Webby Award – Medi-CareFirst

The 14th annual Webby Awards are in and we’ve got something to celebrate! Over 8,000 entries were submitted and fewer than 15% were distinguished as Official Honorees; the Medi-CareFirst.com website designed and built by G.1440 was one of them! We’ve always been proud of our creative web designers and skilled web developers, and we’re thrilled that our team has been recognized by the Web Design community!

The Medi-CareFirst.com website needed to be 508 Compliant, meaning that the Design Team at G.1440 was challenged to create a site where all aspects are accessible to people with varying disabilities. The Design Team also recognized the need for the site to be aesthetically pleasing and organized.

G.1440’s team overcame these challenges by incorporating a variety of techniques. First, the site enables a text size changer, allowing a user to instantly increase the text size without having to adjust browser settings. Next, a “text only” option was added using default text throughout and providing text equivalents for images and any other multimedia content. This allowed for assistive technologies such as screen readers and Braille displays to function properly within the site.

A third task was to keep content understandable, navigable, and easy to use, and ensured that the site “degraded” gracefully when a visitor used the text size changer and/or text only options. For example, the Design Team used JavaScript instead of Flash in the large ad area. The text in the ad area is not image based, but is default, therefore allowing for an easy read by the screen readers.

G.1440’s Web Design Team also focused on users’ feelings when visiting the site. Often visitors are using Medi-CareFirst.com to get information during times that may be personally stressful. The Design Team decided the overall look and feel should be calming and assuring to the user through use of colors, ease of use, and friendly navigation.

To have a client honored for a website that we designed & built is an exciting day for G.1440! It’s a true statement proving that hard work and creativity really sets our team above the rest.