Knitting is a popular craft that can be used to create customized fabric objects such as household items, clothing and toys. Knitting is also a relaxing and calming exercise for many knitters. Little is known about how disabled knitters use and benefit from knitting, and what accessibility solutions and challenges they create and encounter. We conducted interviews with 16 experienced, disabled knitters and analyzed 20 threads from five forums that discussed accessible knitting to identify how and why disabled knitters knit, and what accessibility concerns remain. We additionally conducted an iterative design case study developing knitting tools for a knitter who found existing solutions insufficient. Our innovations improved the range of stitches she could produce. We conclude by arguing for the importance of improving tools for both pattern generation and modification as well as adaptations or modifications to existing tools such as looms to make it easier to track progress
https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445521
The ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (https://chi2021.acm.org/)