It’s been another very busy week in the digital team.

Phil returned from holiday, although this time there were no heat waves, just a very delayed flight home due to the pilot being unwell.

Soph and Kim spent the evenings listening to TTPD and making friendship bracelets…. As you do.

We hope you’ve had a wonderful week and enjoyed the sunnier days, and you’re sitting down with a nice drink to read our Digital Team’s weeknotes!

a puffin in wales

Wild birds

After trees, felling impact assessments and medium combustion plants, Phil is now moving on to a short piece of work all about wild birds. It’s certainly never dull working on our website.

The bird licensing content on our website is really poor. Trying to find anything useful is practically impossible. The bird licensing page has information on falconry and aviculture, ringing or marking birds, and bird control. All this stuff makes it very difficult for the user to find anything useful.

Phil’s task is all about making small improvements to the wild bird content and forms to help our users actually find what they are looking for.

We need to make things easier for the user so they know what they can and cannot do. We need to help them to apply for a licence, if they need one, and not hinder them at every step in the process.

Doing something on our land

Sam and Phil continue to be amazed at the internal process for applying to do something on our land.

Every Monday we get together and spend the day working on this area of our website. It’s brilliant being able to focus on just one thing for the entire day, without constant distractions.

Our current focus has been to try and map out the internal process. This is helping us to understand what happens behind the scenes when the user applies to do something on our land. It’s helping us to say no to various requests that don’t have any real user needs.

the LGBTQ flag made from coloured people

June is pride month

Natural Resources Wales is an inclusive employer.

We are all different here in the digital team. This makes the team interesting, diverse, and a lovely inclusive environment for us all to work in.

It’s only when you can bring your true self to work - can you do your best work.

Equality

Pride Month is all about equality and celebrating the work of LGBTQ+ people. Celebrations usually take place in the form of an outdoor colourful parade, where large crowds gather to march. Sometimes the pride march has more of a protest feel than a parade.

The history of Pride Month

Pride is not just a celebration. It’s a time to celebrate the progress that has been made over the years with legislation, attitudes and behaviours.

In June 1970, the first pride march took place. This marked the first anniversary since the uprising at New York’s Stonewall Inn.

Since then, the LGBTQ+ community has been fighting for visibility and equality. In the UK, people fought for equality until the repeal of Section 28 in 2003.

Challenge bad behaviour

If your friends or colleagues aren’t using the right language, speak up!

Stepping in before harmful behaviour turns into bullying and harassment helps avoid discrimination for everyone.

Join in the celebrations

On 25 June, the city will be celebrating the annual Cardiff Pride. Natural Resources Wales LGBTQ+ network, Calon, will be there along with some of the digital team, everyone is welcome to come along and join in the fun.

Global Accessibility Awareness Day - Reflections

Last week, our team published a blog about the different users that are impacted by inaccessible content and we were pleased with the feedback we received from staff across the organisation.

We had interesting discussions on internal staff platforms, where we shared our own experiences with assistive technologies and the impact of accessible content. It was lovely to hear from individuals we hadn’t met previously, who shared positive feedback with us.

The use of personas (complete with images) to humanise the users impacted by accessibility helped make it clear how we all can benefit from designing content with accessibility in mind.

Other stuff we’ve been up to

  • Phil has made the medium combustion plant transfer web page and form live
  • The expert group which has been meeting to discuss guidance necessary for producers of hydrogen has signed off the proposed web-page, with the caveat that we need to amend some web guidance on water abstraction and water discharges.
  • The new installations Environmental Permit application form is now ready for publication – we just need to obtain agreement to the new and amended installations web guidance.
  • James and Shaun met with the Centre for Digital Public Services Wales to update them on the marine planning project and discuss NRW’s role in planning applications. Owain, Alex and Toyah took part in a two day course on Agile fundamentals for teams by the Centre for Digital Public services.
  • James published updates to the Flood Map for Planning and to advice about wave overtopping. He also joined a presentation by Sion Wyn Evans from the Older People’s Commissioner for Wales about digital exclusion in older people.
  • Owain also added two updates to the Week notes site, with key improvements such as where the document title will now display the page title within the tab. This is to make every page on the site to have an unique title. Along with adding more social share buttons on the “post” pages (the place we add our weeknotes to) and experimenting with breadcrumbs on the Test site.
  • Owain also attending a ‘kick off’ meeting for the upcoming Umbraco upgrade project.

Fun fact

The name May (and Mai in Welsh) is the modern-day adaptation of the Latin word Maius, which has origins going back to the time of the ancient Greeks.

They named the month of May (or Maius) after the Greek goddess of growth. May was once considered an incredibly ill-omened time to get married.

There’s an adage for it actually, which goes: “Marry in May and you’ll ruin the day.” It’s not clear where exactly the saying comes from, but there must have been a pretty good reason not to get married in one of the most beautiful months of the year!

May is also a pretty good month for US presidents. Every other month of the year, at least one US president has died, but never in May!