Inclusivity Matters

I am a one woman business owner (Provenance Craft Co.), designer (Fay Dashper-Hughes Designs) and podcaster (The Crochet Circle Podcast).  Through all elements of my work and personal life I strive for inclusivity for all, because I know it matters and I can make a difference.

For me, this means treating humans with the respect that humans deserve, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, ability, sexual orientation, religion, age or body shape.   

Here are some of the steps I am taking to encourage inclusivity within the three elements of my work life:

 

Provenance Craft Co.

Although I am a one woman outfit, I believe that there are things I can do to increase inclusivity.  At the beginning of May 2019, I changed all of my electronic/download crochet and knitting pattern prices.  I now offer a 'pay what you can' pricing scale whereby customers can choose to pay between £2 and £6 for any of my single electronic patterns.  I want to ensure that people on lower incomes have a chance to access my patterns.  If you are unable to pay the lower end of the 'pay what you can' scale, please email me (fay@provanancecraft.com) with the subject line PATTERN, and I will send you an electronic version of the pattern for free. 

This is all also mentioned in The Craft Bank group on Ravelry which is run by my friend Lisa and aims to unite yarn destsahes and patterns to those that need them for a small amount of money (often for free).

In the coming weeks and months, I will be adding ALT text to all of my front product photos to ensure that they can be picked up by readers.

 

Fay Dashper-Hughes Designs

As a designer, I make, test, write the patterns and do all of the photography myself.  I simply can't afford to outsource that work at the moment, but when I can, I will most certainly be looking to collaborate in an inclusive manner.

The areas that I can currently control are to ensure that my patterns are accessible to all (see above for the financial element of that).  Within each of my patterns I have photo tutorials, video tutorials and they are on PDFs.  I do this to aid people that struggle to read long passages of text or have audio or visual impairments.  

In a recent email conversation with a lovely lady called Julia, she mentioned that it would be better if the text I currently add to my photo tutorials was below rather than on the photo so that her Humanware reader would recognise it and read it out for her.  For every pattern that I produce from now on in, I will do this to increase the readability of my pattern for people with visual impairments.

 

The Crochet Circle Podcast

Back in January 2019, I pulled together a blog post on 'Inclusivity in our fibre community'.  You can click here to read it.  Many of the actions I set out in that blog post are ongoing, and I am making good progress on them.  

If there is an update on inclusivity for the podcast, I talk about it at the beginning of the podcast.  You can watch it on YouTube or listen to it via Podbean, iTunes, Stitcher, Shopify etc. - just search for The Crochet Circle Podcast and you will find me.

 

If you think that there is more I could be doing under any of the three banners of my business, please let me know.  The best way to do that is to email me at fay@provenancecraft.com