Phone number links in contacts / text? about govspeak

[keithiopia]

That's an interesting idea - but would devices get updated when departments/helplines change their number or address?

[edent]

We've just passed the fourth anniversary of this request. What's the best way of getting some progress on this?
It's quite important for knowledge-graph work that machines can know what text on a page relates to a phone number.

[keithiopia]

Has there been any evidence to suggest users need this or would understand why a phone number is a link on desktop/laptops?

[edent]

Only that I tried to contact the DVLA via GOVUK and it was very annoying that I had to copy & paste the phone number.

Tried in Chrome, Opera, and Firefox for Android.

I'm not sure how best to go about testing whether regular users find that a barrier to contacting people.

As for clicking on desktop - a tel link tends to open Facetime on a Mac, and other dialers on other OSes. I'm not sure if that's different from an auto-linking email address if someone doesn't have an email program installed,

[keithiopia]

I could flag it with the user research people if you like?
I'm sure it could be incorporated into some other GOV.UK benchmarking.

[edent]

👍

[edent]

As an example of a site which uses the tel schema https://peoplefinder.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/people/terence-eden

[edent]

Just as a note, over a third of visitors use a mobile device https://www.gov.uk/performance/site-activity/device-type

[edent]

As an alternative - we have a mandated standard for contact exchange.

Would it be sensible to have vCards on all "contact us" pages?

[edent]

No - but that's no different from today. I assume that departments which change numbers / emails / postal addresses maintain the old one for a suitable period of time.

[keithiopia]

We've just passed the fourth anniversary of this request. What's the best way of getting some progress on this?
It's quite important for knowledge-graph work that machines can know what text on a page relates to a phone number.

We've long passed the tipping point in mobile use where having tel: links makes sense.

I don't know why I'm the only person who replies to you about this, but it's been a nice bit of continuity over the years.

@nicholsj who do you think could make a decision on adding this to govspeak?