CivicTheme was inspired by the former Australian Government Design System (AGDS) initiated by the Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) and employs the same design system principles and attention to accessibility standards and security.
GOLD / AuG-Design-System compliance
CivicTheme is based on and inspired by the former Australian Government Design System (aka GOLD Design System) and then uplifted with new features and functionality informed by current users’ needs.
The rationale was to review the previous AGDS and rebuild and uplift the highest value ‘common components', updating them to use the latest technology and web building techniques.
Informed by user research and feedback, a common set of components was built as part of the first CivicTheme release. If you’re interested in the detailed, specific user research findings, let us know and we can get this to you!
WCAG compliance and assessments
The out-of-the-box components have been designed and developed from their inception with accessibility and inclusion front-of-mind. A compliance statement for each component details the compliance to the previous AGDS and to the relevant WCAG 2.1 AA standards - and how they can be tested.
A thorough accessibility assessment is conducted on CivicTheme for all features and functionality built as a part of the core build and is publicly available. This document outlines the CivicTheme design components assessments based on compliance to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0. This covers all of the current components within CivicTheme.