown their mom-and-pop approach and needs multiple teams of people-- including UX and PR specialists.
Respectfully, the company is only 3-4 people. They don't have enough revenue to hire teams of PR people and designers to compete with huge companies in terms of user experience. Instead of supporting a small business, a tiny minority of users are are trying to destroy the website for everyone else. If I were the owners, I don't know how much longer I could go on before giving up and shutting the website down for good. For their mental health, I hope they do.
@@M123Xoxo I have one issue with your statement. Ravelry is a MONOPOLY. What huge companies do they have to compete with?!? There is no one else that has a site like Ravelry. Also, 9 MILLION USERS is NOT a 'small business'. I'm sorry, but it's not. There a LOT of issues with Ravelry and just one of their MANY issues is that they are trying to run a big business with a small business mentality. I get that they don't want to bring in investors, because then the site would be more profit oriented as opposed to a fiber art community. But let's face it, a lot of their users are selling their own patterns from the site. The fact that Ravelry allows and encourages this means they are already 'profit oriented' even if only on a small scale. There are many ways that they could raise the revenue to hire staff members to make their site work better... For example, if they just added a $3 monthly membership fee, they would bring in $27 million a month, $324 million a year. That amount of revenue would be MORE than enough to hire the people they needed to make the site run more efficiently.
@@M123Xoxo At the time, they were a team of 6. People with advanced UX skills were offering their services *for free* because they love the place that much. They turned down every single offer of help. There comes a point when you have to let your ego go and realize that you messed up, take your lumps, and accept help. Instead, they chose to double down, deny anything was wrong, and shut out every person with issues.
@@bookfaerie23 exactly. i’m sorry but having a small staff is not an excuse when people are literally offering their services for free, being unequipped to deal with this is a choice at this point and should be treated as such instead of “lil small business don’t blame them! 🥺” because they’re opting to not properly resolve something that literally gave people seizures.
As a sociology major, I'm also very grateful that you took the time to read Bartholomew's work and detail what he was actually saying. I understand some of his language must have been distasteful, but he wasn't saying "all these disabled women are just being fussy about change", he was saying "this could be a case of MPI, which itself is an actual illness with real symptoms that should be treated". With the Dancing Plague, a very well known historical case of MPI, the solution was not to just ignore the problem, but to put in time and effort to help the dancers recover. It was a huge mistake to just go "it's all in your heads!" instead of recognizing that hey, this design isn't working. Regardless of the reason people are getting a bunch of symptoms from looking at it, it should be changed.
Yeah, my take as someone who’s had a passing interest in mass hysteria and done some preliminary research (during which I managed to completely miss the term mass psychogenic illness, somehow!) was that he’s absolute got a point, and while I wouldn’t be surprised if at least a few initial cases were caused by preexisting conditions, I’d say it’s a fair guess that a good number of the cases were MPI, especially the later cases. That being said, when Emma was first reading the article, I said out loud, ‘it’s a fair take, but you’re being a dick about it.’ So I can see why people would have taken it poorly.
I like this thinking! I must admit that as a psychology graduate and migraineur, I was thinking about the neurologists of Freud's age tut-tutting about hysteria and trying to telepathically communicate to Bartholomew that almost every "nondescript" symptom he described is a migraine symptom. My zinger was that women with migraine used to be diagnosed with hysteria, and just because HE doesn't see a medical cause doesn't mean there isn't one. But you've talked me into backing down from my imaginary argument! And thank you for bringing up the dancing plague, a very good example of something that was indisputably mass psychogenic illness. (Unless they were, in fact, possessed. 🤔🤪)
I agree completely. Hysteria is a terrible word with all the associations emma lists in her video. but MPI is a very real illness and has very important implications for internet use.
At the same time, it seems like certain users will not be happy no matter what the company does. They're expecting a company of 4 people to have the resources of a media company like Walt Disney. Instead of being supportive of a small business, they want to destroy them. Eventually, the owners are going to get tired of the constant vitriol and close the website for good.
@@wardgurl58 What I found really frustrating when I read it at the time was that a lot of the symptoms reported cluster together (migraines and nausea/vomiting, for example, go hand in hand for a lot of people who suffer migraines; I'm lucky enough to avoid that but I do sometimes get visual stuff and dizziness). So when Bartholomew treated the symptoms as totally discrete things that it would be absurd to have clustered together, it really made me uninclined to take him seriously. (Especially since there was an unskippable/unstoppable animation on the front page! I thought we all learned to stop doing that a decade or two ago!)
I recently found out by accident that one of my favourite shops/website is super accessible even to me who doesn't normally need accessibility. I clicked on the little man on the corner and it opened a myriad of opportunities. So I decided to click on the adhd tab which made the website simpler so I could be less distracted when shopping or looking at the products. And the website remembers. I went back in to look at some product reviews and it still appeared with the same simple UI I requested. I don't know how they did it but it would be really nice if more websites did it.
my spouse is very colorblind, and i’ve come to love some sites’ colorblindness options, like patterns instead of plain colors. i wish people would design more accessibility-first digital products, they can only benefit from more users
@@the_sky_is_blue_and_so_am_I it's for the brand l'erbolario. They sell personal care stuff made from plants. I usually shop there for their perfumes. I own three from them and I recently got my dad one. They are really good quality for the price and are also really liked among sensitive skinned people.
I think one unspoken factor that effected the redesign was that... the fibre arts community has a HIGH proportion of disabled people compared to some other hobbies/websites. Knitting and crocheting are super popular among people with a wide range of disabilities for many reasons. It's very possible that the backlash against the redesign wasn't just a bunch of healthy/abled people playing advocate for a small number of disabled people. I do not doubt that there were tons of disabled people ACTUALLY affected by the inaccessibility of the redesign, and no amount of sociological speculation about "MPI" was going to fix that.
Their response is very “we spent a lot of money on this and therefor we are not willing to take criticism bc we don’t wanna admit we spent money on garbage”
Absolutely stupid awful move but honestly. Between FOUR people running the sight I get it, I'd probably react the same. Still their fault to begin with 🤷♂️
The world before Ravelry required you to subscribe to magazines and blogs to get new patterns, and being an indie designer was a hobby at best. They really created an invaluable niche across the world that connected fiber enthusiasts, and suddenly knitting podcasts were everywhere, you could DM a pattern designer (as an autistic person being able to ask direct questions is incredible), indie dyers were making a surge and so on. While I appreciate that they haven't sold out to Meta or anyone else, you are right. At some point, it became too big and they needed to take advantage of their community and ask for a couple $'s Wikipedia style to hire more staff and update their resources. I also wonder if Cassidy is holding on too tight and she and Jessica should set up a retirement plan for themselves?
Seconding that Ravelry is unbelievably useful, but yeah I don’t think they pass the ‘bus test’ (as in, will your company survive if X person gets hit by a bus tomorrow). 4 staff is dangerously tiny, and unless they’re all immortal they absolutely need to figure out plans for expanding their staff and eventual retirement.
I think the hiring of Livia is simple: she came cheap. Her background sounds a lot like mine, substituting dance for German studies. It sounds like she wanted to break into the graphics design field and Ravelry would have been a great way.
I agree with you. I also think it is nice to give someone an opportunity. Its unfortunate that the saying, "you get what you pay for" was not considered before making a decision (or maybe is was and they did not take the time to properly test before releasing).
I’ve never knitted in my entire life, my major has nothing to do with knitting (cybersecurity) but i go into a absolute scrabble whenever i see you have dropped a new video. I love this channel thank you
i was a knitter/crocheter before i got into computing, and i was blown away by how much they have in common. it’s like a tactile, colorful, calming counterpart to the abstract, monochromatic, hair-pulling of computing 😄
people can hate on cassidy all they want for being rude and un-empathetic to them. but GOD i hated to see that when i looked her up on google there are so many knitting blogs with such blatant transphobia. its heartbreaking
Fr it's like she's being an asshole and deserves criticism for that, but that's no excuse to go all transphobic. That's not criticism, that's just bigotry bruh.
yes, whatever I had and have to say about Cassidy and Ravelry, I felt for her with all the transphobia and intentional deadnaming and misgendering that came up along the redesign
i can’t believe the ravelry staff in their emails just said “this isn’t a thing because i said so”. like??? you can’t just say “this doesn’t cause any problems” and make the problems disappear
I'm only 12mins in but oh gosh, as someone who works as a UX designer, I'm already fuming about this "re-design". A UX designer shouldn't just be focusing on the looks of a website, but also functionality and accessibility. I feel like it's only gonna get worse as I keep watching...
I will say that yes, retroactively fixing things takes a lot of effort and web development is a tricky craft. But I still don't think that UX designer did their job well enough, they should have been doing user testing with a diverse range of people including people with different accessibility needs and assistive technology.
After the redesign, site users were looking her up and posting about her experience--or lack thereof. And then getting told off for it by moderators. She claimed she designed the blob that replaced the yarn ball for the logo specifically for Rav. Once people found her website, they saw she'd used that blob for so many other things, lol.
Interested to hear what you'd recommend going forward for a website as a designer after an event like this. How do you fix messing up this bad design wise?
@@faithg7750hiring a new team, but as I see it, the developer doesn't want a whole team and only a pay for a cheap "designer" without significant background. To do things professionally you would need real Ux/UIers and advisors on accessibility, maybe even consult anthropologist or sociologists, and maybe some more front and backenders to really turn this around. A lot of research goes into a redisgn. It also depends on how the OG developer set the page and the DB's up. In theory, if the backend and Frontend was okishly designed or even better, if Frontend frameworks were used, it should be fairly easy to adjust the page according to the UX/UIers and accessibility advisors recommendations. Just my two cents as a backend dev, with some experience in Frontend 😅
I'm not knowledgeable on the financial side of things, so this is not taking into account whether it could be affordable. I'm also not a senior designer, there could definitely be better solutions that I just don't have the experience to think of. Firstly, fixing the inaccessible aspects as quickly as possible, probably pushing everyone back to the previous design if it's going to take time to do so. Hiring an accessibility specialist is 100% worth the money, speaking from experience of working with one. Having multiple devs and ideally, multiple designers, minimises the chances of further work being this bad because two heads are better than one and every dev and designer will have different skills and strengths. And, like, communicating well with the users. Taking their feedback and issues seriously. Even if amazing user testing happens and a design seems really useable and accessible, not everything will be perfect. Part of being a good designer is monitoring feedback and doing further testing once a product has launched or been changed.
I have photosensitive migraines and was affected by the redesign, and i just happened to be using the website around then without realising they'd redesigned it. It gave me such a bad headache and i had to stop using it after 5-10 minutes. A few weeks later, i heard about the redesign and uh yeah... The gaslighting/downplaying about it from ravelry was wild; certainly not something abnormal to hear as a disabled person, but with the yarn community having such a large disabled and chronically ill base, it was a really bizarre way for Ravelry to handle the whole thing. It really felt like they put... ideology? sunk costs? above a huge portion of their userbase and just felt like a weird hill for them to die on when it was already not a good redesign
I'm really curious and trying to understand this whole situation and since you have personal experience with this issue I was hoping you could offer some insight As someone who doesn't experience any disabilities, epilepsy or migraines this site looks totally inocuous to me. Other than not being super navigable it seems like any old website.... Which makes me wonder are there a lot of other websites out there that cause problems for folks who do experience epilepsy/migraines etc? Are you at risk any time you visit a new website, that you'll stumble upon something that will harm you? If so, that sounds really awful, and no one's talking about it? (And since tone never conveys well via text, I am being entirely sincere)
I'll bite. Aside from the moving navigation on the opening page covered in the video (which was not an issue for me), the crappy colors, and drop shadows on buttons: 1. The whiteness of the pages was turned WAY up. Holy cow bright; 2. The text in the forums became a narrower column, thus increasing the amount of white space on the page (with no ads on the side to break up that white space); 3. The line spacing of the text increased' 4. Combine these, and if you scroll on the page, you get a strobing effect. Now, this didn't affect everyone. I have astigmatism. I found out (the hard way) that yup, it affected me. I could take about 10 minutes and I'd start to get a headache that would last hours.
@@bookfaerie23this explanation really helps, thank you. I have photosensitive migraines and from looking at the still images I had no idea how it could be affecting people - white pages are annoying to look at, but it's not really avoidable, and most people I know (myself included) who have issues with this have filters to tone down the brightness and make screens in general easier use. the strobing effect makes a lot more sense.
@@susannahkochfor your question about stumbling onto a site, yes you could potentially be stuck with a migrane. Its usually not a big issue in todays internet but definitely possible. This part is not to sound mean or dismissive or anything but the main 2 reasons you dont hear about this issue more is, 1. Mostly women/afab people have migranes and 2. You dont get migranes yourself so you havent looked for people to talk to about migranes
I think the main problem people unknowingly had with the MPI article was that it was clearly just a sociological paper. And as someone who’s currently studying sociology, I can say that the way sociologists look at things can sound condescending and is infuriating at times, but we need to remember why it is like this. The intention there is not to justify or discredit the complaints, it’s a case study. Sociology has never been too big on finding solutions to problems, it’s about TRYING to figure out what could have caused them. There is also the part of it not being a study, but a contemplative piece. What the Rav team did was a quantitive study (a flawed bullshit one that would never fly, but there was an attempt). In cases like these, the preferred method would be an in-depth qualitative study, taking into account detailed testimonies of the ones affected. Neither Bartholemew nor Rav did that, so we shouldn’t expect either to come up with a definitive answer to whatever happened there.
Non-Academics tend to think this a lot when they’re on the outside looking in tbh. Can’t say I blame them, but it can be frustrating sometimes when they don’t look at the context of the paper and just take the language it uses at face value. Sounding sort of haughty and shitty is like, academic paper 101 lmao
Yeah as someone who's interested in sociology (decided against studying it in school but still like it), I kinda enjoyed his exploration of the idea and appreciate that Emma went a little more in depth with what he was saying. I think the issue is that you need to rule out all other potential causes to theorize on something being caused by MPI and despite the site seeming normal at a glance, there were other things it could be that could be the cause but hadn't been brought up like the specific color choices, or framerate, or something else that's not immediately obvious but makes sense Interesting too that he has an article about the Pokémon episode that caused seizure potentially being MPI. From what I know about that was pretty clearly a case of bright flashing lights triggering photosensitive epilepsy. As a non photosensitive epileptic, I've seen the offending scene and it makes sense to me that it'd trigger a seizure in those who are susceptible. So I'm curious as to what he says in that article...
As a graphic designer and crocheter with a history of seizures (from a tumor that has since been removed, long story), I'm SO invested in this. Even when there's some kind of physical catalyst for your seizures, emotional distress can be a huge factor. My second seizure occurred on the day that they scheduled my brain surgery, because they didn't talk to me before scheduling it and I had a panic attack that led into a seizure. Creating a hostile emotional environment is not only unhelpful and unproductive, it can actively cause harm. If you have a website that caters to a population of niche hobbyists with a large disabled and elderly demographic, obviously accessibility should be a factor in your design, and OBVIOUSLY clapping back with "this is a big website we just don't have the resources" or "maybe you're just being hysterical" is in extremely bad taste. Great job researching and presenting the nuances here!
"If you have a website that caters to a population of niche hobbyists with a large disabled and elderly demographic, obviously accessibility should be a factor in your design, and OBVIOUSLY clapping back with "this is a big website we just don't have the resources" or "maybe you're just being hysterical" is in extremely bad taste."
I don't understand why it is so hard to believe that a website could be making people sick. I suffer from occasional migraines, and I know if I stare at a bright white website too long, I get a migraine. I feel bad for those who suffer from even worse symptoms.
I believe you, but I'm curious - what do you do when you need to use Wikipedia or something? Is there anything you can customize to improve your experience? I know some people like the blue light filtering glasses but I have no idea if they really do anything for photosensitivity. Personally I had a browser extension that skewed everything orange but idk if that's effective for others.
@Annalovesautumn there is an extension you can get on some browsers to dull the brightness, and you can also buy screen covers that help to tone down the brightness.
@Annalovesautumn that won't work for everyone's condition and they are expensive but they work for me. The browser extension is free, but I only found out about it when I have to get work accommodations.
I’m a UI & UX Designer and Researcher with a visual design background. 12 years in industry. Besides the Rav team’s bad PR responses, I have so many thoughts… 1. I understand why the designer is looking for a new job. Being the only in-house designer is tough, especially if you’re newer to the industry. However, I also wonder how many limitations were placed on her; how long did she have to test, was she able to iterate and test early, were they moderated or unmoderated tests, was she given a budget for compensating users, how did she recruit testers, etc. How much of the final design decisions were made by the owners and not her. The amount of times a product owner overrides the designer’s recommendation can be high, depending on the team culture and personalities. I promise this isn’t all on her and her competency. Some of the best designers I’ve worked with are newer and self-taught. 2. This is why more design programs should be teaching accessibility. I have a design & research undergrad, masters, and was a TA. None of the courses I took or were exposed to focused on accessibility beyond a single week’s module. And that was back in 2012. MOST of accessibility knowledge (as shared from the designers in my network at least) is usually acquired on the job and from design or developer coworkers. Or when their mistakes are called out. I’ve searched for a course with a deep level understanding of accessibility and haven’t found a good one beyond IDF’s. If anyone has a course or book to recommend, please point me in that direction! 3. The Rav team is either not looking at the right website analytics or not publicly reporting what really matters; pre vs post daily/weekly/monthly active users - just to name the easiest metric to check. Create a user segment called “Classic Rav Power Users” then compare their avg time on site and days active, before and after the redesign. If they have their analytics set up properly it’ll take 5 mins. Then they can dig deeper from there with other user segments and metrics. 4. I’m curious what other websites trigger the symptoms reported by some Rav users. If NuRav is unique for some reason, this needs to be turned into a case study and broadly shared with designers to learn from and avoid for the future. I’m about to send this vid to my network. This is, by a designer’s perspective, a basic, safe, ho-hum design. the intensity of the physical reactions is extremely concerning and equivalent to rough VR experiences. Any designer I know would be surprised by the effects NuRav has had on some folks. It makes me wonder if there is a small and unique population of people that Rav has brought together who all are drawn to fiber arts but also share a common visual processing challenge and they are finally able to have their voices heard because they are united on this site..?
I'm a person who has migraines triggered by visual stimuli (I get migraines with aura), my mother does as well, and my mother's partner has photosensitive epilepsy. I'm also a Computer Science student, so I've done a bit of focus on web design and web accessibility but clearly not that much. I'm also baffled by what NuRav is doing differently. The screenshots of the website presented in this video, as well as the website itself which I've visited after this video seem to be the most basic semi-modern design possible (edit: Though I note that the current website differs from what is presented in screenshots/as it was in the past). I know clearly not everyone has the same triggers for their conditions, but it feels like if these individuals were triggered by NuRav, they'd also be unable to access many, many modern websites. It feels like there is a huge gap on the apparent web design issues being missed in this video, but I wouldn't claim to know how to fill it.
@@mentallyeeling I am not an expert by any means, and since this all happened around 3 years ago, my memory is hazy. However, I remember people chiming in at the time and saying that New Rav did have some things it did that were actually known to cause these issues (not sure if these have since been fixed). As I said, my memory is hazy. I want to say there was something to do with the drop shadows they added and how they behaved when scrolling (I think basically, they didn't render immediately to scrolling, which caused a flashing sort of effect?). I have basically not been back to Rav since the changes as so many people did leave over this that things changed in terms of dynamics of groups I was in. I basically just downloaded all my patterns and printed them to have a hard copy, in case the designers decided to pull them and mostly haven't visited since. I think maybe I did go to buy a pattern at one point, because as has been pointed out, the database is kind of the only way to find alot of patterns. I say all this to explain that if the drop shadow issue or any other issue that might have been brought up was deemed fixable or was removed has occurred, I wouldn't know.
For point 4 - I'm not a web designer / developer and don't personally have experience with migraines or seizures, but I DO spend a lot of time knitting and in knitting-related spaces. I honestly think that part of it may be that knitting tends to attract people who already deal with chronic conditions and illnesses (including me!). It's a perfect hobby for people who choose or have to spend a significant amount of time inside / sitting down, simple patterns can be done without looking at what you're doing after a certain skill threshold, the repetitive motion gives you something to *do* for an extended period of time without physical exertion or needing to use too much focus (again, after a certain skill threshold and with certain patterns), and it takes a while but feels productive which can be incredibly valuable when you have a flare-up and feel frustrated that your body isn't letting you do what others can. To me, it's not really a surprise that people with chronic conditions that would make them more prone to migraines / seizures would already be Ravelry users and get triggered by the redesign, especially when you consider that the total number of people who had problems was comparatively an extremely small percentage out of the total nine million users - it's just concerning that the number wasn't zero, and that the Rav team chose to do nothing to fix the issues.
i studied computer science in college as part of my math degree. i have never worked as a programmer or website designer, but i did have to complete my share of programming assignments and design a few websites. i haven’t ever heard of a website being able to make people sick. is this because it’s not taught? maybe. is it because it’s not very common? maybe. i’m struggling to see what’s weird about this site. personally i like a dark theme, but that’s preference. when she was first mentioning it was giving people migraines, i envisioned it as probably being crazy neon colors. that doesn’t appear that’s the case. but, as a mathematician, the burden of proof lies with those who claim the site made them sick, so yeah i think i’m gonna need some scientific investigation on this one before siding with the people who claim they were made ill.
I just want to note that, as someone who did have issues those first couple of days after the re-skin but currently does not (because they adjusted it enough for me personally), the thing that gave me the worst headache was the font. They chose some non-standard font that I /think/ was supposed to be good for dyslexia?, but it had this weird illusion of movement that was just awful. I know it was the primary thing for me, because as soon as they changed the font back to something more web-standard, my headaches went away (and the font's own webpage was just as awful to look at). To this day, the only two posts I've ever made in the forums were in those feedback threads lol. ETA: looks like the awful font is actually still the default, so to anyone who's still having issues and is still willing to stick with them, try changing the font in your settings and see if that helps.
@@MazHem That's possible, although I don't have a problem with the wider font AO3 uses, for example. I think the bigger issue is that Inter (the default) looks blurry to me compared to Helvetica (which is what I have my Rav set to), and my eyes already make everything blurry as it is so I don't really need more of that xD
@@Calaidi does it look blurry as a general font offline or on other sides? It looks crisp if not as sharp on my phone, but I don't remember much difference on pc other than wideness. Like newsprint vs letraset
@@MazHem Yeah, if it's sized up to be like, a header or something, it's not too bad, but the website for the font has a little writing sample on it that's a more standard size, and that also looks off to me. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Won't lie--almost did a spit-take when you said that you thought that the site you were looking at must have been done in 2015. That was one of the (many) initial criticisms--the "update" was already looking dated. Edited to add: I read the article at the time, and was not amused. It was actually referenced by Cassidy as a means to say, "See? You guys are making it all up." And as someone who can't go on the site since the old skin stopped working due to headaches, I did not appreciate that.
It really did feel like they went forward with the redesign without realizing what that entailed and when a bunch of negative feedback poured in they (especially Cassidy) took it as an attack of their character and got defensive and decided to take the stance of “nobody likes change” to justify lashing out and the money spent on a bad redesign. What also bothers me the most is Cassidy’s wife was the one who said in that post that Cassidy felt bad about how she acted and was sorry but did Cassidy ever apologize herself? I get being in a bad place mentally but still if she was actually sorry it should have been her saying it not her wife speaking for her
As I recall, her behavior got so bad (I think on Twitter specifically) that they basically thought the best way to deal with it was to take her away from any means of communication. So while I agree that the apology comes off as hollow, I think in terms of damage control, letting her have access to make the apology could have been very disastrous.
@@loverlyredhead I can understand that but still I think even if just from her account and say that her wife looked it over before she posted cause it seems she did get access back if she typed about nfts
@@cyanotype_moon Cassidy coming out happened during all this, yes. More than one user wondered if some of the reaction from the site owners had to do with her transition. I recall homophobic comments made around her coming out (because some people feel the need to be that way), and then all the crap from the redesign, and there were people wondering if criticism of her transition was also equaling criticism of the site change for her.
@@cyanotype_moon yeah I can understand why she may have acted the way she did…i can only imagine…I just still think for the sake of the buisness at least their would be ways to have her make the actual apology from her lips
Like you mentioned in the video, disabled folks are used to being gaslit and having their disabilities dismissed, but when a website self-describes as inclusive and then... responds like that... to people's concerns and experiences, it makes it much worse as it dissolves all trust in the legitimacy of their support for you and your needs. Mistakes happen, bad decisions happen, but it was the subsequent response that really spoke for itself. It should not be a matter of debate whether someone's disability concerns are "legitimate", and the attempts to discredit them are seriously reprehensible. If you cannot DEFINITIVELY prove the claim isn't real with 101% certainty, take our words for it, or at least just don't insist it MUST not be real. We know our bodies and the difficulties of them best. Thank you for documenting this so well for people who didn't know about it, I really hope it aids a lot of folks in understanding why accessibility concerns come in many forms and need empathy all the same. ♥
I’m a product designer myself, so this was a super interesting watch. Looking at just the examples you showed I was confused by the contrast issue of too much contrast and vibrating vivid colors. A black and white combination, while high in contrast, is not going to cause the issues users were having. But then I saw the buttons. Oh man. The buttons. The button color combinations are like Usability 101 to NEVER do… I’m shocked they would put so much time and effort into building out a custom design system and not even test the contrast of their colors. More than that, as a designer, I don’t understand the intuition that even led to those colors being used together lol. I’m poking around Livia’s Figma file of the design system now and I’m just.. surprised. Anyway, great video! Super interesting to hear about everyone’s experience with the update.
Are there any other websites you know of that cause this much trouble? I don’t doubt the people saying they have bad reactions to the site, but I’ve never heard of it happening before, and it surprised me!
@@nadinekim375 I’m with you! I was surprised at first as well, as I’ve never heard of it happening before with a site I’ve seen. I got my degree in design though, and we were warned in school about the effects of pairing vivid colors. It creates an invisible line effect and confuses your brain into thinking there is movement between the colors. It can absolutely cause eye strain in turn causing headaches. You can google “vibrating color combinations” and see a great example of the effect. Unstoppable animations are also a big no-no for accessibility for similar reasons. We were taught that nothing should start moving or playing sound until the user has done something to cause it to happen (pressing play, clicking a button, etc.) It’s crazy to see a site with so many users try it on the login page!
I remember when they changed the site. I didn't know there was a change and it looked so funky. At first, I could only look at the site for like 10 minutes. Eventually, they fixed it enough to look at and now I don't have issues. But yes, it was definitely doing harm to people.
I think part of the problem with the redeisign and Cassidy/Ravelry's responses comes from the addition of bad faith actors. The Trump ban was around the same time, and there were a lot of angry Trump fans willing to make mischief. So you have two polarized sides providing feedback - one the one hand, people who are experiencing issues (migraines, etc) and want relief, and on the other hand, people willing to *say they are* in order to make Ravelry look bad. I can see that if you're Cassidy, it can be really hard to sift through the responses and see who is actually having physical issues with the site and who is tring to harrass her via made-up issues. Given how the redesign isn't that exciting (from a user perspective) and yet took a lot of time and effort, I expect there was a lot of frustration and feeling inadequate - the redesign was lacking and the ability to respond appropriately was lacking (based on not knowing someone's true motivations). It puts you on unstable footing, mentally and emotionally, leading to a spiraling down and continued struggle to get it right. I'm not saying it's all excusable, but I can see how we got there. Thanks for the deep dive!
Should it really matter how much of the feedback was from real or "made-up" issues, though? It's too easy to dismiss any sort of criticism as bad faith in order to avoid taking accountability, and even if some of the reports of issues were disingenuine the fact that ANY of them were real (which we very much know they were) should've been more than enough to stop making excuses at the very least even if you aren't immediately able to address the problem. The redesign alone didn't make Ravelry look that bad, but the subsequent denial/gaslighting/dismissal of concerns most definitely did, and you really can't afford to look for reasons to discount feedback from people for something you cannot prove (by assuming they had a political angle). I can understand acting inappropriately due to being overwhelmed and feeling the brunt of online negativity, but you can still choose to not respond publically if you know you won't be able to give a good response that doesn't directly contribute to ableism and erasure of "invisible" disabilities.
I literally only started crocheting a MONTH ago solely to make hats for my Breyer horse collection 😂😂 and I’m so invested in these videos. I need to know the yard drama.
I adore how niche that is!!! Hats for Breyer Horses? I have Schleich and Papo ones and am always wondering should I start crocheting and knitting tiny things for them and reading that I think I should! 😆😅
hats! model horse hats!! are they the cutest or *the cutest*? my mom is a lifelong horse girl, i can’t wait to tell her someone is out there knitting teeny breyer horse hats
I wasn’t expecting such a niche and highly specific historical reference to the use of ‘wandering wombs’ and electroshock ‘therapy’ in a video about knitting website drama I’m about to watch, but I guess so-called hysteria is something that’ll come up. The way that I recognise the reference to a very specific part of afab healthcare history, down to the word usage in a particular set of sources is so wild to me, but drinking water on a regular basis, and what I planned to do in a room I just walked into elude me every damn day. I should not have gone undiagnosed with ADHD for as long as I did, in retrospect…
reminds me of when tumblr updated a few years ago and i had to change the contrast on my phone to even use the app because it was such a high contrast, it was hurting *my* eyes and i don't have a history of photo sensitivity at all im so glad i subscribed to you. craft drama is amazing
I remember the “polling” over the redesign. It was such a terrible design, and they kept saying “Oh, we’ve fixed [thing]!” And what they did was change buttons to be 3 pixels smaller.
re: pride homepage “controversy” i was a certified gay person on ravelry at the time, and i vivdly remember my immediate response being “this is ugly but whatever” and then i never thought about it again until this moment 💀💀💀
It's so nice to see you being so sensitive to people who are photosensitive, prone to get migraines and so on and give a warning each time before you show the new design! Although I do get migraines quite easily I for my part am not effected (afftected?) from the new design, but I feel very seen and I appreciate this!
10 points, woo!! My auditory processing issues have been annoying lately so I'm pretty proud of that. This was such a good documentation about accessibility in web design that really clicked with me. Bonus points for the crypto nonsense and grody homophobia. I'm really looking forward to part 3! I had no idea there was a whole public issue around the redesign. I just thought that feeling sick (dizziness, nausea, migraines) every time I used Ravelry was some crazy coincidence and never "oh, maybe it's the website and not a chronic illness flare up!" Sure sometimes I got legit eyestrain when it was a better health day but sometimes I'd get dizzy after
Tania Richter is one of my favorite designers ever, she's the person that designed a cross between knitting and tabletop rpgs. She has been permanently disabled from ravelry, and that took away her main source of income for herself and her household as a knitwear designer, and now also can't work a "normal" job. No matter what changes they make in the future, they ruined someone's health and livelihood and will never be forgiven for that. If you want her patterns they can be found on her website/payhip at knit 1 roll 20, and are genuinely some of my favorite designs ever.
that color pallete is inherently messy based on color theory and color schemes like triadic analagous and tetradic are ones that were some of the first I learnd in school so idk why a designer wouldn’t know that, a way to include tjem all would he to group them in their use but it doesnt look like they have as they mostly kept flat color and highly contrasted white which has a strained look to it
That's not completely true. Designers have to focus on the demographic and this color scheme is actually really nice. Considering what year it takes place in and also the user base of the site
After finding the part 1 of this saga, I binged tonns of your channel, and I really adore the way you discuss these topics that often are left ignored and belittled, you actually treat these bits of history like nuanced situations and its a breath of fresh air! Keep it up!! ❤❤❤ (i also love having a new channel to put on to motivate me while I crochet lol)
As far as the redesign goes, I think it's part of a much bigger trend we're seeing. As more websites redesign their sites to be higher contrast and introduce more dark modes, it's just continually making platforms more uninhabitable for people with photosensitivity. Two recent ones I can think of is the Discord mobile redesign that removed the old dark mode for one that's extremely high contrast, which I have seen widespread complaints from some users no longer being able to use the app. There's also the new features RUclips has introduced where if the video says "like" or "subscribe", it highlights those respective buttons with a bright flashy rainbow border. It's all nothing new, but it's still frustrating to watch happen.
While the old version had an outdated design, the new one feels like it's 2008. I didn't get the whole seizure thing, but it was uncomfortable to look at, bc I have astigmatism, if I look at high contrast images for too long my vision blurs and I may get headaches. That didn't happen back then but I did avoid the new design and switch to the old one as soon as it was available just because it felt like I was straining my eyes. I just remember my husband who's a web dev and has absolutely nothing to do with crafts whatsoever, looking at the site on my monitor and going like "Jesus! What the hell is that?" XD
Never forget when Tropicana made their orange juice look like store brand juice for those few months in early 2008. 🍊 Those illustrations of the Ravelry staff were ghastly.
when school turned to online only I would scroll ravelry aimlessly during class, when the redesign happened I genuinely got such a horrible migrane that I had to sleep for the rest of the day and felt like I was hungover the next day.
I am always impressed at the amount of research and work you put into your videos, thank you. This was really interesting. I did experience a couple of migraines when the site changed. I stayed off it once I heard that the redesign could have been the cause. As soon as they allowed the option to go back to the old site, I sent in and downloaded all of my patterns. I do use it now, but sparingly and only for a short time, around 10 mins. I just dip in to get what I need and leave. Partly because I am worried about migraines and partly because of the way it was handled. I scored 12 in the quiz!
You can put it in dark mode now if you haven't tried that, that helped me enough to be able to use it. But most of the community I'd hung out with was gone.
In elementary school my friend Aoife was in my class and we would read out a chart everyday with vowel spelling, an example & the letter sound & ig my teacher noticed some kids had trouble reading Aoife’s name so she made a special vowel card for us to practice with every day!! I still remember “spelling: aoi, example: aoife, sound EE”
I'm scrolling thru a list of today's funniest tweets while listening to this and came across one that said "I found a YT channel dedicated to the drama in the knitting and crochet community, and it's the weird specific content I'm here for". I think I know what channel they're talking about!
I've been crocheting and knitting for over 20 years, but I've never been super deep into the online community of it, so I love your drama videos and getting to learn all sorts of tea without being involved in it.
so sorry, but i believe the name at 41:26 (Aoibhe) is pronounced EE-va! it's an irish name, so the pronunciation is different than what us english speakers might anticipate. love the video! very well researched and interesting
i find it so funny with the redesign of the website because as an avid knitter that’s mostly self-taught i’ve tried to use ravelry because i really liked the concept - but it’s honestly unusable i still can’t navigate that site oh my god
I just found your channel a few days ago and OMG the drama I didn't know I needed in my life, as a crocheter I didn't know the drama of it all, Thank u for the hard work and helping me finish a big order while listening to your video :)
The moving images on the log in pages also meant that people who used screen readers weren't able to log in at all. It took ages for TPTB to care enough to change that. The testers were ignored, TPTB got their egos hurt, and the only way I can use Rav to this day is with an orange filter and a mod created by a user. I have zero loyalty left to that website. So many of my people are unable to use it at all, and now gather on other sites. My favourite thing about the whole saga was having old men tell me, "it's all in your head", just for something entirety unoriginal.
So basically, Ravelry’s response to people physically affected by their site changes was: “you are all a bunch of liars and hypochondriacs.” Edit: oh, I guess that was 100% only Cassidy’s response 🤔
Never have I so anticipated a part two to a drama, involving a community I knew nothing about, and is very tame compared to the drama I usually watch. Letssss goooo!
Seeing this was the motivation i needed to pick up the gusset stitches on my sock so i could get back to the mindless knitting. I am now sat, ready for a knitting adventure.
Those emails from Ravelry are almost identical to the emails I have been getting from Tumblr for the past 2 years. People who run sites give 0 attention about accessibility (the coo of Tumblr actually laughed at their disabled users) I will never understand why people don't realize we are trying to help them...
I remember logging into Ravelry maybe around 2021 after not logging in for a couple years and thinking the site looked weird and ugly and I couldn’t find stuff - I had no idea about all this drama!
Ok, did not realize how excited for part two I was until you posted it! Thanks for doing all this hard work to keep us updated on this crafty drama lol
Ah yes the dreaded site change, I've been waiting for your next Ravelry vid! I remember when it happened (speaking like it was 10 years ago, COVID twisted my sense of time for good) and the eyestrain was real, there was something about the font choices, spacing and contrasts that made the site unbearable to read. I used the old version until they fixed all these problems, still preferred the old but at least the site is usable nowadays.
The color palette really reads millennial decorating their house in 2009. I'm surprised there aren't chevrons all over 😅. Speaking for millennial, if you had a MySpace you probably have reskined a page
@@wplants9793You either weren’t a millenial or had significant privilege to be given the financial ability to get the house. 🤷🏻 Your experience plain and simple is not the norm. Not even close.
Wait, but there was a clown panic. Even in Texas! I remember getting messages from my university alert system warning us to stay inside at night because people would walk around dressed like clowns. It was real lol
I watched a video about it a while ago, I'll see if I can find it. Basically a lot of the "clown spottings" were fake, or just kids/teens messing around. there was 1 (either death or severe injury, I can't remember) tied to it, however the victim was the kid dressed as the clown and not an innocent bystander. Edit: Its called 'Clown spotting of 2016 deep dive" my IzzzyIzzz
I've personally never had any medical issues with the redesign, but I'm not invalidating people who did have medical issues. My biggest issue was that there was *less* division among menus in terms of colors. It was so white that it did hurt my eyes. I switched to the dark version as soon as I could. I remember the survey, it was phrased so as to be a victim blaming in the results. There used to be a 'drama' group on Rav where we'd 'watch' and have commentary on ravelry drama of all kinds, it was a ton of fun, and Cassidy's responses to things were always drama filled.
Great overview and super fun to watch! Also as a side note, it is really neat watching you add different editing techniques and style choices to your videos. It's fun to watch you grow as a creator!
i love the caution and the verbal warning that you told us Emma. I skip down here in the comments and listen. Your inclusivity and looking out for your Viewers is awesome. TYSM!
I'm a casual user of Raverly and had no interest in the community aspect of it, so I had no idea about all the different controversy! This was super interesting, informative, and juicy. So great to listen to while I knit, so thanks for part 1 and 2! Haha
been a brand/visual designer for nearly 9 years, the branding from the colors to the iconography is so all over the place it doesnt make sense if it was to be marketable. even the color scheme makes me wonder if they even put thought behind the brand or thought CMYK stood for (make it part of every brand standard but make it inaccessible as possible) and if it was a reskin, usually the colors are well made to be a global chain change with coding so people can go in anc change colors incase of holiday/events 😭also the fact that the one designer had to do 3 different jobs is just insane.
Throughout this series, I was wondering why I have heard of Ravelry so much as a fiber artist, yet never used it. I just realized while watching this that I think one of the main reasons i have yet to join is because every screenshot I have ever seen has made the website look so old and crusty. I checked out the before and after pics you linked to and they made it look worse with the update! Like how is that even possible.
I know absolutely nothing about knitting or crafting, but I'm really enjoying your videos. For whatever reason, the algorithm decided to send me here and even though i have no context and the community is completely new to me, it's super fascinating. I also appreciate that you include some explanations around knitting/crafting lingo and terminology for folks who aren't as familiar.
I think gender neutral is a garbage concept when it comes to design because it so often just means, "not traditionally feminine/unoffensive to masculine folx."
I'm a total beginner with crochet (less than 10 small projects so far) but I've been listening to the videos on this channel for tea about a community I'm just starting to enter. Your videos are so thorough and I applaud you for the dedication of time. Thank you for the entertainment!
One of the accessibility issues a lot of people had when scrolling had to do with the line spacing because it did create flaring artifacts when people scrolled. It did give me a headache on the first day before I knew it was even a thing, so that's some impressive mass psychosis affect. I would love you to do a deeper dive into Mary Heather, who I think is the source of a lot of the ravelry toxicity and gaslighing, but since her main tactic as deletion, I can see how this would be a challenge. :)
Just wanted to say that I have been on ravelry since the old invitation days and reference it extensively as a knitting instructor. I am not some one who has headaches and had no idea that they had redesigned the site at the time. BUT I went on the site within the first week and got a GIANT headache within a few minutes. Mind you I had no idea yet that people were experiencing serious reactions. Shut down the site in the moment but did get headaches everytime thereafter until they allowed classic rav. To this day I no longer go down crafty rabbit holes on this site - just get in and get out because it still has issues. To describe it as MPI when I initially had no outside influences is laughable.
Same for me--I'm not photosensitive, hadn't heard anything about the redesign nor had I seen any of the reactions, but after using the new site and getting up and walking away I realized I had afterimages when I blinked in the shape of the bright aqua buttons! The dark mode is now fine for me, but I absolutely believe people who had more serious issues.
I've been knitting and crocheting less and less in the past few years, and went on ravelry even less. I used to go to the site multiple times a day, but now I log on maybe twice a year or so. I don't remember when I first saw the new ravelry site design, but I didn't think much of it since mainly only use the pattern search feature and sometimes add my projects if I remember to. So I didn't know there was such a huge issue with the site rebrand! And wow, I never really looked that deep into any the notifications by the ravelry team (and didn't read any regarding this issue before this video), but their responses were appalling. Though I don't knit as often any more, I miss the sense of community of ravelry, so I'm so glad I found your channel emma :) Thanks for all your work!
My issue with Bartholomew's article is more that his expertise is sociological, not medical, not neurological. Nothing that could first validate the people speaking up about seizure/migraine/etc. risks. And either he's so deep into academia that he doesn't realize how mentioning mass hysteria is going to be received, or he just didn't care, but right then was not the moment! Plus, the article landed at a time where ravelry staff was undermining and dismissing any concern brought to them. So the general understanding of MPI + ravelry staff's tone were the worse possible combination. Also, forgot to mention this is previous video's comment, but like. The people who don't want to be reminded that queer people exist saying lgbtq+ representation or mention is "political" will never cease to be so exhausting. biggest UGH. Feels like a dog whistle in itself, "don't politicize" just means, "pretend you don't exist for the sake of my personal comfort". 🙄
I want to just take a moment to say thank you for making these videos! I'm just getting into crochet myself (in part because of your videos!) so I don't know a lot about the past ravelry drama, but my mom has been on the site since it's inception, and it's been fun learning about this stuff and then getting to ask her about it haha
In looking at the comparisons of the site differences, I can see something that would bother me based on photosensitivity. All the white. While there are defined buttons and borders there is little color break. Scrolling through that on a full screen or even a phone screen where text would be tinier would be headache inducing. I noticed one person in the threads saying they had to turn brightness down to even cope. I already have low brightness and yellow glasses to combat light and still I would find that to much.
12:44 i am very prone to migraines and have light sensitivity, but no seizures. so when the first screenshot popped up on screen, of the comments, my immediate thought was "wow that is very white" followed by "*maybe* my brightness on my laptop is just too high?" and this comment just sealed the deal tbh
I just recently started learning to crochet and I'm obsessed with putting your videos on while I work. It's fun catching up on drama for this new community I'm entering!
Something that is often missed in website design is color/contrast placement issues. In certain medically sensitive individuals, the simple placement and shape of colors near each other, causes their eyes to bounce from one side to the other, creating a strobe effect, causing eye strain, nausea, seizures, migraines etc. Sort of like the optical illusion many have seen with the white and black checkerboard where you can see 'imaginary' black/grey dots in between them. A simple thing like the sliding motion fade that is used, even on this vlog, can cause eye and ear disconnect, which causes some people to feel off balance and nauseated.
I stumbled upon your channel and have been binge watching while I do laundry. I am stucked in and weirdly invested in the crafting drama. I feel the need to start crocheting again while I listen. 😂 I love it!
I’m watching this in my TV but HAD to jump on my phone to tell you that your scentbird transition was so incredible I nearly choked on my coffee :) thank you loved it and love ur videos
For anyone curious about MPI, Puppet History (yes that is the name of the series and it's as glorious as it sounds) over on Watcher has a great video about the Dancing Plague. It goes through the sociological factors leading to the outbreak, what did and didn't work in its treatment, and how it was ultimately resolved. Spoiler warning: neither ignoring it nor calling people crazy helped, shockingly.
Yay!!! Thanks for part 2!! I made a profile on ravelry a few months ago and I dislike the site. I mostly use my iPhone for things out of convenience and the mobile version isn’t easy to navigate in my opinion lol
One of the few things the developer ever pushed back on before this drama was the mobile accessibility. It wasn't in their skillset, so they had no interest in doing it. Kinda like how she thought NFTs were gonna be big, she seemed to think mobile use wasn't gonna be a thing. It's why there's no app, either.
@@TamarLitvotI’m not even sure? I think the iPhone “creates” a mobile versions of most web pages?? What I do know for sure is that browsing Ravelry via mobile web browser sucks 🤣🤣
Use INTHEMOMENT to get 55% off your first month at Scentbird sbird.co/3upZYJN
I may have totally missed it but where is the compilation video? I’m sorry if this is a silly question
@thespian72 yes I'm also looking for this!
@@thespian72 Also looking for this. I find it very frustrating when a presenter says they will leave a link, and the link simply is not there. (If the presenter cares not enough to follow through, why should I bother to visit their sponsor links???)
finally not bet+erhelp…
address be++erhelp.
I cant express the depths of my disappointment that they used "off-rav" instead of "un-ravel"
Fr, such missed potential smh
I’ve never knitted a stitch in my life, but I am so deeply invested in this knitting drama. I’ve been at the edge of my seat thank you!!!
Ditto. I’ve literally never been on Ravelry in my life, but I’m here for this part two!
SAME
Same! 😆🙌
@ville__ the comment i’m replying to is a bot please report i see them everywhere
LOVE textiles and I have NEVER gotten my brain around knitting - love seeing the gorgeous pieces made
Absolutely wild that they didn’t beta test their website with NINE MILLION users????? Girl
They did. I was one of them. They just didn't want to hear a bad word about it. They didn't listen to the testers, just like they didn't (and don't) listen to the users.
@@possum4774100%.
You cannot criticise ravelry at all no matter how positive the criticism is
@@possum4774 Oh wow, I didn't know they actually did a beta test. I remember the whole thing going down and UI/UX designers who specialised in accessibility wondering why they hadn't done the beta. So sad they didn't listen to any of the testers, it could have solved so much for them... I'm sorry you had to go through the testing to only be ignored. The whole thing was such a sh*t show.
Girl 😂
@@possum4774 I'm friends with someone who beta tested and who had issues, and they totally didn't listen to a thing she said.
Ravelry just doesnt seem to understand that the site has outgrown their mom-and-pop approach and needs multiple teams of people-- including UX and PR specialists.
Respectfully, the company is only 3-4 people. They don't have enough revenue to hire teams of PR people and designers to compete with huge companies in terms of user experience. Instead of supporting a small business, a tiny minority of users are are trying to destroy the website for everyone else.
If I were the owners, I don't know how much longer I could go on before giving up and shutting the website down for good. For their mental health, I hope they do.
@@M123Xoxo I have one issue with your statement. Ravelry is a MONOPOLY. What huge companies do they have to compete with?!? There is no one else that has a site like Ravelry.
Also, 9 MILLION USERS is NOT a 'small business'. I'm sorry, but it's not. There a LOT of issues with Ravelry and just one of their MANY issues is that they are trying to run a big business with a small business mentality.
I get that they don't want to bring in investors, because then the site would be more profit oriented as opposed to a fiber art community. But let's face it, a lot of their users are selling their own patterns from the site. The fact that Ravelry allows and encourages this means they are already 'profit oriented' even if only on a small scale. There are many ways that they could raise the revenue to hire staff members to make their site work better... For example, if they just added a $3 monthly membership fee, they would bring in $27 million a month, $324 million a year. That amount of revenue would be MORE than enough to hire the people they needed to make the site run more efficiently.
@@M123Xoxo the site literally gave people seizures
@@M123Xoxo At the time, they were a team of 6. People with advanced UX skills were offering their services *for free* because they love the place that much. They turned down every single offer of help. There comes a point when you have to let your ego go and realize that you messed up, take your lumps, and accept help. Instead, they chose to double down, deny anything was wrong, and shut out every person with issues.
@@bookfaerie23 exactly. i’m sorry but having a small staff is not an excuse when people are literally offering their services for free, being unequipped to deal with this is a choice at this point and should be treated as such instead of “lil small business don’t blame them! 🥺” because they’re opting to not properly resolve something that literally gave people seizures.
As a sociology major, I'm also very grateful that you took the time to read Bartholomew's work and detail what he was actually saying. I understand some of his language must have been distasteful, but he wasn't saying "all these disabled women are just being fussy about change", he was saying "this could be a case of MPI, which itself is an actual illness with real symptoms that should be treated". With the Dancing Plague, a very well known historical case of MPI, the solution was not to just ignore the problem, but to put in time and effort to help the dancers recover. It was a huge mistake to just go "it's all in your heads!" instead of recognizing that hey, this design isn't working. Regardless of the reason people are getting a bunch of symptoms from looking at it, it should be changed.
Yeah, my take as someone who’s had a passing interest in mass hysteria and done some preliminary research (during which I managed to completely miss the term mass psychogenic illness, somehow!) was that he’s absolute got a point, and while I wouldn’t be surprised if at least a few initial cases were caused by preexisting conditions, I’d say it’s a fair guess that a good number of the cases were MPI, especially the later cases.
That being said, when Emma was first reading the article, I said out loud, ‘it’s a fair take, but you’re being a dick about it.’
So I can see why people would have taken it poorly.
I like this thinking! I must admit that as a psychology graduate and migraineur, I was thinking about the neurologists of Freud's age tut-tutting about hysteria and trying to telepathically communicate to Bartholomew that almost every "nondescript" symptom he described is a migraine symptom. My zinger was that women with migraine used to be diagnosed with hysteria, and just because HE doesn't see a medical cause doesn't mean there isn't one. But you've talked me into backing down from my imaginary argument! And thank you for bringing up the dancing plague, a very good example of something that was indisputably mass psychogenic illness. (Unless they were, in fact, possessed. 🤔🤪)
I agree completely. Hysteria is a terrible word with all the associations emma lists in her video. but MPI is a very real illness and has very important implications for internet use.
At the same time, it seems like certain users will not be happy no matter what the company does. They're expecting a company of 4 people to have the resources of a media company like Walt Disney. Instead of being supportive of a small business, they want to destroy them. Eventually, the owners are going to get tired of the constant vitriol and close the website for good.
@@wardgurl58 What I found really frustrating when I read it at the time was that a lot of the symptoms reported cluster together (migraines and nausea/vomiting, for example, go hand in hand for a lot of people who suffer migraines; I'm lucky enough to avoid that but I do sometimes get visual stuff and dizziness). So when Bartholomew treated the symptoms as totally discrete things that it would be absurd to have clustered together, it really made me uninclined to take him seriously. (Especially since there was an unskippable/unstoppable animation on the front page! I thought we all learned to stop doing that a decade or two ago!)
I recently found out by accident that one of my favourite shops/website is super accessible even to me who doesn't normally need accessibility. I clicked on the little man on the corner and it opened a myriad of opportunities. So I decided to click on the adhd tab which made the website simpler so I could be less distracted when shopping or looking at the products. And the website remembers. I went back in to look at some product reviews and it still appeared with the same simple UI I requested. I don't know how they did it but it would be really nice if more websites did it.
What website is that?? I love that idea!!!
my spouse is very colorblind, and i’ve come to love some sites’ colorblindness options, like patterns instead of plain colors. i wish people would design more accessibility-first digital products, they can only benefit from more users
@@meaverly exactly!
@@the_sky_is_blue_and_so_am_I it's for the brand l'erbolario. They sell personal care stuff made from plants. I usually shop there for their perfumes. I own three from them and I recently got my dad one. They are really good quality for the price and are also really liked among sensitive skinned people.
Wow - nice! That would help me so much if it were standard practice across the board. Hopefully someday
I think one unspoken factor that effected the redesign was that... the fibre arts community has a HIGH proportion of disabled people compared to some other hobbies/websites. Knitting and crocheting are super popular among people with a wide range of disabilities for many reasons. It's very possible that the backlash against the redesign wasn't just a bunch of healthy/abled people playing advocate for a small number of disabled people. I do not doubt that there were tons of disabled people ACTUALLY affected by the inaccessibility of the redesign, and no amount of sociological speculation about "MPI" was going to fix that.
Their response is very “we spent a lot of money on this and therefor we are not willing to take criticism bc we don’t wanna admit we spent money on garbage”
Yes! This exactly!
Absolutely stupid awful move but honestly. Between FOUR people running the sight I get it, I'd probably react the same. Still their fault to begin with 🤷♂️
The world before Ravelry required you to subscribe to magazines and blogs to get new patterns, and being an indie designer was a hobby at best. They really created an invaluable niche across the world that connected fiber enthusiasts, and suddenly knitting podcasts were everywhere, you could DM a pattern designer (as an autistic person being able to ask direct questions is incredible), indie dyers were making a surge and so on.
While I appreciate that they haven't sold out to Meta or anyone else, you are right. At some point, it became too big and they needed to take advantage of their community and ask for a couple $'s Wikipedia style to hire more staff and update their resources. I also wonder if Cassidy is holding on too tight and she and Jessica should set up a retirement plan for themselves?
Seconding that Ravelry is unbelievably useful, but yeah I don’t think they pass the ‘bus test’ (as in, will your company survive if X person gets hit by a bus tomorrow). 4 staff is dangerously tiny, and unless they’re all immortal they absolutely need to figure out plans for expanding their staff and eventual retirement.
I think the hiring of Livia is simple: she came cheap. Her background sounds a lot like mine, substituting dance for German studies. It sounds like she wanted to break into the graphics design field and Ravelry would have been a great way.
I agree with you. I also think it is nice to give someone an opportunity. Its unfortunate that the saying, "you get what you pay for" was not considered before making a decision (or maybe is was and they did not take the time to properly test before releasing).
I’ve never knitted in my entire life, my major has nothing to do with knitting (cybersecurity) but i go into a absolute scrabble whenever i see you have dropped a new video. I love this channel thank you
I love the phrase "an absolute scrabble"
Fun fact, computer coding language of 1 and 0 was inspired by knitting so by a very round about way cyber security is related knitting
@@previously4821i didnt know that, that’s awesome!! My roots are calling me back then it seems
your profile pic is iconic
i was a knitter/crocheter before i got into computing, and i was blown away by how much they have in common. it’s like a tactile, colorful, calming counterpart to the abstract, monochromatic, hair-pulling of computing 😄
people can hate on cassidy all they want for being rude and un-empathetic to them. but GOD i hated to see that when i looked her up on google there are so many knitting blogs with such blatant transphobia. its heartbreaking
It's always disgusting when people use a legitimate grievance with a person's actions as an excuse for being a bigot.
She deserves accountability for being a shit website owner not get bigotry thrown at her for being trans.
Fr it's like she's being an asshole and deserves criticism for that, but that's no excuse to go all transphobic. That's not criticism, that's just bigotry bruh.
yes, whatever I had and have to say about Cassidy and Ravelry, I felt for her with all the transphobia and intentional deadnaming and misgendering that came up along the redesign
i can’t believe the ravelry staff in their emails just said “this isn’t a thing because i said so”. like??? you can’t just say “this doesn’t cause any problems” and make the problems disappear
That’s how covid is treated
I'm only 12mins in but oh gosh, as someone who works as a UX designer, I'm already fuming about this "re-design". A UX designer shouldn't just be focusing on the looks of a website, but also functionality and accessibility. I feel like it's only gonna get worse as I keep watching...
I will say that yes, retroactively fixing things takes a lot of effort and web development is a tricky craft. But I still don't think that UX designer did their job well enough, they should have been doing user testing with a diverse range of people including people with different accessibility needs and assistive technology.
After the redesign, site users were looking her up and posting about her experience--or lack thereof. And then getting told off for it by moderators. She claimed she designed the blob that replaced the yarn ball for the logo specifically for Rav. Once people found her website, they saw she'd used that blob for so many other things, lol.
Interested to hear what you'd recommend going forward for a website as a designer after an event like this. How do you fix messing up this bad design wise?
@@faithg7750hiring a new team, but as I see it, the developer doesn't want a whole team and only a pay for a cheap "designer" without significant background. To do things professionally you would need real Ux/UIers and advisors on accessibility, maybe even consult anthropologist or sociologists, and maybe some more front and backenders to really turn this around. A lot of research goes into a redisgn. It also depends on how the OG developer set the page and the DB's up. In theory, if the backend and Frontend was okishly designed or even better, if Frontend frameworks were used, it should be fairly easy to adjust the page according to the UX/UIers and accessibility advisors recommendations. Just my two cents as a backend dev, with some experience in Frontend 😅
I'm not knowledgeable on the financial side of things, so this is not taking into account whether it could be affordable. I'm also not a senior designer, there could definitely be better solutions that I just don't have the experience to think of.
Firstly, fixing the inaccessible aspects as quickly as possible, probably pushing everyone back to the previous design if it's going to take time to do so. Hiring an accessibility specialist is 100% worth the money, speaking from experience of working with one. Having multiple devs and ideally, multiple designers, minimises the chances of further work being this bad because two heads are better than one and every dev and designer will have different skills and strengths.
And, like, communicating well with the users. Taking their feedback and issues seriously. Even if amazing user testing happens and a design seems really useable and accessible, not everything will be perfect. Part of being a good designer is monitoring feedback and doing further testing once a product has launched or been changed.
I have photosensitive migraines and was affected by the redesign, and i just happened to be using the website around then without realising they'd redesigned it. It gave me such a bad headache and i had to stop using it after 5-10 minutes. A few weeks later, i heard about the redesign and uh yeah... The gaslighting/downplaying about it from ravelry was wild; certainly not something abnormal to hear as a disabled person, but with the yarn community having such a large disabled and chronically ill base, it was a really bizarre way for Ravelry to handle the whole thing. It really felt like they put... ideology? sunk costs? above a huge portion of their userbase and just felt like a weird hill for them to die on when it was already not a good redesign
I’m having trouble finding examples of the redesign on google images. What was an example of something on the site that made you sick?
I'm really curious and trying to understand this whole situation and since you have personal experience with this issue I was hoping you could offer some insight
As someone who doesn't experience any disabilities, epilepsy or migraines this site looks totally inocuous to me. Other than not being super navigable it seems like any old website.... Which makes me wonder are there a lot of other websites out there that cause problems for folks who do experience epilepsy/migraines etc? Are you at risk any time you visit a new website, that you'll stumble upon something that will harm you? If so, that sounds really awful, and no one's talking about it?
(And since tone never conveys well via text, I am being entirely sincere)
I'll bite.
Aside from the moving navigation on the opening page covered in the video (which was not an issue for me), the crappy colors, and drop shadows on buttons:
1. The whiteness of the pages was turned WAY up. Holy cow bright;
2. The text in the forums became a narrower column, thus increasing the amount of white space on the page (with no ads on the side to break up that white space);
3. The line spacing of the text increased'
4. Combine these, and if you scroll on the page, you get a strobing effect.
Now, this didn't affect everyone. I have astigmatism. I found out (the hard way) that yup, it affected me. I could take about 10 minutes and I'd start to get a headache that would last hours.
@@bookfaerie23this explanation really helps, thank you. I have photosensitive migraines and from looking at the still images I had no idea how it could be affecting people - white pages are annoying to look at, but it's not really avoidable, and most people I know (myself included) who have issues with this have filters to tone down the brightness and make screens in general easier use. the strobing effect makes a lot more sense.
@@susannahkochfor your question about stumbling onto a site, yes you could potentially be stuck with a migrane. Its usually not a big issue in todays internet but definitely possible.
This part is not to sound mean or dismissive or anything but the main 2 reasons you dont hear about this issue more is, 1. Mostly women/afab people have migranes and 2. You dont get migranes yourself so you havent looked for people to talk to about migranes
I think the main problem people unknowingly had with the MPI article was that it was clearly just a sociological paper. And as someone who’s currently studying sociology, I can say that the way sociologists look at things can sound condescending and is infuriating at times, but we need to remember why it is like this. The intention there is not to justify or discredit the complaints, it’s a case study. Sociology has never been too big on finding solutions to problems, it’s about TRYING to figure out what could have caused them. There is also the part of it not being a study, but a contemplative piece. What the Rav team did was a quantitive study (a flawed bullshit one that would never fly, but there was an attempt). In cases like these, the preferred method would be an in-depth qualitative study, taking into account detailed testimonies of the ones affected. Neither Bartholemew nor Rav did that, so we shouldn’t expect either to come up with a definitive answer to whatever happened there.
Non-Academics tend to think this a lot when they’re on the outside looking in tbh. Can’t say I blame them, but it can be frustrating sometimes when they don’t look at the context of the paper and just take the language it uses at face value. Sounding sort of haughty and shitty is like, academic paper 101 lmao
Yeah as someone who's interested in sociology (decided against studying it in school but still like it), I kinda enjoyed his exploration of the idea and appreciate that Emma went a little more in depth with what he was saying. I think the issue is that you need to rule out all other potential causes to theorize on something being caused by MPI and despite the site seeming normal at a glance, there were other things it could be that could be the cause but hadn't been brought up like the specific color choices, or framerate, or something else that's not immediately obvious but makes sense
Interesting too that he has an article about the Pokémon episode that caused seizure potentially being MPI. From what I know about that was pretty clearly a case of bright flashing lights triggering photosensitive epilepsy. As a non photosensitive epileptic, I've seen the offending scene and it makes sense to me that it'd trigger a seizure in those who are susceptible. So I'm curious as to what he says in that article...
As a graphic designer and crocheter with a history of seizures (from a tumor that has since been removed, long story), I'm SO invested in this. Even when there's some kind of physical catalyst for your seizures, emotional distress can be a huge factor. My second seizure occurred on the day that they scheduled my brain surgery, because they didn't talk to me before scheduling it and I had a panic attack that led into a seizure. Creating a hostile emotional environment is not only unhelpful and unproductive, it can actively cause harm. If you have a website that caters to a population of niche hobbyists with a large disabled and elderly demographic, obviously accessibility should be a factor in your design, and OBVIOUSLY clapping back with "this is a big website we just don't have the resources" or "maybe you're just being hysterical" is in extremely bad taste. Great job researching and presenting the nuances here!
"If you have a website that caters to a population of niche hobbyists with a large disabled and elderly demographic, obviously accessibility should be a factor in your design, and OBVIOUSLY clapping back with "this is a big website we just don't have the resources" or "maybe you're just being hysterical" is in extremely bad taste."
I don't understand why it is so hard to believe that a website could be making people sick. I suffer from occasional migraines, and I know if I stare at a bright white website too long, I get a migraine. I feel bad for those who suffer from even worse symptoms.
I don't either, if a screen I'm looking at is too bright it makes me nauseous for days! Some people just don't have empathy or compassion for others.
Yeah but - then that would be the case looking at any website
I believe you, but I'm curious - what do you do when you need to use Wikipedia or something? Is there anything you can customize to improve your experience? I know some people like the blue light filtering glasses but I have no idea if they really do anything for photosensitivity. Personally I had a browser extension that skewed everything orange but idk if that's effective for others.
@Annalovesautumn there is an extension you can get on some browsers to dull the brightness, and you can also buy screen covers that help to tone down the brightness.
@Annalovesautumn that won't work for everyone's condition and they are expensive but they work for me. The browser extension is free, but I only found out about it when I have to get work accommodations.
The phrase "NFTs for knitting patterns" made me break out into hives
I’m a UI & UX Designer and Researcher with a visual design background. 12 years in industry.
Besides the Rav team’s bad PR responses, I have so many thoughts…
1. I understand why the designer is looking for a new job. Being the only in-house designer is tough, especially if you’re newer to the industry. However, I also wonder how many limitations were placed on her; how long did she have to test, was she able to iterate and test early, were they moderated or unmoderated tests, was she given a budget for compensating users, how did she recruit testers, etc. How much of the final design decisions were made by the owners and not her. The amount of times a product owner overrides the designer’s recommendation can be high, depending on the team culture and personalities. I promise this isn’t all on her and her competency. Some of the best designers I’ve worked with are newer and self-taught.
2. This is why more design programs should be teaching accessibility. I have a design & research undergrad, masters, and was a TA. None of the courses I took or were exposed to focused on accessibility beyond a single week’s module. And that was back in 2012. MOST of accessibility knowledge (as shared from the designers in my network at least) is usually acquired on the job and from design or developer coworkers. Or when their mistakes are called out. I’ve searched for a course with a deep level understanding of accessibility and haven’t found a good one beyond IDF’s. If anyone has a course or book to recommend, please point me in that direction!
3. The Rav team is either not looking at the right website analytics or not publicly reporting what really matters; pre vs post daily/weekly/monthly active users - just to name the easiest metric to check. Create a user segment called “Classic Rav Power Users” then compare their avg time on site and days active, before and after the redesign. If they have their analytics set up properly it’ll take 5 mins. Then they can dig deeper from there with other user segments and metrics.
4. I’m curious what other websites trigger the symptoms reported by some Rav users. If NuRav is unique for some reason, this needs to be turned into a case study and broadly shared with designers to learn from and avoid for the future. I’m about to send this vid to my network. This is, by a designer’s perspective, a basic, safe, ho-hum design. the intensity of the physical reactions is extremely concerning and equivalent to rough VR experiences. Any designer I know would be surprised by the effects NuRav has had on some folks. It makes me wonder if there is a small and unique population of people that Rav has brought together who all are drawn to fiber arts but also share a common visual processing challenge and they are finally able to have their voices heard because they are united on this site..?
I'm a person who has migraines triggered by visual stimuli (I get migraines with aura), my mother does as well, and my mother's partner has photosensitive epilepsy. I'm also a Computer Science student, so I've done a bit of focus on web design and web accessibility but clearly not that much. I'm also baffled by what NuRav is doing differently. The screenshots of the website presented in this video, as well as the website itself which I've visited after this video seem to be the most basic semi-modern design possible (edit: Though I note that the current website differs from what is presented in screenshots/as it was in the past). I know clearly not everyone has the same triggers for their conditions, but it feels like if these individuals were triggered by NuRav, they'd also be unable to access many, many modern websites. It feels like there is a huge gap on the apparent web design issues being missed in this video, but I wouldn't claim to know how to fill it.
I would be absolutely fascinated by a paper about this.
@@mentallyeeling I am not an expert by any means, and since this all happened around 3 years ago, my memory is hazy. However, I remember people chiming in at the time and saying that New Rav did have some things it did that were actually known to cause these issues (not sure if these have since been fixed). As I said, my memory is hazy. I want to say there was something to do with the drop shadows they added and how they behaved when scrolling (I think basically, they didn't render immediately to scrolling, which caused a flashing sort of effect?).
I have basically not been back to Rav since the changes as so many people did leave over this that things changed in terms of dynamics of groups I was in. I basically just downloaded all my patterns and printed them to have a hard copy, in case the designers decided to pull them and mostly haven't visited since. I think maybe I did go to buy a pattern at one point, because as has been pointed out, the database is kind of the only way to find alot of patterns. I say all this to explain that if the drop shadow issue or any other issue that might have been brought up was deemed fixable or was removed has occurred, I wouldn't know.
For point 4 - I'm not a web designer / developer and don't personally have experience with migraines or seizures, but I DO spend a lot of time knitting and in knitting-related spaces. I honestly think that part of it may be that knitting tends to attract people who already deal with chronic conditions and illnesses (including me!). It's a perfect hobby for people who choose or have to spend a significant amount of time inside / sitting down, simple patterns can be done without looking at what you're doing after a certain skill threshold, the repetitive motion gives you something to *do* for an extended period of time without physical exertion or needing to use too much focus (again, after a certain skill threshold and with certain patterns), and it takes a while but feels productive which can be incredibly valuable when you have a flare-up and feel frustrated that your body isn't letting you do what others can. To me, it's not really a surprise that people with chronic conditions that would make them more prone to migraines / seizures would already be Ravelry users and get triggered by the redesign, especially when you consider that the total number of people who had problems was comparatively an extremely small percentage out of the total nine million users - it's just concerning that the number wasn't zero, and that the Rav team chose to do nothing to fix the issues.
i studied computer science in college as part of my math degree. i have never worked as a programmer or website designer, but i did have to complete my share of programming assignments and design a few websites. i haven’t ever heard of a website being able to make people sick. is this because it’s not taught? maybe. is it because it’s not very common? maybe. i’m struggling to see what’s weird about this site. personally i like a dark theme, but that’s preference. when she was first mentioning it was giving people migraines, i envisioned it as probably being crazy neon colors. that doesn’t appear that’s the case. but, as a mathematician, the burden of proof lies with those who claim the site made them sick, so yeah i think i’m gonna need some scientific investigation on this one before siding with the people who claim they were made ill.
I just want to note that, as someone who did have issues those first couple of days after the re-skin but currently does not (because they adjusted it enough for me personally), the thing that gave me the worst headache was the font. They chose some non-standard font that I /think/ was supposed to be good for dyslexia?, but it had this weird illusion of movement that was just awful. I know it was the primary thing for me, because as soon as they changed the font back to something more web-standard, my headaches went away (and the font's own webpage was just as awful to look at).
To this day, the only two posts I've ever made in the forums were in those feedback threads lol.
ETA: looks like the awful font is actually still the default, so to anyone who's still having issues and is still willing to stick with them, try changing the font in your settings and see if that helps.
Do you find narrow fonts usually easier to read?
@@MazHem That's possible, although I don't have a problem with the wider font AO3 uses, for example. I think the bigger issue is that Inter (the default) looks blurry to me compared to Helvetica (which is what I have my Rav set to), and my eyes already make everything blurry as it is so I don't really need more of that xD
@@Calaidi does it look blurry as a general font offline or on other sides? It looks crisp if not as sharp on my phone, but I don't remember much difference on pc other than wideness. Like newsprint vs letraset
@@MazHem Yeah, if it's sized up to be like, a header or something, it's not too bad, but the website for the font has a little writing sample on it that's a more standard size, and that also looks off to me. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It was the drag of the font for me on the very white background.
Won't lie--almost did a spit-take when you said that you thought that the site you were looking at must have been done in 2015. That was one of the (many) initial criticisms--the "update" was already looking dated.
Edited to add: I read the article at the time, and was not amused. It was actually referenced by Cassidy as a means to say, "See? You guys are making it all up." And as someone who can't go on the site since the old skin stopped working due to headaches, I did not appreciate that.
I couldn't tolerate the changed site. I only recently discovered the Ravit app to utilize the site. Much better.
It really did feel like they went forward with the redesign without realizing what that entailed and when a bunch of negative feedback poured in they (especially Cassidy) took it as an attack of their character and got defensive and decided to take the stance of “nobody likes change” to justify lashing out and the money spent on a bad redesign. What also bothers me the most is Cassidy’s wife was the one who said in that post that Cassidy felt bad about how she acted and was sorry but did Cassidy ever apologize herself? I get being in a bad place mentally but still if she was actually sorry it should have been her saying it not her wife speaking for her
As I recall, her behavior got so bad (I think on Twitter specifically) that they basically thought the best way to deal with it was to take her away from any means of communication. So while I agree that the apology comes off as hollow, I think in terms of damage control, letting her have access to make the apology could have been very disastrous.
@@loverlyredhead I can understand that but still I think even if just from her account and say that her wife looked it over before she posted cause it seems she did get access back if she typed about nfts
@@cyanotype_moon Cassidy coming out happened during all this, yes. More than one user wondered if some of the reaction from the site owners had to do with her transition. I recall homophobic comments made around her coming out (because some people feel the need to be that way), and then all the crap from the redesign, and there were people wondering if criticism of her transition was also equaling criticism of the site change for her.
@@cyanotype_moon yeah I can understand why she may have acted the way she did…i can only imagine…I just still think for the sake of the buisness at least their would be ways to have her make the actual apology from her lips
Like you mentioned in the video, disabled folks are used to being gaslit and having their disabilities dismissed, but when a website self-describes as inclusive and then... responds like that... to people's concerns and experiences, it makes it much worse as it dissolves all trust in the legitimacy of their support for you and your needs. Mistakes happen, bad decisions happen, but it was the subsequent response that really spoke for itself. It should not be a matter of debate whether someone's disability concerns are "legitimate", and the attempts to discredit them are seriously reprehensible.
If you cannot DEFINITIVELY prove the claim isn't real with 101% certainty, take our words for it, or at least just don't insist it MUST not be real. We know our bodies and the difficulties of them best. Thank you for documenting this so well for people who didn't know about it, I really hope it aids a lot of folks in understanding why accessibility concerns come in many forms and need empathy all the same. ♥
As a web developer I continue to be horrified by Ravelry’s technical decisions 🙃
same
Can you elaborate? I know nothing about web design.
Same. It's baffling to me
I’m a product designer myself, so this was a super interesting watch. Looking at just the examples you showed I was confused by the contrast issue of too much contrast and vibrating vivid colors. A black and white combination, while high in contrast, is not going to cause the issues users were having. But then I saw the buttons. Oh man. The buttons. The button color combinations are like Usability 101 to NEVER do… I’m shocked they would put so much time and effort into building out a custom design system and not even test the contrast of their colors. More than that, as a designer, I don’t understand the intuition that even led to those colors being used together lol. I’m poking around Livia’s Figma file of the design system now and I’m just.. surprised. Anyway, great video! Super interesting to hear about everyone’s experience with the update.
Are there any other websites you know of that cause this much trouble? I don’t doubt the people saying they have bad reactions to the site, but I’ve never heard of it happening before, and it surprised me!
@@nadinekim375 I’m with you! I was surprised at first as well, as I’ve never heard of it happening before with a site I’ve seen. I got my degree in design though, and we were warned in school about the effects of pairing vivid colors. It creates an invisible line effect and confuses your brain into thinking there is movement between the colors. It can absolutely cause eye strain in turn causing headaches. You can google “vibrating color combinations” and see a great example of the effect. Unstoppable animations are also a big no-no for accessibility for similar reasons. We were taught that nothing should start moving or playing sound until the user has done something to cause it to happen (pressing play, clicking a button, etc.) It’s crazy to see a site with so many users try it on the login page!
Is meeting WCAG AAA standards for accessible text not enough?
Is the figma file public? I’d love to take a look too!
I remember when they changed the site. I didn't know there was a change and it looked so funky. At first, I could only look at the site for like 10 minutes. Eventually, they fixed it enough to look at and now I don't have issues. But yes, it was definitely doing harm to people.
I think part of the problem with the redeisign and Cassidy/Ravelry's responses comes from the addition of bad faith actors. The Trump ban was around the same time, and there were a lot of angry Trump fans willing to make mischief. So you have two polarized sides providing feedback - one the one hand, people who are experiencing issues (migraines, etc) and want relief, and on the other hand, people willing to *say they are* in order to make Ravelry look bad. I can see that if you're Cassidy, it can be really hard to sift through the responses and see who is actually having physical issues with the site and who is tring to harrass her via made-up issues. Given how the redesign isn't that exciting (from a user perspective) and yet took a lot of time and effort, I expect there was a lot of frustration and feeling inadequate - the redesign was lacking and the ability to respond appropriately was lacking (based on not knowing someone's true motivations). It puts you on unstable footing, mentally and emotionally, leading to a spiraling down and continued struggle to get it right. I'm not saying it's all excusable, but I can see how we got there. Thanks for the deep dive!
Should it really matter how much of the feedback was from real or "made-up" issues, though? It's too easy to dismiss any sort of criticism as bad faith in order to avoid taking accountability, and even if some of the reports of issues were disingenuine the fact that ANY of them were real (which we very much know they were) should've been more than enough to stop making excuses at the very least even if you aren't immediately able to address the problem. The redesign alone didn't make Ravelry look that bad, but the subsequent denial/gaslighting/dismissal of concerns most definitely did, and you really can't afford to look for reasons to discount feedback from people for something you cannot prove (by assuming they had a political angle). I can understand acting inappropriately due to being overwhelmed and feeling the brunt of online negativity, but you can still choose to not respond publically if you know you won't be able to give a good response that doesn't directly contribute to ableism and erasure of "invisible" disabilities.
I literally only started crocheting a MONTH ago solely to make hats for my Breyer horse collection 😂😂 and I’m so invested in these videos. I need to know the yard drama.
Yarn drama!!
I adore how niche that is!!! Hats for Breyer Horses?
I have Schleich and Papo ones and am always wondering should I start crocheting and knitting tiny things for them and reading that I think I should! 😆😅
hats! model horse hats!! are they the cutest or *the cutest*? my mom is a lifelong horse girl, i can’t wait to tell her someone is out there knitting teeny breyer horse hats
Omg, Breyers are such a niche, your comment surprised me! Hobby crossover haha. I love the idea of making accessories for them!
@@sarahheilman6350 isn't it THE most precious thing?! You see, Breyers (and Schleichs!) are our babies! 😅😊
Yep, whenever I get a migraine I just assume that my womb has started wandering again and it's time for another round of electroshock therapy.
So sorry to hear this. So sorry your issue has been brushed off as if it were insignificant.
I wasn’t expecting such a niche and highly specific historical reference to the use of ‘wandering wombs’ and electroshock ‘therapy’ in a video about knitting website drama I’m about to watch, but I guess so-called hysteria is something that’ll come up.
The way that I recognise the reference to a very specific part of afab healthcare history, down to the word usage in a particular set of sources is so wild to me, but drinking water on a regular basis, and what I planned to do in a room I just walked into elude me every damn day. I should not have gone undiagnosed with ADHD for as long as I did, in retrospect…
Omg you're hysterical😂
reminds me of when tumblr updated a few years ago and i had to change the contrast on my phone to even use the app because it was such a high contrast, it was hurting *my* eyes and i don't have a history of photo sensitivity at all
im so glad i subscribed to you. craft drama is amazing
I remember the “polling” over the redesign. It was such a terrible design, and they kept saying “Oh, we’ve fixed [thing]!” And what they did was change buttons to be 3 pixels smaller.
re: pride homepage “controversy” i was a certified gay person on ravelry at the time, and i vivdly remember my immediate response being “this is ugly but whatever” and then i never thought about it again until this moment 💀💀💀
It's so nice to see you being so sensitive to people who are photosensitive, prone to get migraines and so on and give a warning each time before you show the new design! Although I do get migraines quite easily I for my part am not effected (afftected?) from the new design, but I feel very seen and I appreciate this!
10 points, woo!! My auditory processing issues have been annoying lately so I'm pretty proud of that. This was such a good documentation about accessibility in web design that really clicked with me. Bonus points for the crypto nonsense and grody homophobia. I'm really looking forward to part 3!
I had no idea there was a whole public issue around the redesign. I just thought that feeling sick (dizziness, nausea, migraines) every time I used Ravelry was some crazy coincidence and never "oh, maybe it's the website and not a chronic illness flare up!" Sure sometimes I got legit eyestrain when it was a better health day but sometimes I'd get dizzy after
Tania Richter is one of my favorite designers ever, she's the person that designed a cross between knitting and tabletop rpgs. She has been permanently disabled from ravelry, and that took away her main source of income for herself and her household as a knitwear designer, and now also can't work a "normal" job. No matter what changes they make in the future, they ruined someone's health and livelihood and will never be forgiven for that.
If you want her patterns they can be found on her website/payhip at knit 1 roll 20, and are genuinely some of my favorite designs ever.
ok but having illustrations of a b plug and people wearing bdsm outfits on the homepage of a KNITTING site is kinda wild, coming from a gay gal myself
Agreed, those things also aren't even inherently tied to lgbtq+ people and plenty of straight people engage with them.
that color pallete is inherently messy based on color theory and color schemes like triadic analagous and tetradic are ones that were some of the first I learnd in school so idk why a designer wouldn’t know that, a way to include tjem all would he to group them in their use but it doesnt look like they have as they mostly kept flat color and highly contrasted white which has a strained look to it
Those colors are just...yeah. They were "in" around the time of the redesign.
I totally agree. I really think changing the high contrast white and black lines to lighter grays would fix a lot of the photosensitivity issues
@@existential-axolotl It used to be like that. There wasn't as much high contrast on the old site. Or as much white space.
@@bookfaerie23 Yeah, Classic Rav was way better. I’ve had a Ravelry account since 2007.
That's not completely true. Designers have to focus on the demographic and this color scheme is actually really nice. Considering what year it takes place in and also the user base of the site
After finding the part 1 of this saga, I binged tonns of your channel, and I really adore the way you discuss these topics that often are left ignored and belittled, you actually treat these bits of history like nuanced situations and its a breath of fresh air! Keep it up!! ❤❤❤
(i also love having a new channel to put on to motivate me while I crochet lol)
As far as the redesign goes, I think it's part of a much bigger trend we're seeing. As more websites redesign their sites to be higher contrast and introduce more dark modes, it's just continually making platforms more uninhabitable for people with photosensitivity. Two recent ones I can think of is the Discord mobile redesign that removed the old dark mode for one that's extremely high contrast, which I have seen widespread complaints from some users no longer being able to use the app. There's also the new features RUclips has introduced where if the video says "like" or "subscribe", it highlights those respective buttons with a bright flashy rainbow border. It's all nothing new, but it's still frustrating to watch happen.
While the old version had an outdated design, the new one feels like it's 2008. I didn't get the whole seizure thing, but it was uncomfortable to look at, bc I have astigmatism, if I look at high contrast images for too long my vision blurs and I may get headaches. That didn't happen back then but I did avoid the new design and switch to the old one as soon as it was available just because it felt like I was straining my eyes.
I just remember my husband who's a web dev and has absolutely nothing to do with crafts whatsoever, looking at the site on my monitor and going like "Jesus! What the hell is that?" XD
Never forget when Tropicana made their orange juice look like store brand juice for those few months in early 2008. 🍊
Those illustrations of the Ravelry staff were ghastly.
when school turned to online only I would scroll ravelry aimlessly during class, when the redesign happened I genuinely got such a horrible migrane that I had to sleep for the rest of the day and felt like I was hungover the next day.
I am always impressed at the amount of research and work you put into your videos, thank you. This was really interesting. I did experience a couple of migraines when the site changed. I stayed off it once I heard that the redesign could have been the cause. As soon as they allowed the option to go back to the old site, I sent in and downloaded all of my patterns. I do use it now, but sparingly and only for a short time, around 10 mins. I just dip in to get what I need and leave. Partly because I am worried about migraines and partly because of the way it was handled.
I scored 12 in the quiz!
You can put it in dark mode now if you haven't tried that, that helped me enough to be able to use it. But most of the community I'd hung out with was gone.
20/20 on the quiz! Also wanted to say as a disabled knitter I’m appalled by the inaccessibility of the redesign.
For future reference, Aoibhe is pronounced like Eva. It's the Irish form of the name. 😉
as in "ee-va" or "eh-va"?
Eeva
Ah. I was really curious about that one! 😊
In elementary school my friend Aoife was in my class and we would read out a chart everyday with vowel spelling, an example & the letter sound & ig my teacher noticed some kids had trouble reading Aoife’s name so she made a special vowel card for us to practice with every day!! I still remember “spelling: aoi, example: aoife, sound EE”
I'm scrolling thru a list of today's funniest tweets while listening to this and came across one that said "I found a YT channel dedicated to the drama in the knitting and crochet community, and it's the weird specific content I'm here for". I think I know what channel they're talking about!
PART 2 LETS GOOOOO!!!! SO excited - kindly, Peyton from that coffee shop in Brookline🌞
I've been crocheting and knitting for over 20 years, but I've never been super deep into the online community of it, so I love your drama videos and getting to learn all sorts of tea without being involved in it.
so sorry, but i believe the name at 41:26 (Aoibhe) is pronounced EE-va! it's an irish name, so the pronunciation is different than what us english speakers might anticipate. love the video! very well researched and interesting
i find it so funny with the redesign of the website because as an avid knitter that’s mostly self-taught i’ve tried to use ravelry because i really liked the concept - but it’s honestly unusable i still can’t navigate that site oh my god
I just found your channel a few days ago and OMG the drama I didn't know I needed in my life, as a crocheter I didn't know the drama of it all, Thank u for the hard work and helping me finish a big order while listening to your video :)
The moving images on the log in pages also meant that people who used screen readers weren't able to log in at all. It took ages for TPTB to care enough to change that.
The testers were ignored, TPTB got their egos hurt, and the only way I can use Rav to this day is with an orange filter and a mod created by a user. I have zero loyalty left to that website. So many of my people are unable to use it at all, and now gather on other sites.
My favourite thing about the whole saga was having old men tell me, "it's all in your head", just for something entirety unoriginal.
So basically, Ravelry’s response to people physically affected by their site changes was: “you are all a bunch of liars and hypochondriacs.”
Edit: oh, I guess that was 100% only Cassidy’s response 🤔
me, a person who has never knitted: yes part 2 of the ravelry video is here
I feel like the MPI article is a great example of “intent =/= impact”.
Never have I so anticipated a part two to a drama, involving a community I knew nothing about, and is very tame compared to the drama I usually watch. Letssss goooo!
Seeing this was the motivation i needed to pick up the gusset stitches on my sock so i could get back to the mindless knitting. I am now sat, ready for a knitting adventure.
how fitting, to turn the heel on your sock while learning about ravelry's heel turn
Those emails from Ravelry are almost identical to the emails I have been getting from Tumblr for the past 2 years. People who run sites give 0 attention about accessibility (the coo of Tumblr actually laughed at their disabled users) I will never understand why people don't realize we are trying to help them...
I remember logging into Ravelry maybe around 2021 after not logging in for a couple years and thinking the site looked weird and ugly and I couldn’t find stuff - I had no idea about all this drama!
Ok, did not realize how excited for part two I was until you posted it! Thanks for doing all this hard work to keep us updated on this crafty drama lol
I've never been more scared that what I was cooking smelled wrong and somehow from the past you could smell it. That ad was such poor timing
I am sooo proud of this redemption arc!(for me that is) From 2 last time to a score of 14 this time!
Ah yes the dreaded site change, I've been waiting for your next Ravelry vid! I remember when it happened (speaking like it was 10 years ago, COVID twisted my sense of time for good) and the eyestrain was real, there was something about the font choices, spacing and contrasts that made the site unbearable to read. I used the old version until they fixed all these problems, still preferred the old but at least the site is usable nowadays.
The color palette really reads millennial decorating their house in 2009. I'm surprised there aren't chevrons all over 😅.
Speaking for millennial, if you had a MySpace you probably have reskined a page
What millenials were decorating a house in 2009? They cant afford houses even now, much less on peak mortgage crisis during their teens and early 20s
@verybarebones I owned a home in 2009 but it was in northern MN and cost 90k 🤷🏻♀️ no chevrons though
I think that chevrons might’ve actually been kinda cute here because they kinda look like knitting stitches
….I was 17 in 2009 lmao. What house.
@@wplants9793You either weren’t a millenial or had significant privilege to be given the financial ability to get the house. 🤷🏻 Your experience plain and simple is not the norm. Not even close.
Wait, but there was a clown panic. Even in Texas! I remember getting messages from my university alert system warning us to stay inside at night because people would walk around dressed like clowns. It was real lol
I watched a video about it a while ago, I'll see if I can find it. Basically a lot of the "clown spottings" were fake, or just kids/teens messing around. there was 1 (either death or severe injury, I can't remember) tied to it, however the victim was the kid dressed as the clown and not an innocent bystander.
Edit: Its called 'Clown spotting of 2016 deep dive" my IzzzyIzzz
I've personally never had any medical issues with the redesign, but I'm not invalidating people who did have medical issues.
My biggest issue was that there was *less* division among menus in terms of colors. It was so white that it did hurt my eyes. I switched to the dark version as soon as I could. I remember the survey, it was phrased so as to be a victim blaming in the results.
There used to be a 'drama' group on Rav where we'd 'watch' and have commentary on ravelry drama of all kinds, it was a ton of fun, and Cassidy's responses to things were always drama filled.
I’m so glad I saw this when it got uploaded a minute ago!!!
Great overview and super fun to watch! Also as a side note, it is really neat watching you add different editing techniques and style choices to your videos. It's fun to watch you grow as a creator!
i love the caution and the verbal warning that you told us Emma. I skip down here in the comments and listen. Your inclusivity and looking out for your Viewers is awesome. TYSM!
I'm a casual user of Raverly and had no interest in the community aspect of it, so I had no idea about all the different controversy! This was super interesting, informative, and juicy. So great to listen to while I knit, so thanks for part 1 and 2! Haha
IVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS !!!! U slay thanks Emma
@ville__ lies
I got entirely too excited when you mentioned saving that other controversy for another video. This is entertaining to listen to/watch while I knit.
been a brand/visual designer for nearly 9 years, the branding from the colors to the iconography is so all over the place it doesnt make sense if it was to be marketable. even the color scheme makes me wonder if they even put thought behind the brand or thought CMYK stood for (make it part of every brand standard but make it inaccessible as possible) and if it was a reskin, usually the colors are well made to be a global chain change with coding so people can go in anc change colors incase of holiday/events 😭also the fact that the one designer had to do 3 different jobs is just insane.
I really loved this two part video series. I was knitting through both videos and enjoyed your commentary. Also, you rock the pigeon vest!
Throughout this series, I was wondering why I have heard of Ravelry so much as a fiber artist, yet never used it. I just realized while watching this that I think one of the main reasons i have yet to join is because every screenshot I have ever seen has made the website look so old and crusty. I checked out the before and after pics you linked to and they made it look worse with the update! Like how is that even possible.
I know absolutely nothing about knitting or crafting, but I'm really enjoying your videos. For whatever reason, the algorithm decided to send me here and even though i have no context and the community is completely new to me, it's super fascinating. I also appreciate that you include some explanations around knitting/crafting lingo and terminology for folks who aren't as familiar.
I think gender neutral is a garbage concept when it comes to design because it so often just means, "not traditionally feminine/unoffensive to masculine folx."
To add to this, I've found some gendered clothing that make fun of gendered norms and they're funny af
I'm a total beginner with crochet (less than 10 small projects so far) but I've been listening to the videos on this channel for tea about a community I'm just starting to enter. Your videos are so thorough and I applaud you for the dedication of time. Thank you for the entertainment!
One of the accessibility issues a lot of people had when scrolling had to do with the line spacing because it did create flaring artifacts when people scrolled. It did give me a headache on the first day before I knew it was even a thing, so that's some impressive mass psychosis affect. I would love you to do a deeper dive into Mary Heather, who I think is the source of a lot of the ravelry toxicity and gaslighing, but since her main tactic as deletion, I can see how this would be a challenge. :)
you know youve watched too much youtube when you can tell what sponsorship is coming just based on the intro 😂😂 love ur videos
Just wanted to say that I have been on ravelry since the old invitation days and reference it extensively as a knitting instructor. I am not some one who has headaches and had no idea that they had redesigned the site at the time. BUT I went on the site within the first week and got a GIANT headache within a few minutes. Mind you I had no idea yet that people were experiencing serious reactions. Shut down the site in the moment but did get headaches everytime thereafter until they allowed classic rav. To this day I no longer go down crafty rabbit holes on this site - just get in and get out because it still has issues. To describe it as MPI when I initially had no outside influences is laughable.
Same for me--I'm not photosensitive, hadn't heard anything about the redesign nor had I seen any of the reactions, but after using the new site and getting up and walking away I realized I had afterimages when I blinked in the shape of the bright aqua buttons! The dark mode is now fine for me, but I absolutely believe people who had more serious issues.
I've been knitting and crocheting less and less in the past few years, and went on ravelry even less. I used to go to the site multiple times a day, but now I log on maybe twice a year or so.
I don't remember when I first saw the new ravelry site design, but I didn't think much of it since mainly only use the pattern search feature and sometimes add my projects if I remember to.
So I didn't know there was such a huge issue with the site rebrand! And wow, I never really looked that deep into any the notifications by the ravelry team (and didn't read any regarding this issue before this video), but their responses were appalling.
Though I don't knit as often any more, I miss the sense of community of ravelry, so I'm so glad I found your channel emma :) Thanks for all your work!
Tysm for uploading this right as discord went down, I was in the middle of a convo and I need something to watch while I wait for it to come back up
My issue with Bartholomew's article is more that his expertise is sociological, not medical, not neurological. Nothing that could first validate the people speaking up about seizure/migraine/etc. risks. And either he's so deep into academia that he doesn't realize how mentioning mass hysteria is going to be received, or he just didn't care, but right then was not the moment!
Plus, the article landed at a time where ravelry staff was undermining and dismissing any concern brought to them. So the general understanding of MPI + ravelry staff's tone were the worse possible combination.
Also, forgot to mention this is previous video's comment, but like. The people who don't want to be reminded that queer people exist saying lgbtq+ representation or mention is "political" will never cease to be so exhausting. biggest UGH. Feels like a dog whistle in itself, "don't politicize" just means, "pretend you don't exist for the sake of my personal comfort". 🙄
I want to just take a moment to say thank you for making these videos! I'm just getting into crochet myself (in part because of your videos!) so I don't know a lot about the past ravelry drama, but my mom has been on the site since it's inception, and it's been fun learning about this stuff and then getting to ask her about it haha
In looking at the comparisons of the site differences, I can see something that would bother me based on photosensitivity. All the white. While there are defined buttons and borders there is little color break. Scrolling through that on a full screen or even a phone screen where text would be tinier would be headache inducing. I noticed one person in the threads saying they had to turn brightness down to even cope. I already have low brightness and yellow glasses to combat light and still I would find that to much.
As a person who doesnt have epilepsy or migraines, i could still feel my eyes strain a bit from looking at the redesign in this video.
12:44 i am very prone to migraines and have light sensitivity, but no seizures. so when the first screenshot popped up on screen, of the comments, my immediate thought was "wow that is very white" followed by "*maybe* my brightness on my laptop is just too high?" and this comment just sealed the deal tbh
When ti was new the drop shadows also wouldn't keep up with scrolling and would cause flickering. Yeah, it was bad juju and worse in movement by far.
I just recently started learning to crochet and I'm obsessed with putting your videos on while I work. It's fun catching up on drama for this new community I'm entering!
You made me actually go dig up my ravelry account so I could see what the newrav looks like. Yes, you are correct, like an old aol page.
Something that is often missed in website design is color/contrast placement issues. In certain medically sensitive individuals, the simple placement and shape of colors near each other, causes their eyes to bounce from one side to the other, creating a strobe effect, causing eye strain, nausea, seizures, migraines etc. Sort of like the optical illusion many have seen with the white and black checkerboard where you can see 'imaginary' black/grey dots in between them. A simple thing like the sliding motion fade that is used, even on this vlog, can cause eye and ear disconnect, which causes some people to feel off balance and nauseated.
Speaking as a South Carolinian, the clown panic was a very real thing
I stumbled upon your channel and have been binge watching while I do laundry. I am stucked in and weirdly invested in the crafting drama. I feel the need to start crocheting again while I listen. 😂 I love it!
lol to a Scentbird advert after I literally just clicked out of a video about the unhinged believes of one of the Scentbird founders
Yes I’ve heard of this!
👀 say more
The video I watched was from 3 months ago on a channel called Cyber Noop.
I’m watching this in my TV but HAD to jump on my phone to tell you that your scentbird transition was so incredible I nearly choked on my coffee :) thank you loved it and love ur videos
For anyone curious about MPI, Puppet History (yes that is the name of the series and it's as glorious as it sounds) over on Watcher has a great video about the Dancing Plague. It goes through the sociological factors leading to the outbreak, what did and didn't work in its treatment, and how it was ultimately resolved. Spoiler warning: neither ignoring it nor calling people crazy helped, shockingly.
ive been using ravelry on dark mode this whole time and never even knew the light mode was so ugly
Yay!!! Thanks for part 2!! I made a profile on ravelry a few months ago and I dislike the site. I mostly use my iPhone for things out of convenience and the mobile version isn’t easy to navigate in my opinion lol
yeah, I have to use the Ravit app to use Ravelry on my phone, I hate the mobile site
One of the few things the developer ever pushed back on before this drama was the mobile accessibility. It wasn't in their skillset, so they had no interest in doing it. Kinda like how she thought NFTs were gonna be big, she seemed to think mobile use wasn't gonna be a thing. It's why there's no app, either.
Is there a mobile version?
@@TamarLitvotI’m not even sure? I think the iPhone “creates” a mobile versions of most web pages?? What I do know for sure is that browsing Ravelry via mobile web browser sucks 🤣🤣