We’re back! Here’s what the Digital team have been up to this week…

Last week, most of our team met up in person in Cardiff for a few days of meetings, planning and even an empathy lab. During our sessions, we looked practically at AI use within the organisation and how it can be used to support our aims in the coming months. We also had a very interesting afternoon at an ‘empathy lab’ organised by Jo Goodwin, which used technology and equipment to simulate barriers that disabled users might face when accessing online services.

photos from the empathy lab with Phil, Sam and Sophie wearing glasses that simulate the symptoms of common disabilities and ailments

The challenges associated with each disability or impairment were layered and complex, and trying to complete a task while wearing the equipment gave us a new appreciation for how inaccessible services can become impossible services when paired with additional difficulties. The session gave us new motivation to build bridges wherever possible to help all our users experience our digital services in a simple and straightforward way.

photos from the night out playing darts at Flight Club

After a busy few days in work, we all went out for a night of pizza at Real Italian Pizza Company and darts at Flight Club. Congratulations to Lucinda who is our team’s champion at darts. It was a lovely way to end a very busy week.

Other things we’ve been working on:

  • Shaun has been working to try and get the guidance on main rivers agreed by the subject matter expert and has started looking at charges across the site in advance of a proposed charge increase on 1st April.
  • The publishing team has been inundated with documents for accessibility checking. Our team reviews documents in line with Welsh Government’s accessibility guidance, as well as our own style guide. This process features two stages, an initial accessibility check in Microsoft Word and then a PDF review in Adobe. This way we capture as many accessibility faults as possible and our team then supports subject matter experts in updating their content in line with legislation. For more information, please see our Natural Resources Wales / Writing accessible documents
  • Toyah has been busy behind the scenes building the new marine licensing website IA in Umbraco, ready for launch on April 1st (no joke!). This includes rearranging existing pages, creating new ones, adding in the new content she and our delivery partner have written, getting this content translated and inserting that into the pages, triple checking all the links work and making sure all the CMS settings are correct. She’s looking forward to a week off over Easter…
  • Jane has been updating web content relating to the new car parking system at 3 of our sites to reflect ongoing developments as the new machines have been installed and activated. The system is currently being tested so charges won’t be enforced until it goes live on 30 March. She also met with subject matter experts for the forest management plan project to discuss their initial feedback on the prototype. Discussions focused on the user journeys required to cover those applying through the Welsh Government Sustainable Farming Scheme and other routes. We need to ask the right questions to capture the information we need so it’s important to get this right.
  • Jane also attended a session on how AI is changing the way users access information. This was run by Scope and Macmillan Cancer Support and focused on what they are learning about AI summaries and chat relating to cancer information. They shared powerful examples of the risks of inaccurate information being included in AI summaries and described how they are trying to mitigate these risks. This includes creating clearly structured, evidenced summaries of key information that can be repurposed and shared across digital channels to increase the likelihood of accurate AI summaries, and the increased importance of content design principles in the creation and curation of all content. They also demonstrated how tools such as Botify can be used to explore how users are searching for information.