The page on the "Scottish legal system" provides links to a number of related articles. The one about "volunteering as a magistrate" is of no relevance to Scotland- it's England and Wales only. Also, the page on "how to resolve a dispute" links to the English deposit protection scheme (without an indication that that is English content- which could be confusing). These pages claim to have been reviewed and approved for use in DirectScot- surely the linked pages should be appropriate for Scotland?

I work for government and we are working hard to ensure our website meets gov.uk design principles and that people accessing any government site will have the same look and feel. Your site is going in the right direction but I dont understand why you wouldnt reuse the code they have done are offering people to use. For example your bank holiday page could look far better using GDS styles provided?

Possible to do a synthetic voice at each area/page?? Would help visualy impaired or facility to zoom on pages

The font on pages such as http://www.directscot.org/Topics/council-tax is awful
Also, I would expect to find 'Pay your Council Tax' under 'Most popular' links at http://www.directscot.org/Topics/council-tax as I'd guess that's what most people actually want to do

Will this replace the current local authority websites?
A lot of time and effort is going into developing these sites, however if they are not needed, it's best to let people know sooner rather than later.

I am disappointed to find that a supposedly Scottish website gives a link to an English website for volunteering instead of the Volunteer Scotland website which provides a range of opportunities in volunteering for people in Scotland

Suggest you validate using w3c validation and also w3c CSS validator either Jigsaw or Unicorn check also with http://achecker.ca/checker/index.php, why am I saying this? This website is aimed at users with disabilities by providing a service for them. W3c have guidelines for accessibility also BS8878, If this website is not accessible by all types of disabled people you may be contravening the Equalities Act 2010.

Make sure there is enough advertising to that the most is made form this central resource!

Take a look at gov.uk - a really modern, easy to use site. directscot.org is better than what we already have but so much less than it could be. Given that anybody can take the source of gov.uk (from GitHub) - why not work in conjunction with them to build something consistent rather than trying to reinvent the wheel and do so poorly?

Are Scotland's public bodies ready to support this site? For example SAAS seems to struggle to maintain it's own system accurately and has issued our 2 daughters with 4 different award amounts each this year despite having all the relevant information from an uncomplicated, salaried, married-and-living-together household. Not clear how this portal will iron out those kind of issues which might be staff training or more likely inadequate, legacy IT systems!