Thursday, July 9, 2020

I should've done this before

"There are few knitting problems that will not yield to a blend of common sense, ingenuity, and resourcefulness." - Elizabeth Zimmermann "The Opinionated Knitter"

An excellent quote to keep in mind right now as things continue to go unanswered on the R*velry front. The new readability survey is a cruel joke upon those experiencing vision troubles, migraines, 10 reported seizures now, and a case of retinal bleeding! The Epilepsy Foundation has issued a warning about the site, and sent a letter to them. Will it help? Sadly, I can't be positive about it as I once would've been.

As I mentioned before, I have listed my patterns on Payhip and LoveCrafts, while still having them available on R*velry. Unfortunately, they're a leading force in the industry and I'm too small of an entity not to use them. The resources for designers, especially smaller ones, housed in the group pages are a wealth of information.

And it's a page in the Accessible Patterns group that my post title comes from today. I have witnessed a lot of discussions about the needs of knitters with vision difficulties overtime,  and am sad to say, I always put it to the side as "something I'll get around to". That's not good enough. This is me saying I need to do better. I started on Tuesday and so far have 4 patterns with an additional low vision pdf included with them. These are available in my Payhip shop and my R*velry shop (yes, I completely see the irony of having them available on R*v); as near as I can tell you can't have more than one pdf to a pattern on LoveCrafts. I need to see if that means I can have a duplicate pattern page set up for the low vision version. The 4 patterns with the low vision option, so far, are:
The links above take you directly to the Payhip individual listing for that pattern. The links to my whole portfolio on each platform are in the sidebar. I'm working more or less in publishing order, starting with my older patterns.*

Going forward, my plan is for every Knit Dance Repeat Designs pattern to have a low vision pdf included with the standard one. This meshes well with my previous plan of offering both written out instructions and charts so each knitter is able to choose what suits them best.

What's the difference between my standard pdf and my low vision ones? My standard pdfs have the title and all headings in Pacifico, title in 26pt, headings in 16pt underlined; the low vision pdf has Calibri in 24pt for the title and Calibri in 22pt in bold type for the headings. Standard print of my patterns is Cambria 12pt; for my low vision pdfs I've used Calibri 22pt. I use some italics and underlining for definition in my standard pdfs; I've either used bold type or parentheses for definition in the low vision options. Almost all of my standard patterns include charts and fully written out instructions; I don't include charts in the low vision pdfs. Lastly, my standard pdfs have the page number/title/my name/Knit Dance Repeat Designs on the bottom right side of each page; in my low vision pdfs I have left justified everything including the page number, etc.


Update: ‪The Light Reel Cowl has its low vision pdf now.

*I'm unsure what I'll do about Rínce Fada as it's completely double-knit colorwork presented as charts. I'm going to have to ask someone the best way to go about that one so it'll probably be the last one completed. It will also be a very large file once completely written out.

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