With a site like BBC News integrating with lots of different internal services, it can be more difficult than it seems on the face it to enable HTTPs, but I'm sure it's coming soon, other BBC sites have enabled HTTPs.
308 karma · joined January 10, 2017
https://medium.com/bbc-design-engineering/about
It has also been shared internally on a few slack BBC teams that I'm in, so it's all good.
It may be the case for 'talent' and management of TV projects (for example), but in the tech departments - your assertion, in my experience seems to be far from true.
It's actually pretty much in the same place (touchable area is bigger than the visual button) and I'm pretty certain it displays at all times.
Missing the feedback is more than understandable criticism (that I agree with) but muscle memory of hitting the key in the first place itself shouldn't really change, hasn't for me - as someone who does use vim a fair amount.