U.S. Web Design System 2.0

Some of the markup is incredibly similar. The checkbox stuff[0] looks like a `s/govuk/usa/g`.

I've been working on a GDS project for the last few months, it's actually a nice change to have a set of established patterns to work to and a host of responsive people to discuss extending those patterns with.

[0] https://v2.designsystem.digital.gov/components/form-controls...

honestly good for them, UK gov websites are always very very nice

Dutch government also has its own font.

https://www.rijkshuisstijl.nl/basiselementen/basiselementen-...

well, we are allies

Even for internal apps, it might pay to think about accessibility... e.g. imagine someone who got hired to use the "internal app" was a Marine vet who lost vision to an IED or something... if your company is following the law, you have to provide the same opportunity for him to work there and use that "internal" app as everyone else. Maybe there's some reason why that would never be the case, but devs tend to think of the issue of accessibility much too narrowly.

It's also important to keep in mind that some disabilities are temporary.

Someone with normally good vision could have undergone a procedure that leaves them with reduced vision for a while as they recover.

Someone could have a broken hand, or tendinitis, or any number of other temporary conditions that affect precise motion, vision or other physical abilities.

Hell it could be something as simple as they are holding their phone in their other hand and still need to navigate your interface so they have to tab through it with a keyboard instead of using a mouse or trackpad.

These people may still need to use your product during this time when their capacities are reduced in some way.

Accessibility benefits much more than just people with serious and visible disabilities. Accessible applications are better experiences for all users.

As another enterprise software developer we've been told by legal that we must be accessible per the ADA and that doing otherwise could be used to claim we discriminate (hostile work environment) against our disabled employees.

Title 1:

> Employers must provide reasonable accommodations to qualified applicants or employees. A reasonable accommodation is any modification or adjustment to a job or the work environment that will enable an applicant or employee with a disability to participate in the application process or to perform essential job functions.

With our software handling timecards/leave, inventory, reporting, payroll, etc it isn't realistic for us to claim someone could perform their "essential job function" if it weren't accessible.

That all being said: Our accessibility game isn't perfect. We've just tried to make pages work with screen readers, color-blindness, etc. We still have a lot of internal video content without subtitles however (or even a way to display subtitles).

Also see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18900946 for a similar list (the Australian pendant to this new). I think there was a post about France's, and maybe other non-English-speaking countries, but couldn't find them.

I dislike the fact that only the left half of my screen is used on that web page; the content should at least be centered.

This font is even more interesting because it of its extremely uncertain copyright/licensing situation:

“Open-source licenses, like all software licenses, are only possible through assertion of copyright. Certain free-software advocates prefer to sidestep this inconvenient fact (akin to ‘keep your government hands off my Medicare’). For individual software authors, this usually poses no problem, because their copyright arises at the moment the work is created. Thus, they’re free to put their work under any license, including an open-source license.

“But US government employees are a special case. As a matter of federal law (17 USC § 105), they can’t assert copyright in their work. Public Sans is an inseparable mixture of copyrighted work (= the underlying Libre Franklin font) and uncopyrightable work (= the alterations made by the GSA). The GSA currently claims that Public Sans has been released under the OFL. But that’s impossible. To use this license, they’d first need to have a copyright in their contributions. But they don’t.”

— Matthew Butterick (type designer + lawyer) https://tinyletter.com/mbutterick/letters/the-curious-case-o...

I came here to say... that body text font renders really nicely on my screen

They have some really impressive documentation in this project. It's really great.

They go over their browser support here: https://designsystem.digital.gov/documentation/developers/

"We’ve designed the Design System to support older and newer browsers through progressive enhancement. The current major version of the Design System (1.0) is designed to support the newest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer 9 and up. The next major release (2.0) will follow the 2% rule: we will officially support any browser above 2% usage as observed by analytics.usa.gov. Currently, this means that the Design System version 2.0 will support the newest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer 11 and up."

Flexbox support is at 98.59% of global users according to[0] (so probably significantly higher for the US).

[0] https://caniuse.com/#search=flexbox

There are polyfills in JS available, if you really want to target IE10 and lower.

I wouldn't say they're ugly, more that they're not trendy. They're round rects with text on them.

But I don't need my government services to be on the bleeding edge of web design trends so I think that's fine.

I also would have to disagree, I find them to be super easy to understand. And someone like my grand father would actually be able to know whats going on.

Honestly it looks fine to me - they do seem jarring individually but casually browsing the sites is pleasant.

I'm very appreciative that each component is very clear and pages won't draw my attention in 10 different places.