One last weeknote for 2025

I haven't been weeknoting much recently. I've been focusing on Cymru Ddigidol. Plus work has been a bit tough. But, I wanted to round off the year with one more post and some highlights.

Finishing the year with user research

We finished the year off with a round of user research. In fact, my last meeting of 2025 was observing some remote usability testing, which seems like a great way to go out.

This round included some users of the old service, so it was great to get some insight into their mental models.

It was also the first time the team had prototyped with an interactive, HTML based prototype. After my work at the Home Office earlier in the year, I feel a lot more confident in my prototyping skills, so it was nice to put those skills to use again.

Assistive technology groups

Over the past few weeks I've joined a few assistive technology (AT) working groups with internal users. We've spent a lot of time with Dragon Speech Recognition and dark mode users to see the barriers they face with the new service.

I've really valued the time spent with them, and it gave us some solid evidence around bugs to fix, as well as some accessibility workflow improvements further up the chain.

I think I can offer a lot of help in this space, joining the dots between…

  1. identifying barriers that AT users face
  2. linking those barriers to WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) success criteria
  3. and translating these findings into improvements that need to be implemented by the delivery teams

Accessibility bookmarklets

I also discovered (or maybe rediscovered?) this amazing resource from Ian Lloyd: A11y audit bookmarklets.

For example:

  • Blackout is a great tool that "redacts all parts of a page that will be hidden to AT users".
  • 1-Click De-crapulator lets you "click on any part of a web page, get the basic HTML with all the bloaty crap removed!"

Both have been really helpful in helping me to identify and diagnose accessibility issues, Thanks Ian for making these!

Some great feedback about my accessibility efforts

After a tricky few weeks, I received some lovely feedback out of the blue. So I'm just going to capture it here (sorry for the humble brag)…

Benjy has become a genuine accessibility ally. He consistently challenges and supports delivery teams to adhere to relevant accessibility standards and best practice, ensuring accessibility is considered as a core requirement rather than an afterthought.

What really sets Benjy apart is his willingness to get involved. He has proactively volunteered to join accessibility meetings to hear directly from users and see and hear first-hand the barriers they face. He regularly uses these insights to recommend practical improvements and to influence better outcomes across delivery. Benjy's actions are making a real difference to both our users and our teams and his contribution absolutely deserves recognition. It's great to be working with him!

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