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Privacy-Respecting, Accessibility-First Ravelry Successor That Knitters With Epilepsy And Migraines Can Actually Use

saas real project •• multiple requests

Ravelry's June 2020 redesign triggered eye strain, migraines, and seizures so severe that the Epilepsy Foundation reached out and a US Department of Justice ADA complaint was filed. As of 2026 the situation persists, with active community migration projects (Fiber.Club, an LSG-affiliated craft-agnostic database, Airtable workarounds) but no clear successor. Ship a privacy-first, ADA-compliant pattern + project + stash database that lets a knitter who literally can't open Ravelry without medical risk participate in the fiber-arts ecosystem.

builder note

The reason this hasn't been built isn't difficulty, it's that web-developers who care about ADA aren't usually fiber artists, and fiber artists aren't usually web developers. The team that ships this has an a11y consultant and a working knitter on day one, and ideally those are the same person.

landscape (5 existing solutions)

The fiber-arts community migration has been ongoing for six years with no consolidating successor. The opportunity is real but technically modest (it's a database, not AI), and the moat is ADA compliance plus a privacy-first stance plus craft-agnosticism (knitters and crocheters and weavers and spinners in one platform). Make it boringly functional and accessibility-tested by actual disabled knitters.

Ravelry The incumbent that triggered the migration. Has done partial accessibility fixes but disabled users still report symptoms; privacy policy updated 2026-02-23 but data practices unchanged in substance
Fiber.Club (in development by Liza Rico) Crowdfunded community alternative; per public updates still pre-launch and dependent on a single maintainer's funding cycle
Ribblr Pattern marketplace for knitting/crochet/Tunisian/sewing; designed for selling, not the deep stash-and-project database knitters use Ravelry for
LoveCrafts Closest functional clone with database connectivity; commerce-first, not community-first; no equivalent of Ravelry's group structure
My Yarn Stash app Stash-only, not patterns or projects or social

sources (5)

other https://www.dailydot.com/irl/ravelry-disabled-website/ "Disabled users say Ravelry's new site design has given them seizures" 2020
other https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/a-call-for-ravelry-to-co... "A Call for Ravelry to Comply with the ADA" ongoing
other https://craftindustryalliance.org/beyond-ravelry-pattern-pla... "Beyond Ravelry: Pattern Platforms for Knitting and Crochet Designers" 2026
knittingcrochetaccessibilityravelry-alternativeada-compliance