Despite Ravelry's platform being of great use to the online community, there has been quite a bit of recent controversy surrounding the site and its accessibility for disabled knitters, as well as its response to political statements made by some users; Ravelry was fighting against white supremacy. Some knitters believed this response was against the first amendment of free speech.

In June of 2020, Ravelry changed their layout and design to be more up-to-date, recognizing that its old layout was too retro. The Reluctant Spoonie, a blogger who writes about living with a chronic illness, discussed anonymous users' reports of adverse visual effects of the new design. Users prone to seizures and migraines described experiencing these effects due to the way the design is structured. The new design looks appeared to affect those with photosensitivity, causing susceptible people to experience side effects, such as vertigo, nausea, and eye strain. Despite these reported concerns and experiences, Ravelry did not do a great job at responding to these problems nor did they make any effort to adjust their site for accessibility. Ravelry took the longest time to respond, eventually dismissing everyone who claimed to become unwell because of the design. They even made the false claim that The Epilepsy Foundation never found any problems with their site, when in fact, the foundation had a post on their Facebook page stating the opposite. Cassidy Forbes released the statement, which The Reluctant Spoonie screenshotted and supplied on their post, which inlcuded the dismissal of these claims, saying "we have found zero evidence that there is anything about the new design that causes seizures or migraines," and for people to "check their sources" before making false claims.

The interesting thing about this incident and Ravelry not making any visible/public apology to their users is that they publicly announced their zero tolerance of harassment, personal attacks, hateful speech and imagery, and any support of former President Trump, in their updated (2019) community guidelines. How can they so publicly show no tolerance for the support of Trump, but then be so dismissive of such an integral part of their community, which are those with disabilities or chronic illnesses ?

Battan wrote a piece titled "The Unravelling", which primarily discussed how Forbes came to the conclusion that they would not allow hateful speech and Trump supporters who released hateful patterns on the site.

It started when a user, Deplorable Knitter, published a pattern for a hat on which the stitching said “Build the Wall,” which seemed as if it was just as accepting of a pattern as the PussyHat was. They both voice two different political opinions. However, it became clear that there was a different motive. Ravelry already disallowed any patterns that had the Confederate flag, and it seemed as if MAGA-related content was following in those steps (New Yorker). Battan writes that when this came up in their interview, Jessica said, “I don’t want to be a place where people are radicalizing,” and when Ravelry users came to them, saying ‘This kind of rhetoric is hate speech,’. So, how could Cassidy and Jessica address the situation of more Trump-related patterns becoming more prominent on the site? They couldn’t just remove some and not all. And, while Cassidy was going through her own transition of coming out as transgender to her family, the drama and fighting on the forums of Ravelry, and on Instagram, became too much. On June 23^rd, 2019, Cassidy announced that “Ravelry would be banning all Trump-related content, including casual Trump-related chatter on forums,” (New Yorker). They were not banning users just because they supported the former administration, they just banned any sort of speech and mention of related content on the site. “We cannot provide a space that is inclusive of all and also allow open support for white supremacy. "Support of the Trump administration is, undeniably, support for white supremacy,” they stated in their announcement.

This brings me back to how Ravelry made the decision to ban any form of Trump-related content because of the hate it brought to the online community, yet they still denied making any change to the update from June of last year on their website's layout and design, despite several users' concern about potential adverse effects.