London, UK - Feb 2026: – The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association (“Guide Dogs”) announces the launch of its new flagship website, (https://www.guidedogs.org.uk/) - a modern, accessible and future-ready digital experience designed to better serve people with sight loss, supporters, volunteers and the wider public.
The relaunch marks a major milestone in Guide Dogs’ broader digital transformation strategy. The charity has replaced its legacy Sitecore-based platform with a cleaner, faster, more secure and fully accessible experience powered by a modern, headless Contentstack CMS. The new platform has been engineered to scale, adapt, and evolve, ensuring Guide Dogs can continue delivering life-changing services in the future. A major technical upgrade - delivered so seamlessly “no one noticed”.
Behind the scenes, the new website represents a complete technical overhaul: a new CMS, a rebuilt frontend, and the removal of years of accumulated legacy complexity. Yet for users, the transition was intentionally invisible.
“The most exciting thing is that no one noticed,” Dan Hall, CIO said. “Many months of work went into this upgrade. We delivered on time and, to the untrained eye, the site looks the same. That’s exactly what a well-executed transformation should feel like.”
This smooth transition was achieved thanks to close collaboration between Guide Dogs’ internal team and experts from Inviqa - A Havas Company, who worked together as a single delivery community from discovery through deployment.
“It is one of the best partnership arrangements I have seen,” Janine Duggan, Head of Digital, Guide Dogs, added. “What made it work? Trust, clear goals, complete openness, trust again - and making space for experts to excel in their field.”
Inclusivity and accessibility were the driving forces behind the rebuild. The project focused on not only meeting but exceeding WCAG standards, ensuring the website supports the widest possible range of access needs, including assistive technologies and low-vision browsing.
Co-creation activities shaping the final experience included early discovery sessions, accessibility workshops, and prototype testing with participants - including people with lived experience of sight loss and real-world access needs. The result is a smoother, clearer, and more intuitive digital journey, with improved readability, consistent content patterns, simplified navigation and responsive design across all devices.
Key improvements include:
Clearer messaging around the impact of donations
Reduced cognitive load and simplified mobile-first forms
More consistent page structures and calls to action
Accessibility-first interaction patterns
These enhancements support higher conversion, more meaningful giving experiences, and stronger long-term engagement. The new platform replaces legacy systems with a composable, API-driven architecture designed for long-term growth.
Key technology features include:
Contentstack headless CMS for flexible, future-proof editorial workflows
Automated content migration and rebuilt content structures
A performant React-based frontend
Improved governance, content consistency, and observability
Enhanced security and scalability
This foundation empowers Guide Dogs’ digital teams to publish faster, adapt more flexibly, and respond more effectively to public needs, campaigns, and national events.
The delivery was shaped through a highly collaborative programme of:
Discovery workshops across accessibility, content, development and architecture
Analytics and heuristic evaluations
Competitor benchmarking
Iterative design sprints and stakeholder feedback loops
Real-world prototyping of high-traffic user journeys
Dominic Feenan, CEO of Inviqa, said: “This project shows what’s possible when client and agency teams work as one. Guide Dogs brought clarity, trust and true openness to the partnership - the foundations that allow teams to deliver at their best. We’re proud to have helped create a platform that strengthens their mission and supports people with sight loss for years to come.”
About Inviqa
The new Guide Dogs digital platform was delivered in collaboration with Inviqa, part of the HAVAS Group - a specialist agency combining strategy, engineering and experience design. Inviqa creates modern, composable digital experiences that help organisations scale, innovate, and deliver measurable business outcomes. With deep expertise across Contentstack, composable commerce, experience design, and large-scale content platforms, Inviqa brings together multidisciplinary teams from across Havas to deliver best-in-class digital services spanning content, commerce, and creativity.
For further information contact Miranda Glover, Marketing Director, Inviqa Miranda.glover@inviqa.co.uk
