Async Digital

English Cymraeg

Welsh Language StandardsTenant apps and portals

What it takes for a tenant app to function fully in Welsh

A briefing for housing associations in Wales and the Community Housing Cymru working group. It sets out five points that matter when a tenant app or portal has to function fully in Welsh, and the questions each one raises for software suppliers.

Rob Nash

Why now

Cymraeg 2050
The Welsh Government’s Cymraeg 2050 strategy aims for a million Welsh speakers by 2050, and to double the share of people who use Welsh every day, from 10 per cent to 20 per cent.
The Standards
The Welsh Language Standards are how that commitment reaches organisations. They give Welsh speakers enforceable rights to use Welsh when dealing with the bodies they cover. Over 130 bodies already work to them.
Housing associations
Housing associations are next. The Welsh Language Standards (No. 10) Regulations 2026 set Standards for them, and the Welsh Language Commissioner decides which ones apply to each association, and by when, in a compliance notice. After the consultation, the standards for websites and online services were extended to cover portals, including app-based tenant portals.
Costs
In their own consultation responses, housing associations named IT upgrades among the costs they expect.

Async Digital builds apps bilingual in English and Welsh from the first build.

Point 1 of 5

‘Fully’ means fully

Standard 45 requires every app a housing association publishes for the public to function fully in Welsh, with Welsh treated no less favourably than English. The test covers everything a tenant can see in the app, not only the parts that ship with it.

Considerations

  1. 1.1Every screen, every message and every piece of data the tenant sees is in scope, not just the menus.
  2. 1.2An app that is translated but still shows English repair updates does not function fully in Welsh.

Point 2 of 5

An iPhone cannot be set to Welsh

iOS does not offer Welsh as a system language, so a fully translated app can still open in English. The phone cannot tell the app that the tenant wants Welsh, so the app has to ask.

Considerations

  1. 2.1The app needs its own language choice, offered on first launch and remembered.
  2. 2.2That choice has to survive updates and reinstalls.
  3. 2.3It has to reach the server too. See point 4.

Point 3 of 5

Most of what tenants read is not in the app

Repair updates, rent statements and appointment slots come from the housing system’s server. Translating the app’s screens does not translate them.

Considerations

  1. 3.1Which records the housing system can hold in two languages.
  2. 3.2Who writes the Welsh for data that changes daily.
  3. 3.3What the tenant sees when a Welsh version is missing.

Point 4 of 5

Messages are written by the server

Notifications, emails and texts are composed by the housing system. It can only send them in Welsh if it records each tenant’s language.

Considerations

  1. 4.1Where the preference is stored, and who can change it.
  2. 4.2One preference must drive the app, the push notifications, the emails and the texts alike.
  3. 4.3What happens to tenants already on the system.

Point 5 of 5

Welsh grammar trips up code written for English

Welsh has six plural forms to English’s two. Mutations change the start of words: ‘Caerdydd’ becomes ‘yng Nghaerdydd’, ‘in Cardiff’. A simple search for ‘Caerdydd’ will not find it.

Considerations

  1. 5.1Counts such as ‘3 repairs’ need proper plural handling, not ‘repair(s)’.
  2. 5.2Search must find a word in its mutated forms.
  3. 5.3Sorted lists must follow Welsh alphabetical order, where ‘ch’, ‘dd’ and ‘ll’ are single letters.

Who does what

Async Digital builds
The bilingual engineering: the language choice, bilingual data and search, the per-tenant preference, and plurals.
The housing association owns
The Welsh wording, written by its own translators or its translation supplier.

A free 20-minute briefing

Rob Nash offers a free 20-minute briefing for the Community Housing Cymru working group, or any housing association, on what this means in practice, so members can ask the right questions of their software suppliers.

Get in touch

or email info@async-digital.com

Rob Nash, director of Async Digital Ltd, a senior iOS engineer in Cardiff with fifteen years shipping native apps.