Ethics is a huge decision maker at Octophin...

...not just in the work we take or refuse to take but in how we approach it, what we charge and how we build it to be sustainable long into the future (with or without us).

We have sponsored diversity places at conferences and place mentorship, training and the awarding of well-paid internships at equal importance to our development work. We have worked with Islington Council on several schemes aimed at getting people from underrepresented backgrounds into work. This has included speaking to people in the prison service, helping at careers fairs, employing people directly in internships, and giving paid work experience as part of a mental health scheme.

We are proud to have directly made a difference in several peoples’ lives by giving them the skills to retrain and get into the technology sector.

Regarding the environment, our commitment stretches further than the software we build, with regular chairing and membership of a local sustainability group, consultancy on green software development and hosting, and voluntary activities.

Ethical software

We follow inclusive, accessible, ethical and open design principles. We create, build-on and support free and open source software and believe the web should be accessible to every user on every device and browser through standards-driven, inclusive design.

We understand that not everyone has the best internet connection so focus on performance to make sure the content gets through to people regardless of who or where they are. We love getting excited about the latest trends in content presentation but try to where possible make use of progressive enhancement so that everyone can get to the core content even if they or their device can’t see, hear or interact with the style layer.

We’ve worked with many charities to help them become GDPR compliant and subtley nudged them to store less of that information about their users they don’t actually need to collect.