Stabilising and strengthening Great Ormond Street’s web platform
We helped GOSH navigate a critical Wagtail upgrade while improving accessibility
Last year, we took on the support contract for Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH). At almost the same moment, their lead developer moved on. That’s where I came in. They asked me to provide interim technical leadership, especially with one concern on the horizon: a major Wagtail upgrade with an unclear upgrade path.
GOSH uses the Wagtail CMS framework to run both their GOSH Children’s Charity and NHS Trust websites. It’s important to keep core infrastructure like this up to date to ensure the security of the platform, and be able to take advantage of new features in the framework.
A technical deep dive
Our first priority was understanding exactly what we were working with. Together with a Wagtail developer and a platform engineer, we carried out a detailed investigation into the state of the application and its infrastructure.
We documented our findings thoroughly and produced clear recommendations to help shape the next steps. Most importantly, we mapped out a confident, achievable route for that long-awaited Wagtail upgrade.
Supporting offboarding and untangling proprietary tools
Another main area of work was helping GOSH offboard their previous agency. Most of this involved routine account updates and removals across various software services. However, there was one more complex piece: the previous agency had embedded some of their own proprietary tools into parts of the application and hosting setup. We carefully migrated everything over, so GOSH could have full ownership and control moving forward.
Building review apps to speed up development
One of the improvements we recommended — and started implementing — was the introduction of review apps into the development workflow. This enhancement allows the team to preview changes in isolated environments, speeding up testing and review.
The GOSH team has since taken this work over, completed it, and have started using it. It’s a huge milestone and one I’m really excited about for them. Review apps have significantly streamlined their development process and reduced the time it takes to ship new features.
Improving accessibility with confidence
GOSH also wanted support implementing fixes from their latest accessibility audit. The site was in good shape with just a handful of straightforward adjustments needed, like adding missing alt attributes, improving aria labels, and refactoring older components to use newer patterns.
A few components needed different attention — notably the autocomplete search bar and some filtering elements on the search results and event listing pages. These interactive pieces required more careful handling to ensure they remained functional while becoming more accessible.
To make this work safer and more robust, I introduced unit tests for the JavaScript powering these components. By fully testing their existing behaviour first, I could make accessibility improvements with confidence, knowing I wasn’t accidentally breaking anything. It was a great opportunity to add long-term value beyond the audit fixes themselves.
This stage of work is now completed and we continue to provide ongoing website support to the team.