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Comment by dazc | Hacker News Reader

A lot of public services and utilities have shifted their customer facing operations to the web and the very people who struggle to interact with these services are often the ones who need them the most.

Factor in that a lot of these web-based services are poorly designed and badly constructed and it is no wonder that some people get frustrated or are easily swindled.

Local council sites tend to be the worst, in my experience, with unfathomable navigation and broken forms being the most common problems.

My dad often asks 'why can't I do x?' and my usual answer is that the website is sh1t, there is nothing you can do about it.

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A lot of work goes into making GOV.UK sites accessible to people who aren't au fait with technology. From the design of form elements and wizards to the extreme care in choosing the correct language.

It's a huge project and driven by user research and testing. Best part, almost all of it happens in the open

https://design-system.service.gov.uk

https://design-system.service.gov.uk/community/backlog

The technology and design should eventually filter down to localised services.

It's a long time coming Pete.

Lmao the local councils have been left to run their own web services and they are painfully backwards and outdated, payment portals for council tax from the early 2000’s, sites that are not responsive by default, dead/missing links.

From what I have seen they are left to do their own thing a little too much.

Yeah, we can lead the horse to water.

A dev can get a Node or Rails app with all the correct assets and templates running in two minutes. C# and Django in a bit longer.

Most of the things they'll need to build are already there, well-engineered and tested.

Some councils have longstanding contracts with local companies or just have their heads in the sand. Not much more we can do.

Some work on this has actually been started

https://localdigital.gov.uk/funding/leeds-city-council-2/

Edit: just read the assessor's comments, pretty damning. Doesn't sound like the project delivered much - pretty sure I could do more in an afternoon

"A lot of public services and utilities have shifted their customer facing operations to the web and the very people who struggle to interact with these services are often the ones who need them the most."

Well, that's the thing isn't it? Personally, I think I'd be happy, and probably better off, with an internet that consisted of email, USENET, and Amazon. (maybe eBay, although I could do without it). Unfortunately, the rest of the world and it's needs and addictions tends to drag you along.

I agree, in principal, but amazon's retail operation succeeds because it works and puts no barriers in front of people who want to buy stuff. One might think this is 'basic internet 101' but the majority of other retail sites prove otherwise?

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