Processing

Today is a day for processing things. For one thing, it's hot and humid again, and not being overly active means not breaking into a sweat too often. For another, thinking can be done while I knit.

The letter signed by nearly 400 current and former Ravelry designers was delivered to them on Tuesday, and a response came back less than 24 hours later. Considering the track record of response times during this situation, that was near miraculous.

Sadly, while many of us hoped for better results, their answer was unsurprising. I screenshot the Instagram post by Sarah, who was one of the main organizers of the letter. (Kudos to her for that! It was no small undertaking.) So here you go:



Because the post is too long to fit in an alt text caption, I have typed it here:

"sarahmgoodwindesigns Wednesday update for the Designer's Open Letter on Ravelry Accessibility. Do you want to know the good news or the bad news first? Let's do the good news: we got a response from Mary Heather late yesterday afternoon (sorry, too wiped out to update last night!)
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So the bad news: (quoting response in full because it pertains to everyone who participated) "Thank you for writing with your concerns and care. I shared your letter with Jessica and we discussed it this morning. We hope that Jessica's letter last week addressed these concerns and helped share our thoughts behind our decisions and our next steps. We will be following up with continued updates on our blog and look forward to continuing this work. Best regards, Mary Heather (and Jessica)."

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I know many of you poured your hearts into this and I don't want to tell you how to feel about it. I thought I'd check in here with everyone before deciding if a follow up would be at all productive? Tell me what you think? Also, tell THEM what you think (email: contact-us@ravelry.com)

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Personally, I find that laughably dismissive & willfully obtuse. For one thing, it's still unclear whether they believe the people who have had neurological symptoms (migraines, seizures, etc) due to the website (or tilting towards super problematic claims of mass hysteria). They've apologized for causing "anxiety" and "issues", but are committed to keeping a website which has triggered seizures for multiple users as the default. That's... not really something you can successfully put a positive spin on.

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Basically, "We gave at the office, now go away." Several of us have commented that there's really no point in a follow up letter. Willful obtuseness won't respond any differently. No amount of beating our collective head against a wall can change that.

For myself, I feel my removal of my patterns from sale on Ravelry is more than justified. I was wondering if I'd done the right thing. Yeah, no. No more wondering in that direction. I'm maintaining my account to have control of my pattern listings and to participate in one group in particular where I play a fair sized role. And even that is a lot less checking in than I used to do. This is to say if anyone messages me there about my patterns, or anything else, I will answer you, just not as quickly as I would've before.

Today as I knit, I'm processing what was, what could've been, what is, and what will come. Some of that is very different than what I pictured in early June. I may be processing for awhile.

Til next time,

Síle