Ask HN: Looking for a Tech Talk from Gov.uk
Many years ago, I remember watching a tech talk from Gov.uk about how they design their websites. The general thrust of this talk was that, as a government service they had to be accessible to literally everyone in the UK. This included not just typical accessibility work, but also things like:
- They had to support positively ancient browsers like IE6 far longer than the rest of the internet, because some people had no choice of computing device, and the government had to serve them anyway.
- The people looking for information on Gov.uk usually aren't at their best or sharpest: they're usually stressed because they're in some kind of legal or health issue they're desperately looking to resolve, and the site had to accommodate for that with clear and understandable navigation.
- They ran user studies on usability and found that fancy date pickers tended to confuse people, and that it was far easier to just let people type dates with their keyboard. I think there were some other design notes in this vein throughout the talk.
Basically the whole thing was contrasting their approach with the typical, flashy, "cutting-edge" web development of the time. It ended (naturally) with a call for developers to apply to work there.
Try as I might I haven't been able to find this talk again. Does anyone know what this talk might be or where I might be able to find it?
Comments
Was it this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wprWuTvhec4
(Building Accessible Components and the GOV.UK Design System - Meetup #13 - April 2018)
That hits on some of the same notes, and I do think I (maybe?) remember the speaker being female (this one has at least the first half with a female speaker), but I don't think this is the same one. I see no mention of IE in the transcript, no mention of typing dates instead of date pickers, and generally it doesn't seem like it has as much focus on the end-users as the one I remember.
That said, good call on pointing out the "Gov.uk design system"—searching for this brought up a lot of good talks, which might be part of what I'm remembering:
https://obyford.com/posts/inclusive-forms/ https://www.designsystemtalks.com/talks/accessibility-in-the... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wprWuTvhec4
I found it! It's this one!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUkMCQR4TpY
"Many years ago" is an understatement, this is from 2014, the better part of a decade ago.
That's great that you found it.
Oh no - 2014! That feels like yesterday :)
I found it! It's this one!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUkMCQR4TpY
"Many years ago" was right, this is from 2014, going on the better part of a decade.