Why we use progressive enhancement to build GOV.UK by Robin Whittleton via GOV.UK

This article is more interesting views on progressive enhancement, though there’s not a lot of novelty here. Progressive enhancement, though arguably not for everyone, seems ideal for a government website.

The more time I spend developing for the web the more I like the concept of progressive enhancement, if nothing else than for its 1) reach and 2) longevity. Pure javascript single-page-apps these days can be so brittle and tenuous in terms of longevity.

“progressive enhancement is about resilience as much as it is about inclusiveness.” ... Building in resilience is also known as defensive design: a system shouldn’t break wholly if a single part of it fails or isn’t supported.

We have a mandate to provide digital services to everyone in the UK and many beyond. Many users access services in different ways to the configuration tested by developers. If a person visits GOV.UK we want them to be able to complete their service or access the information they need, regardless of whether we’ve tested their configuration or not.