...since I've been able to visit my dragon profiles. Since I've been to view them for more than a few seconds without panic and pain.
So far, the developers have made no comment in response to the many valid criticisms raised by the community about the dragon profile changes, including criticisms and comments by disabled users, unless let it "breathe [and] settle" and "visit our suggestions forum" can be considered comments.
It took less than eight hours for the devs to remove glowtail from the market when the community raised criticisms about the quality of the art? Why aren't disabled users given the same respect? (On a similar note: why have the devs still not commented on the fact that camping is inaccessible to users with some visual impairments and color blindness?)
Watch this space.
Edit (6.9.2020, 21:00):
I was not expecting this to get as much attention as it has, and I wanted to provide a few updates and clarifications:
1. A few comments have been confused about why the profiles are inaccessible. There are lots of different people on the site talking about how they impact different disabilities, including anxiety, autism, and adhd. The relevant part of my disability is my sensory processing disorder - there are so many boxes and icons and colors and layers and different levels of texts and tooltip/description popups that my brain can't process them all without pain and starts to shut down (literally - if my senses get to overwhelmed, I will temporary loose parts of my vision). Other people have different issues.
2. Thanks to the amazing @Antimoany, who showed me how to use an adblocker to block tooltips from pooping up on the profiles on the site, I am now able to briefly visit my dragon profiles (not very long, but long enough to do things like start identifying the elements that make them so painful for me). If you have similar problems to me, I would highly recommend the same.
3. I stand by what I said above, that the devs have made no valid comments to the complaints by disabled users. The comments they have made (i.e., "breathe [and] settle" and "visit our suggestions forum") are not responses to any criticism - they are defections and delays - and they particularly are not responses to comments about inaccessibility. For an analogy - imagine a company built a new public building, but when it opened, you could only enter by climbing a bunch of steep, ugly steps. "Let it breathe and settle" might, in some circumstances, be a valid response to criticism that the steps are ugly - but they would not be a valid response to people with physical disabilities pointing out that they cannot access the building.
4. This is why I brought up glowtail and the coliseum captcha (besides the inaccessibility of the coliseum still being something important we should talk about). It is obvious that glowtail was an easier fix than changing the profile would be, and I did not mean to suggest that the devs can or should take the same action in this case. What the incident shows is that the staff can and will respond rapidly to community criticism when they think it is important - and they have not responded at all in this case. Although I believe they don't mean to send this message, it feels like they don't care about users with disabilities.
5. This feeling is enhanced by the fact that the fact that the coliseum captcha issue has still not been fixed or addressed. Why should we believe they will take action here, where they still have not there?
6. Part of the reason timing is important is because the disabilities involved here are often dismissed as not real or not serious. However, they are real, and they can still make the website inaccessible. If a main portion of the site isn't accessible, people who cannot access it are going to give up and leave, either on that portion or on the site entirely. And at that point, people (including well meaning people!) may say, "hey look, people aren't complaining about accessibility anymore! I guess the problem wasn't really as bad as they were saying" - but the problem won't have gone away; the disabled users will have.
So far, the developers have made no comment in response to the many valid criticisms raised by the community about the dragon profile changes, including criticisms and comments by disabled users, unless let it "breathe [and] settle" and "visit our suggestions forum" can be considered comments.
It took less than eight hours for the devs to remove glowtail from the market when the community raised criticisms about the quality of the art? Why aren't disabled users given the same respect? (On a similar note: why have the devs still not commented on the fact that camping is inaccessible to users with some visual impairments and color blindness?)
Watch this space.
Edit (6.9.2020, 21:00):
I was not expecting this to get as much attention as it has, and I wanted to provide a few updates and clarifications:
1. A few comments have been confused about why the profiles are inaccessible. There are lots of different people on the site talking about how they impact different disabilities, including anxiety, autism, and adhd. The relevant part of my disability is my sensory processing disorder - there are so many boxes and icons and colors and layers and different levels of texts and tooltip/description popups that my brain can't process them all without pain and starts to shut down (literally - if my senses get to overwhelmed, I will temporary loose parts of my vision). Other people have different issues.
2. Thanks to the amazing @Antimoany, who showed me how to use an adblocker to block tooltips from pooping up on the profiles on the site, I am now able to briefly visit my dragon profiles (not very long, but long enough to do things like start identifying the elements that make them so painful for me). If you have similar problems to me, I would highly recommend the same.
3. I stand by what I said above, that the devs have made no valid comments to the complaints by disabled users. The comments they have made (i.e., "breathe [and] settle" and "visit our suggestions forum") are not responses to any criticism - they are defections and delays - and they particularly are not responses to comments about inaccessibility. For an analogy - imagine a company built a new public building, but when it opened, you could only enter by climbing a bunch of steep, ugly steps. "Let it breathe and settle" might, in some circumstances, be a valid response to criticism that the steps are ugly - but they would not be a valid response to people with physical disabilities pointing out that they cannot access the building.
4. This is why I brought up glowtail and the coliseum captcha (besides the inaccessibility of the coliseum still being something important we should talk about). It is obvious that glowtail was an easier fix than changing the profile would be, and I did not mean to suggest that the devs can or should take the same action in this case. What the incident shows is that the staff can and will respond rapidly to community criticism when they think it is important - and they have not responded at all in this case. Although I believe they don't mean to send this message, it feels like they don't care about users with disabilities.
5. This feeling is enhanced by the fact that the fact that the coliseum captcha issue has still not been fixed or addressed. Why should we believe they will take action here, where they still have not there?
6. Part of the reason timing is important is because the disabilities involved here are often dismissed as not real or not serious. However, they are real, and they can still make the website inaccessible. If a main portion of the site isn't accessible, people who cannot access it are going to give up and leave, either on that portion or on the site entirely. And at that point, people (including well meaning people!) may say, "hey look, people aren't complaining about accessibility anymore! I guess the problem wasn't really as bad as they were saying" - but the problem won't have gone away; the disabled users will have.
