A New Digital Platform for The City of Edinburgh

Many have taken to referring to the new/Beta site as ‘Purple’ (the colouring chosen to reflect the historical regality of the capital city), and to the old one as ‘Red’ (referencing the old colour scheme). Here we’ll stick with the terms ‘new/Beta’ and ‘old’ for the sake of clarity, but if you hear the colour names crop-up, at least you’ll know what they refer to!

The majority of tasks can be carried out on the new site already. Core sections - including the Homepage, News, Schools and Learning, Social Care and Health, Council Tax, Bins and Recycling, and Benefits (as well as many smaller sections) - are all operational.

A lot of content has also been migrated across. But, rather than just ‘lifting and shifting’, we’re taking the opportunity to refresh and scrutinise everything. Not all of the content actually needs to be transferred and we want to ensure that what is moved across deserves to be, and is in the best possible shape. We’ve used Jadu Continuum CMS for many years; it’s a fantastic platform and easy to use, so we’re handling the content migration ourselves, which helps with the scrutinisation process we’ve developed.

Spacecraft used Jadu’s Photon ‘template engine’ to create the new site, which made for rapid development and a great looking design, but it also helped nail core accessibility elements straight away. A primary focus of ours is ensuring the site is friendly and usable for individuals who have a disability or impairment. The Photon templates provide immediate accessibility, but customised elements also need to be checked and Spacecraft and Jadu are doing just that to ensure the site meets new Web Content Accessibility 2.1 Guidelines (WCAG 2.1), which will come into effect later this month. For example, a recent audit found three items that are now receiving attention...

• The top three items in the top tasks on the Beta homepage are currently highlighted purple by default, which could make the focus state difficult to see. This will be changed so it does not hinder those with low vision in reading and perceiving the elements
• The ‘To-Top' button in the Beta footer currently does not pass colour contrast requirements in hover state. This will be changed for the same reason
• When using the Beta’s ‘Skip to Content’ button, the content is not read out. This will be changed so those with visual impairments using screen readers can quickly navigate the site

Identifying and making such changes shows the real value of having a Beta. It gives you the opportunity to fine tune and make seemingly small but very important improvements.

Feedback

A key part of this phase is of course gathering feedback and data to make further improvements to how the new website looks and works.

Before go-live, our public relations team ran a number of consultation sessions. The first gathered internal feedback from council employees. Minor tweaks were made and then the site was presented to elected members through ‘show and tell’ sessions for further input and amends. From there, we took the site to the general public in a wave of consultation, inviting feedback across the board. We then went live with the new site in Beta form to gather yet more feedback!

Upon arriving at edinburgh.gov.uk, visitors are currently informed that we’re improving our website and invited to look at the new version by clicking through. Users are asked to send their feedback to betafeedback@edinburgh.gov.uk and to report broken links or error messages if encountered.

This feedback is being used to fine-tune the site’s content, navigation and layout. However, some prioritisation is required, whereas some things have been easy to do as part of this first phase of work, we’re upfront that other things may have to wait until later phases.

A key part of testing is having users try the site across devices. Our new site works on different browsers and is optimised for mobile use, so we’re encouraging the public to try it out on their laptops, tablets and mobile devices.

Public testing will continue to be an ongoing and continuous process but we’re pleased to say that the feedback so far has been very positive!

We press on.