Tuesday 3 March is World Hearing Day. To mark the occasion and raise awareness, Opencast Junior Software Developer John Owens has written about his experience of deciding whether to have cochlear implants. He takes us through how he made his decision, his surgery, his recovery and how he feels about it now.

Modifying legacy systems presents real challenges. Whether its an unfamiliar code base, disregarded business logic which controls the flow of the application, or other aspects of an ageing system such as outdated norms, practices and repository structures. Senior Software Engineer Liam Treacy explores techniques and strategies which make the task easier.

Opencast’s senior service designer Dr Angela Orviz co-led a workshop at the 2025 SDinGov Conference. The session was co-led by Dr Priscilla Cheung-Nainby, from the University of Edinburgh, and was entitled From Awareness to Action: Co-creating a framework and guidelines for trauma-informed digital services.