Reducing the digital divide is essential to create a more equitable and inclusive society, where everyone has equal access to information, opportunities, and the tools necessary to thrive in todays digital world. In this session I discuss how web performance plays a vital role in building this bridge.
Slides: https://talks.nooshu.com/N86m1L/bridging-the-digital-divide-using-web-performance
About Matt: https://nooshu.com
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Matt Hobs he is the former head of front and development for the UK’s government digital service he’s done some phenomenal work he lead he led a team of 30 people there where he did some great work around performance and equity and so I’m really excited about this presentation to learn more about
Bridging that digital divide and uh everyone Welcome Matt [Applause] Hobs can you hear me hear me at the back perfect um morning everyone it’s an honor to be here as the first speaker on the second day of this amazing web performance conference um I’d like to
Thank the perf now team for inviting me to speak I feel extremely priv privileged to be on this stage with such incredible speakers from the web performance Community my name is Matt Hobbs and until recently I was the head of front end at the UK’s government digital
Service today I’m delighted to speak to you about the topic of Bridging the digital divide using web performance with a specific focus on the United Kingdom in an increasingly connected world it is crucial to ensure that everyone has equal access to digital resources and opportunities in this presentation we will explore how
Optimizing web performance can play a significant role in Bridging the digital divide note the background image of this slide um I took a leaf out of Mark’s book yesterday and generated it using mid Journey last night um so anyway let’s get started first let’s understand what is the digital
Divide the UK like many other developed countries is experiencing an aging population this is increasing due to longer life expectancy and lower mortality rates in older Generations a person born in the past 20 years will have been exposed to the internet mobile phones and tablets with connectivity
With the whole world from a very early age they brain knows nothing more and nothing different than licking up any question they have on a digital device having two young Sons I’ve been witnessed to this over the past few years as they are both very fluent with
Technology the digital divide is the gap between those who’ve been privileged enough to be exposed to technology and those who haven’t although I alluded to it in my previous slide it’s an oversimplification to say it’s only a young versus old demographic issue although it’s an easier assumption to
Make a major misconception that people believe when talking about the digital divide is that there’s only one when a simple fact when in fact a simple division between two clear social categories doesn’t exist we live in complex multifaceted societies a more accurate way to examine the digital divide is across entire populations
Including people’s social economic and cultural differences there are many reasons why an individual won’t have been exposed to the techn techology for example they come from a family with less disposable income to spend on luxuries like mobile phones tablets and computers they live in a part of the country with poor
Connectivity or an underfunded education system they simply haven’t had the opportunity to use technology maybe they’ve had no one to show them how to use it or a common occurrence is getting someone else to do it all for them eg a family member or friend maybe they don’t understand the benefit that technology
Can bring or a combination of above there are many people in society that are scared of change and technology is a huge change you’ll often hear comments like I’ve always done it this way why change now or technology is going to take my job so why is it important to
Reduce the digital divide reducing the digital divide is essential to create a more fair and inclusive Society where everyone has equal access to information and opportunities and tools to thrive in the digital era a more fair and inclusive Society will enable indiv indviduals and communities to take part
In social economic and Civic life and Foster development and progress for all in turn this improves social inclusion and access to information and knowledge leading to better economic opportunities education and skills development Bridging the Global Knowledge Gap will create a more inclusive and interconnected Global Community for
Everyone so we know the digital divide is detrimental to society and is something that we should be aiming to reduce but how can web performance help do this web performance is a crucial factor in Bridging the digital divide especially for users accessing the internet across a large range and speeds
Of devices for example across a whole country’s population so let’s look at a few web performance topics individually number one optimized and efficient web design if websites and applications are well optimized to load load quickly and function smoothly they can be more accessible to people with slower internet connections and less
Advanced Hardware this includes practices like efficient use of code optimizing images and video and prioritizing the loading of critical content note my use of accessibility in this context is in the literal sense of the word allowing a user to actually access the information they need here I’ll share a personal
Experience that I happened that happened to me in July related to digital exclusion in rural areas of the UK my family and I were recently at a French wedding at the Lake District in the Lake District in the north of the UK this picture is from DW Lake around 30 mil
From the border of Scotland we stayed in an independent hostel next to do water lake it was only when we got there we realized how remote we actually were in terms of connectivity there was no mobile service across the whole site indoors or outside Wi-Fi was only available in two small
Rooms downstairs and none of the 30 plus bedrooms had Wi-Fi at all the bandwidth available was extremely limited 3.4 megabits download 8.2 megabits upload they even say on the website free Wi-Fi although speed and bandwidth is limited by our rural location there were 150 plus guests at the wedding and
Approximately 40 kids attended too including two of my own as you can imagine there were quite a few disappointed children when their their tablets couldn’t stream from the favorite video streaming service as you can see from the map of connectivity in the UK updated in July what we experienced while in the Lake
District isn’t an isolated case it happens across the country for those wondering the orange dots signify less than 10 megabits available red dots less than 2 megabits available lack of any color means very little to zero connectivity available amazing amazing the specific area we stayed in uh see it
By the purple Arrow I’m amazed that we had um any connectivity at all in fact if we examine the 20123 report from the UK’s communication regulator ofcom we can see that around 8% of the UK has no coverage by any of the mobile operators the largest region
Being Scotland at 177% of the country being a not spot for mobile data as can be seen by looking at the map again yes these are rural areas but they aren’t devoid of people they are full of everyday people trying to apply for passports register death or farther
Tax returns 177% of Scotland is a huge area with hundreds of thousands of people living in it for those people any mobile or broadband connection is likely to be precious they most likely don’t care about huge amounts of interactivity on a website they want the site to load
Quickly and allow them to get from A to B with as little hassle as possible the UK government is aware of this issue as a report from the UK Parliament was published in June the report is called the government has no credible strategy to tackle digital exclusion the key findings of the report
Say the government’s ambition to make the UK a technology superpower and boost economic growth is being undermined by high levels of digital exclusion the committee says the scale of the problem is a direct consequence of political leffy so the figures that come from the report make for a pretty disheartening
Read these include 7 million households in the UK have no broadband or mobile internet access and 4 million people are still unable to complete a single digital task to get online unfortunately the problem has only got worse in the past few years as the co due to the cost
Of living crisis as people are canceling their monthly Internet packages to save money the cost this is costing the UK economy approximately 63 billion pound every year because the country has a digital skills shortage among some of the recommendations the report calls for is urgent access to help with the cost of
Living crisis and a big investment in basic digital skills as the most basic digital skills are now as important as maths and literacy an interesting note from the report it specifically says F the focus should be on basic skills not coding the chair of the committee bar
Sto of beaston hits the na on the head with her summary comments where she says digital exclusion is a moving Target as technology develops people currently confident using it at work and home will need to keep ref uh refreshing their skills to avoid being left behind they
We need to Ure that people oh sorry we need to ensure that people of all age groups um develop the skills they need to operate and the opportunities they need to develop their skills and te as technology is changing as we all know technology does move fast and it’s
Always changing and as uh coming back to the issue uh the point I mentioned earlier this isn’t a young versus old demographic issue all groups must be involved in this digital upskilling so who’s responsible for whose responsibility is it for the digital upskilling to help bridge this digital divide
The six there are six key sectors that are responsible for reducing the digital divide they they could fall on first it falls on governments to enact sensible policies to ensure equal access for all private sector companies have a role to play as well they can make their products more accessible and more
Affordable nonprofit organizations are have already um are already working in this space to provide people with uh equipment and training and internet access schools and universities should incorporate digital skill digital literacy into their curriculums this is particularly important for Rural and low-income areas as students may not have access to the resources at
Home individuals can help bridge the digital divide by donating old equipment and volunteering to teach digital literacy skills Global organizations like the United Nations and World Bank already provide funding and support for projects especially in developing countries all these entities have a role to play and it’s only through a combined
Effort that the digital uh divide can be addressed oh sorry uh as the creepy woner meme says what’s in it for me why would I as an individual or organization do this if we go back to our pressing map of the connectivity in the UK we see there are
7 million households that have no broadband or mobile internet access and this is costing as me as I mentioned this is costing approximately 63 billion pounds every year if you’re a business that’s a lot of potential customers if you’re a charity that’s a lot of potential donations if you’re the
Government that’s a lot of people you are excluding from your services and remember they’re all paying some form of tax they have as much right to access your services as everyone else does so let’s see is this a UK only issue unfortunately you know this is a global issue with a staggering 2.7
Billion people or onethird of the global population still remain unconnected to the internet this is according to the international telecommunications Union in 2022 uh it the itu uh statistics say that the cost of mobile and Broadband Services is um has dropped recently but it still remains
Too high for the average customer in a lowi income economy a basic data plan in a lowi income economy cost approximately 9% of the average income people living in this situation are literally choosing between food and housing or connectivity under these circumstances connectivity is always going to be the lowest priority
So coming back to what’s in it for me well there are 7 million households in the UK alone that could be your next customers worth billions to the economy and magnitudes greater is the 2.7 billion people roughly 13d of the global population that could that are yet to
Connect to the Internet so Target these lowincome economies web performance is vital to being successful in these low income economies as the M phrase from JFK goes a rising tide lifts or boats so if you make your sites fast for a loow income economy it will be fast for everywhere everybody and
Everyone number two mobile mobile first design giving given that a large proportion of users in countries on the other side of the digital divide access the internet through a mobile device as seen in this graph we 50 to 75% of the population use smartphones uh Keithan uh Keithan
Um f kean’s f fantastic talk yesterday touched on this topic designing with um a mobile first approach ensures that they um have the best available experience given any device limitation they may have responsive web design allows a website to adapt to the screen size and capabilities of the device
Accessing it which is key for users with lowend devices and slow network connections here I focus on UK data from gov.uk for those who are not from the UK here’s an explanation of what it is gov.uk is a website for the UK government it is the best place to find
Policy announcements information about government and guidance for Citizens since 2012 it has replaced 1,884 government websites with just one to become the home of all Central governments online content and services you can see what gov.uk looks like here on the slide this is on an iPad iPhone
And a Dell laptop you will see this on the slide the slide you see the site on the slide is built using mobile first design principles the design is clean and simple and lends itself to we being a a mobile website it’s it was a brave
Decision back by the GDs design team to use a mobile first approach back in 2012 when it was first launched considering the now famous alista part article responsive web design by Ethan marot had only just been released in mid 2010 and it wasn’t until 2013 that responsive web
Design took the Internet by storm in fact Mashable actually called 2013 the year of responsive web design to to back up this claim they released the respons a responsive version of their website to uh for the Post PC era as they called it back to the topic of
Gov.uk this is what the site looked like before it wasn’t exactly mobile friendly and many would say wasn’t very user friendly either I remember this was and still is a fully taxpayer funded service the the new design was quite controversial at the time there were quite a few angry members of the public
Leaving comments on the GDs blog post uh blog post announcing the launch here a random member of the public named Howard Andrews comments where is the government website for grown-ups this is a Go the whole of go EK is obviously designed for primary school children and those with special educational needs
This seems pretty harsh Howard I bring interest thing to know if he feels the same after 11 years in hindsight there wasn’t actually a Market in 2012 for a mobile first government website so you can imagine why it was such a controversial decision in 2012 80% of
The UK population were accessing the go gov.uk via a desktop computer and less than 20% of users were visiting via a mobile phone or tablet but if we fast forward 8 years 2 months 9 days to the fourth of January 2021 which happens to be go. ‘s busiest
Day ever things look very different this is 8 months into the co 19 lockdown in the UK when the Prime Minister Boris Johnson tells everyone to stay at home for the UK’s thirdd National lockdown on this evening gov.uk has its highest traffic in its nine-year history at the
Peak the Google analytics real-time data broke with with a due to the 88,000 requests per second that were hitting the site the relevant part to this section comes in this graphic when the real-time tracking data broke and 85% of gov.uk users were on a mobile device
With only 11% of users on a desktop what a year what a difference N9 years can make in technology two other important dates regarding mobile first design on gov.uk October 2019 was when we saw mobile usage finally exceed desktop usage month on month as seen bya the red arrow and
In March 2020 we saw saw a huge shift in user numbers using mobiles seen via the blue arrow this shift happens to coincide with Boris Johnson urging everyone to in the UK to work from home and avoid pubs and restaurants Co 19 looks to have been a c a huge Catalyst
For greater mobile usage at least on gov.uk anyway remember at the time this was life-saving information being given to the masses Via mobile first design principles if that’s not a reason to bridge the digital divide for everyone in society regardless of their location or circumstances I don’t know what is what
We are seeing here is an example of how mobile first and optimized web design save lives to reiterate the importance of mobile first responsive design across a large population here are some more gov.uk data from the start of this year on the left is a heat map of all screen
Resolutions that visited gov.uk in a single month there are so many resolutions towards the bottom right corner of the image the teex disappears into a blur of thousands of individual images on the right is the actual number of combinations seen the important number here is 51,9 189 screen resolutions visiting
Gov.uk in a single month thank goodness for mobile first responsive design there is way too many resolutions and devices to test on so resilience and flexibility has to be built into design to cater for everyone every user visiting no matter what device and screen size they’re using speaking of user devices it isn’t
Always desktop tablet and mobile phones being used either usually the most popular tweet in the gov.uk stats thread I posted on Twitter every month was this one month on month we saw users using games consoles to visit gov.uk and delving into the data they aren’t only visiting the homepage there are
Vulnerable people trying to visit the home the site to find a job find information on the cost of and signing to their Universal Credit account there’s a user story that was always spoken about at GDs it was written up by teren Eden who was witness to
It it it will I’ll try to paraphrase the story for you here Terren is doing policy research in a housing benefits office in London a young woman sits in the middle of the office and is surrounded by bags these are all her worldly possessions she’s holding a
PlayStation Portable or a PSP he assumes she’s playing a game to pass the time it turn turns out she’s using the free Wi-Fi and the PSP’s crappy browser to browse the to read the housing benefits pages of go. she’s being kicked out of a house and a her parents house and she
Now has nowhere to live the PSP is a hand me- down from an older brother when asked about why she’s using a PSP to browse the internet her response is it’s but it worked my paraphrase version doesn’t do the story justice so I’d recommend reading terrence’s blog post
In full it’s called the reasonable effectiveness of simple HTML and this reiterates everything that Ryan was saying yesterday in his excellent talk so if there’s one thing you take away from this talk today it’s when building a website in the future remember to consider users whose response to the
Device they’re using is it but it worked as I’d imagine there are millions of people across the world who are in a very similar position to the young woman mentioned in the story they can’t afford the latest device and data required to use them so they’re using a second or
Third hand device with a borrowed internet ACC internet connection to complete the tasks they need to number three accessibility considerations and digital exclusion I can’t stress this point enough if we want to bridge the digital divide and reduce digital exclusion accessibility is a huge part of the problem that needs
Consideration by accessibility I mean the literal meaning a user being able to access the information they need and also the use of assisted Technologies like screen readers and brow readers whereas there is no legal requirement for a fast and performant website the same can’t be said for accessibility in
Certain sectors of the UK and EU compliance with wag is a legal requirement and soon a new regulation will become law uh called the European accessibility act more on that in a few slides time the US has similar requirements with C 508 and order in my opinion good web performance also means
Ensuring that websites are accessible to users with disabilities and M and this this means creating websites that are compatible with assisted Technologies and designing interfaces that are easy to use now since Chrome itous comes with a whole set of accessibility audits I’d like to think that many in the web
Performance Community agree with this stance on the slide you will see a small number of accessibility audits Lighthouse looks for uh according to my last view of the documentation it has 57 it runs in total for accessibility when many people mention accessibility a large proportion likely
Think this this is the symbol used in the UK to signify someone with in a wheelchair or a person with a physical alment but as I mentioned earlier how the digital divide isn’t only a young versus old demographic issue it’s exactly the same for accessibility as a saying goes we’re all
Just temporarily abled so design and build for your future self but there’s more to accessibility Than Physical elments here we have six icons from Microsoft that they they use when talking about inclusive design listed we have permanent disabilities like having one arm deafness blindness and being a new parent also temporary disabilities
Like having an injury or having an eye or ear infection then there are the situational disabilities like being in a noisy or distracting environment or a place with poor lighting but there’s actually more to consider not included in the previous slides are the hidden disabilities these include things like
Autism mental health issues sensory processing disorder multiple sclerosis dyslexia dyspraxia epilepsy and the one I know well traumatic brain injury EG from brain surgery I don’t mind talking about this quite traumatic part of my life but for those who don’t know in April 2021 one I was diagnosed with a
Huge brain tumor after 7 hours of brain surgery in which 15% of my brain matter was removed I not only woke up with the worst headache of my entire life but also a really annoying temporary weakness in my left arm and hand meaning I couldn’t use my phone and laptop fully
For many weeks post surgery if you’re interested in what my brain looks like the before and after MRI scans are on the slide now in fact I’m still considered disabled as I’m prone to seizures and have to take daily medication to control them apologies for the huge tangent there I just wanted to
Emphasize the point that disabilities come in all shapes and sizes hidden and not so hidden building for accessibility and inclusivity is a challenge but it’s vital if we want to bridge the digital divide as I mentioned earlier I’d like to think that as you attending this wonderful web performance conference
You’re already thinking about building inclusive websites that minimize their device footprint and utilize efficient use of a limited of a users limited data an excellent resource for the current state of accessibility on the web is the alac the web alak which I’m sure many of you have read or even contributed to I
Know Rick viomy is here today who is Project Lead on the almanac so a massive thank thank you to him for all the work he’s done over the years comparing the 2021 versus 2022 Almanac reveals some positives like there’s been an almost 9% increase in the use of focus visible but
It also goes goes on to say there’s still plenty to do with straightforward fixes like using image alt tags correctly with approximately 2.2% of websites have alt text that Cana as a file extension and fixing anchor tags with a roll of button which according to the almanac 20% of websites do and
Finally adjusting pages to have improved contrast just fixing these three issues could improve accessibility on a large number of websites like Annie cook once said there’s no MVP without accessibility the web Community needs to realize that a website is only only has a great user experience when that user experience
Works for everyone irrespective of the device and assistive technology used it’s this user experience built for everyone that is going to be key to Bridging the digital divide for all demographics and web performance is an incredibly important part of delivering a good user experience as I briefly mentioned
Earlier if you’re a company that wishes to do business in The UU you should add the 28th of June 2025 to your diary as this is when the European accessibility act becomes law for all member states I’d recommend making your business ready for this important upcoming date to
Avoid the ban from trading in the U EU for non-compliance number four content delivery networks they are essential for fast and resilient websites especially ones used by millions of people across the globe the speed of light is quick but but the the speed of light is quick but when
You’re still looking at a ping time of 255 plus milliseconds between London and Sydney as seen on the graph here 255 milliseconds doesn’t sound like a lot of time but when a HTTP negotiations take multiple round trips even before the first bite of website data is sent this all adds up
That’s why you need you want servers in many GE Geographic locations across the world to mirror your content and deliver it to your users from the server closest to them as I’m Al I’m sure you all know the metric the specific metric I’m talking about is time to first bite or
Ttfb and as Harry Roberts said in 2019 while a good ttfb doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll have a fast website a bad ttfb almost certainly guarantees a slow one so make sure you minimize your time to First Bite to ensure your users aren’t left with a page that is
Unresponsive and frustrating to use as I mentioned another very important reason for using a CDN is resilience what happens to your website when your origin fall Falls over more importantly what happens to your users when a user enters your their URL into your address bar they expect you to
Still be there not an empty page staring back at them or even worse a error message that they likely don’t understand for users who aren’t technically s I’d imagine this screenshot displayed on the slide be highly stressful do users even know or care what a server is probably not the
Only one to visit your site complete a task and get on with their lives referring back to go. UK’s busy day I mentioned earlier in the talk this is what the SES traffic looked like in Google analytics 760,000 plus concurrent users hitting the website it looking for life-saving coid
Information thankfully due to go. UK’s use of a CDN this is what the users saw yes it’s pretty unremarkable the users saw the standard gov.uk homepage with all the important information and news about the national lockdown Co 19 travel advice and brexit still available to read what fun 2021 was uh on
Gov.uk I think this is a great quote that sums obsidian quite well it’s like being a duck caling and ruffled on the surface but paddling like hell underneath and this is pretty much what was happening there were some impress pretty impressive fastly CD end stats from that day between 3.2 and 3.2
Million concurrent users approximately 88,000 requests per second a 99% cash hit rate at the CDN and for the 17 million page views between 800 and 9:00 p.m. only 21500 errors were served I personally think that’s pretty impressive for a public service website and without a CDN gov.uk would have
Buckled under those huge user numbers in turn it would have left their users without Vital life-saving Information they needed here are the same stats um for the same CDN starts in graph form the top graph is a cash hit rate the bottom graph is a number of current current concurrent requests hitting the
CDN while cdns bring increased web performance if we take the literal meaning of the word they also increase accessibility they do this by giving a much greater number of users globally access to the information they serve another important service cdnn are able to provide is optimized versions of
Content for example content that is specifically tailored for low-end devices like the one seen here a low-spec Android device available on pageo for £52.99 in my local Tesco supermarket CDN also help users on limited and expensive data plans here we see that the folkland islands is the second most expensive
Country in the world for mobile data with 30 gigabytes costing upwards of 30 pound no one gigabyte costing upwards of 30s in summary CDM providers play a huge part in Bridging the digital Divide from improved access to the internet internet and reducing cost for users they also enhance performance provide resilience
And scalability for critical online services number five data compression since we’ve been talking about cdns it’s a great time to mention data compression too data compression helps reduce the size of data over the network improving page load times and reducing data usage this is critical for users on limited
Data plans a reduction in the amount of data transferred will also lead to Energy savings this is not only good for the environment but also translates into cost savings for users as we saw on the previous slide people in St Helena and FK the folkland islands need as much
Help as they can when it costs upwards of 30 pound of per gigabyte of data this is also where data compression can help rural users thankfully over the past few years the number of websites enabling some form of compression on their assets has been increasing the
Graphs on the slide show a drop in uncompressed requests between 209 19 and 2021 the for desktop users this is 4 5.3% for mobile users this is a little less at only 4.5% it’s actually getting easier for web developers to enable data compression on their websites with many
Cdns offering asset compression at the touch of a button compression at the edge is perfect for lazy developers where they can where the uncompressed file is fetched from the origin and compressed on the Fly by the CDN it’s possible to do this automatically when assets are updated too it really can be
A set it and forget it solution this the use of Broly compression will reduce data over the network even further with many of the major cdns now supporting it by default according to Cloud flare by compressing broadly at level 11 developers are able to reduce their file
Sizes by 19% compared to the best gzip compression level they later go on to say how utilizing brle at its highest compression levels can lead to improved website performance and website page load times and I’m sure the folks on this graph would love a 19% reduction in
Their data usage at these prices 19% would save them a small fortune and it isn’t all about remote islands in the South Pacific that this is that that have this this issue these BBC articles from 2020 describe how residents of rural villages in Wales feel totally isolated and forgotten they
Talk about having to walk up hills just to get a mobile signal and one article even mentions how the visit hasn’t how the village hasn’t got us reliable radio or TV signals either going back to the map I showed earlier in the UK um this is an issue
Across the whole of the United Kingdom it’s currently known as a postcode lottery in the UK whether you get a a fast connection or not in summary data compression has a vital part to play in Bridging the digital divide it reduces data over the network and improves page
Load times more importantly um less data usage allows users on limited data plans in rural areas to gain access to the information they need no matter where they are or the device they are using I believe Pat mean’s talk is talking about compression dictionaries later today and
I’m sure he will cover some upcoming improvements in data compression to so make sure you check that out number six offline capabilities and Progressive web apps as the last topic I will briefly touch on is a web platform’s offline capabilities and discuss if they can help when you when
Coming to the digital divide for users the web platform has a powerful set of apis that are designed to help users who struggle with connectivity issues the key API I’m talking about is the service worker API is the service worker API ready to be used well according to Jake Archbold
One of the w3c API authors yes it is and there’s a whole website here saying it is and the web platform information website can I use is in agreement with 94.4% of users globally currently using a browser that supports the API the natural progression from the service worker API is Progressive web
Apps there are they these apps leverage the service worker API to allow web applications to access native device features one of the standout pwas that is often cited is a Starbucks store locator and easy ordering app the success of this app comes with some pretty impressive web performance stats
The native Starbucks app was a hefty 148 megabytes to download a huge download for low data users the pwa version came in at 233 kiloby a whopping 99.8 4% smaller this is led to improved order diversity by 23% the lightweight app opened the starbu open up Starbucks to a
Larger user base simply because there wasn’t the 148 megabyte barrier 2ry for the digital storefront having said all this I personally believe that using pwas for web performance and reducing the digital divide could likely be a double-edged sword don’t get any ideas Robin yes this
Is a fine gra yes you uh yes you get very fine grain control over caching and the use uh and a more much smaller footprint um when than a u a native app but on the slide uh we see how but on the slide how do you explain
This concept to someone who is less technically Savvy or scared of technology for example when a user visits a website what but it then becomes a native app on their phone’s home screen god um is the user left asking why is this website asking me to
Add something to the to my own home screen why what is a home screen why is it now an app where did the app store go this could likely be very confusing for uh a confusing user experience I’d struggle to to explain this concept to my parents and even my younger sister
Who are all daily phone users but aren’t heavily into technology like I am I personally feel that PW may be a bridge too far for many non-technical users but I’d love to hear if anyone has had success using pwas uh and users with limited digital skills maybe it’s a
Topic to discuss over lunch later so that’s pretty much the end of my talk I only have a few more slides before I finish I’d like to take this opportunity to thank you the whole web performance Community as the past few years have Prett been pretty rough for my family
And I as I mentioned earlier back in April 2021 I was diagnosed with a a Grade Three brain tumor completely unforeseen after having no symptoms at all upon seeing the size and location of the cancer I was pretty certain that I’ve been I’ve just been handed a death
Sentence and that I’d be lucky to get to my 40 birthday in the December of that year while waiting 6 months for my brain surgery the web performance Community were there to help keep me occupied and help me get over the huge life-changing news a few kind folks even banded
Together uh to buy me the 7,500 piece Lego Millennium Falcon to which uh to help me um help keep me occupied during my recovery my sons and I were completely blown away when we open the box but after 7 hours of awake open head brain surgery 33 rounds of radiotherapy
And four cycles of chemotherapy thank thankfully they thankful to the much the wonderful National Health Service and the Miracle of modern medicine I’m still here so a big thank you to Tammy Ebert a Andrew vetts Barry Pollard Patrick minan Cliff Crocker and Andy Davis who I want
To buy a nice cold Dutch beer um over the next day or so [Applause] you’re gonna make me cry um and and not only I’m not the only person to comment on this fact I shared this tweet with from Alex Russell where he comments I I can’t say often
Enough I can’t say often enough enough how kind supportive and collegial the web performance Community is truly the best of us staring endlessly at the worst of the web communities excesses and staying positive a comment I completely agree with and that’s the end of my talk thanks for listening I hope
You found it interesting and I want to take a second to mention that I’m currently looking for my next job role so if anyone if you know anyone who is um hiring please do get in contact with me um I have all my slides all my sources in the final slide any
Questions thanks again great job Matt thank you all right oh God this is really awful I don’t think I can get up there should we lean can lean all right thanks Matt that was a great talk wasn’t it everyone um oh this is like this is my standing DK now all
Right so um there was one general question uh that asked about where the slides are going to be they are all going to be on the website so if you want to access the slides they they will be collected there yeah but um you talked about how to get decision makers
To investment equity and access in terms of like revenue or lost donations and things but how do you motivate developers to care who may not be familiar with with the circumstances that um that their users are in what strategies do you recommend um I would
Say the um for me it’s always been um iterate small like start small and um start small and um build uh build up as you uh sort of um as you sort of do it yourself so I at GDs I was pretty pretty much the only person interested in and
Iterating web performance and it was um it was quite hard you just touching you’re pushing um things uphill to get to get it started um but once you start the actual um process of pushing pushing it uphill you can actually bring people along with you and sort of um being able to
Um uh use other developers and other people in the um organization is a big help um but uh if you do it completely on your own you’re completely burn burn out so it definitely start small and if you make a a um if you make something important that
You um that you are like uh you celebrate completely celebrate the hell of it and sort of like publish on Twitter publish a blog post and and sort of bring people along along for the ride that’s what I think anyway yeah those are great tips thanks and then we had a
Question from Marcel who said how do you bite the temptation of a growing number of Frameworks and libraries that are used to simplify development simplify with an impact on performance for slower connections and devices when working on gov.uk I think it has to be I think you have to start looking at
Users you need to you need to approach users and um make sure that you’re you doing user user testing so go to I mean the example of the uh lady in the um in the uh office where she’s on a crappy PSP Go go to places like that and
Actually see how a user actually interacts with a website um and it’s just having a bit of for me it’s a bit of empathy having empathy for employee uh for users and making sure that uh they have uh the ability to sort of um get to the information that they need
And um yeah and trying to use as um Ryan said yesterday use the right um tool for the job if you’re if you’re downloading like hundreds of U megabytes of JavaScript then users are going to have bad time so uh definitely try and sort of uh use empathy and and
Sort of um change change whatever the tool is uh best to use for sure if that makes sense all right I think we’ll do one more question um what’s one change you advocated for that you’re most proud of or that had the most impact you think
Um I think it was when I managed to enable um htv2 on gov.uk because we um it was quite a when I first enabled it and I changed the uh how it worked it all went horribly horribly wrong it actually got worse and I was I was literally ripping
My hair out not that I had hair at that time but uh no it was it was um not good at all so I had to go back to the drawing board and and sort of um change uh there were issues with um we were using uh subresource in Integrity for uh
JavaScript and for uh CSS and it was it was breaking um it was slowing down uh http2 um but um I managed to CH turn it off and it um thankfully it actually worked out so that’s probably one of my uh one of my uh achievements there awesome well everyone thank you again
Thank you [Applause] Matt