Alex and Phil are here this week to let you know what’s been going on….

Spring is with us this week; warmer weather and lighter nights makes us all feel a lot better.

screenshot of new hornbill service

New Hornbill request form

Alex and Kim have been working with colleagues in ICT to move our digital content request form to Hornbill.

You can see your complex routing behind the scenes – but our goal is to try and make the process easy for our colleagues, and also reduce the amount of emails we need to deal with, with follow-up questions.

The first iteration will be going live in April.

Looking forward to working closer to iterate the ICT Hornbill Site into the Digital, data and technology site over coming months.

Services Week 2025

Our team made the most of the variety of talks and presentations taking place during Services Week 2025. Sophie was able to join a lightning talk ‘What you need to know to present in an accessible and inclusive way’.

Some of the key insights for an accessible slide design included the:

  • use of high contrast colours
  • use of large fonts and clear, simple language
  • use of headings and structure
  • use of accessible templates

Something we notice a lot in our accessibility auditing process is that a lot of otherwise accessible content is complicated through the addition of images, infographics, charts and tables. This presentation provided a really sensible checklist to support content creators as they build their content to ensure consistency and inclusivity.

When adding image material to content, consider:

  • What value or purpose does this add to the existing content?
  • Whether the content type aligns with the purpose of the content?
  • When writing alt-text, consider the reason why you added the image, and explain the image out loud in your alt-text to ensure an equal experience for users
  • Whether the images that you’re adding are clean and simple
  • Whether you’ve supplied the minimum information necessary – test this with a colleague if needed
  • Providing information in different formats, if including a chart or table in the content

The biggest takeaway that Sophie will be sharing internally when auditing evidence reports, is to consider whether content belongs in a table or if it’s better presented as a bullet point list. If in doubt, consider the purpose of a table vs a bullet point list.

Tables are used to organise data that is too detailed or complicated to be described adequately in the text, allowing the reader to quickly see the results. They can be used to highlight trends or patterns in the data and to make a manuscript more readable by removing numeric data from the text.

Meanwhile bullet point and numbered lists can be used to help break up your content. They often make complex content clearer and easier to read and understand. They are a great way to summarise your research in a way that can be easily digested by your reader.

photo of family walking a dog over a bridge

Designing services for people

In another Services Week talk about designing for people who’ve experienced domestic abuse, the use of language was discussed.

Some users may not identify with the terminology used, which can limit the support available to them. Interestingly, the description of behaviours was used instead of labels - for example, someone experiencing financial abuse may not be aware that their experience constitutes as abuse.

The use of language to describe what is happening instead of relying on labels like ‘domestic abuse’ can help break down stigma and help survivors access support.

This was an interesting insight that could be beneficial to helping our organisation signpost relevant resources and information to user groups who may not see themselves as needing a permit for this activity.

a picture of a cormorant bird

Fish eating birds

Sam and Phil continue to work on bird licensing, we have been busy:

  • working on the structure and content of the apply for a bird licence form
  • working on the many fish-eating bird content pages

Sam and Phil have been trying to unpick and understand this work for months. When we make progress, we hit a brick wall, we encounter inconsistencies and problems. This is making this project complicated and very time consuming, but slowly we are getting there.

Other things we’ve been working on…

  • Following the update to the website, Owain has been busy with the upcoming website enhancements. With creating the test plan and test scripts ready for the upcoming busy weeks
  • James has been revising the discussion guide for user interviews about our new ‘Send a flood message’ service. He’s also been working with the Flood Risk team on text changes and UX improvements to our ‘Check your flood risk by postcode’ service
  • Owain had received his certificate for carbon literacy