During GDS Services Week 2026, Hippo consultants delivered two sessions focused on practical innovation, human-centred design, and leadership that drives meaningful change.
These sessions reflect a core belief at Hippo: effective digital services aren’t built in isolation; they emerge from collaboration, empathy, and a clear focus on the people who use them.
Making accessibility tangible: Florence and Robin’s session
Florence Nguyen and Robin Parker presented Leveraging AI: Making accessibility accessible, and with their access needs simulation, made accessibility visible. Florence has deep experience working alongside people with disabilities across and knows that empathy isn’t optional. Yet too often, accessibility remains a box-ticking exercise, buried under fragmented tools, bureaucratic hurdles, and a lack of shared understanding.
To change that, Florence and Robin built an access needs simulation: an AI-powered tool that turns guidelines into visible experiences. Their web-based platform consolidates multiple accessibility simulations (motor impairments, screen readers, dyslexia, low vision, and colour blindness) into a single, interactive tool. By overlaying these simulations onto GDS prototype interfaces, teams can see, firsthand, how their designs fail or succeed for real users. To make it readily usable, the tool’s code can be exported and embedded directly into GDS Prototype Kits; circumventing a need for plugins or extra software.
The goal is to unify various accessibility plugins, move beyond static guidelines and into experiential learning, where stakeholders can engage with accessibility first-hand. With plans to make the tool publicly available, the hope is to democratise accessibility, giving even those new to the field the power to build for everyone.
Leading in complexity: Juliet’s webinar
Government delivery isn’t for the faint-hearted. Juliet Bale’s webinar, Delivery Leadership in Government, identified the messy, unpredictable reality of leading digital projects in the public sector.
Delivery leadership isn’t about managing tasks; it’s about enabling outcomes. Too often, teams get bogged down in ceremonies, backlogs, and activity metrics. The real work of a delivery leader is to identify and unblock the systemic constraints that hold teams back, whether it’s governance bottlenecks, unclear ownership, or tangled dependency chains. The best leaders don’t just push harder; they design the conditions for success.
But perhaps the most critical lesson was about psychological safety. Trust is the foundation of high-performing teams, and leaders must create spaces where risks are surfaced early, mistakes are treated as learning opportunities, and accountability doesn’t come at the cost of fear.
It’s crucial to optimise the system, not just the team. Whether it’s managing stakeholders, scaling delivery, or navigating ambiguity, the best leaders are those who focus on outcomes instead of activity.
Great digital services are built on two pillars: understanding people and unblocking systems.
Florence and Robin’s tool puts humanity at the centre of accessibility, using AI to bridge gaps in empathy and process. Juliet’s leadership insights, meanwhile, remind us that systems shape behaviour, and that the best leaders are those who shape systems to enable the right behaviours.
