By skyforbes 
At Nava we’ve been working with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to create an open source design system for HealthCare.gov. The design system is a set of design and front-end development resources for creating Section 508 compliant, responsive, and consistent websites.
We’re excited about the release of Version 1.0, available at design.cms.gov, and even more excited about growing the design system as we continue making improvements to HealthCare.gov.
The design system is a set of open source design and front-end development resources for creating Section 508 compliant, responsive, and consistent websites.
Why a design system?
Since the launch of HealthCare.gov, over 23 million people have enrolled in health insurance through the federal and state exchanges, and America now has its lowest uninsured rate ever. It’s important that we create a process for applying and enrolling in health coverage that is simple and accessible for everyone.
Currently, multiple contractors are responsible for different parts of HealthCare.gov and each team has their own processes and codebases. Without a shared, living source of truth for UI standards, this has resulted in a fragmented and visually inconsistent user experience. The design system is an attempt to bridge the divide between these siloed codebases, establish a more collaborative environment, and to empower each team to efficiently build consistent, accessible experiences.
The design system is an attempt to bridge the divide between these siloed codebases, establish a more collaborative environment, and to empower each team to efficiently build consistent, accessible experiences.
What we’re building
In order to accomplish the goals above, the design system builds upon the U.S. Web Design Standards and extends it to support additional CSS and React components, utility classes, and a flexbox grid framework. A goal of the U.S. Web Design Standards is to promote consistency and accessibility across federal government websites, and it’s important to us that we play our part in supporting that. We’re continuing this work and we’ll be adding more resources to the design system as we identify use cases through our work on HealthCare.gov and other government services.
Documentation for the design system is available at design.cms.gov and the code can be viewed on GitHub.
For a closer look at how we’re approaching the technical side of the design system, check out our follow-up post: “Building a design system for HealthCare.gov”
Nava is a public benefit corporation headquartered in Washington, D.C. with offices in San Francisco and New York. Nava is hiring across engineering, design, and product to pursue its mission of radically improving the way government serves people.
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