Our Work
St. Joseph’s General Hospital – Elliot Lake
Our Work
St. Joseph’s General Hospital – Elliot Lake
Building a Modern, Accessible Website
Shout Media began working with St. Joseph’s General Hospital – Elliot Lake (SJGHEL) to completely redesign their outdated website. The project focused on accessibility, user experience, and functionality to better serve patients, families, and staff across multiple locations.
The Challenge
SJGHEL is founded on the legacy of the Sisters of St. Joseph, who built and administered the hospital. With a fifty-five-bed hospital and three site locations, SJGHEL plays a critical role in the region. They provide the only Ministry-funded Long-Term Care beds, as well as a wide range of essential services including Obstetrics, Intensive Care, Surgery, Specialist Clinics, Addictions Treatment, Dialysis, CT Scanning, Oncology, and Diabetes Education.
Despite this scope, SJGHEL’s website was outdated, non-responsive, and failed most AODA compliance tests. Administrators made accessibility and usability their top priority, alongside improved navigation, search, and department-specific content.
Our Approach
Shout Media collaborated closely with the SJGHEL team to design and implement a new website that met strict accessibility standards while improving overall functionality and user experience.
Key solutions included:
- Advanced navigation system with a multi-tier, hierarchical menu to make information easy to find across departments and services.
- Custom careers page and job post templates to streamline hiring and increase candidate applications.
- WordPress CMS implementation with flexible block design tools, user role assignments, and fine-grained permissions for content creation, editing, and publishing.
- Emergency wait time updater to provide real-time information for patients seeking care.
- Alert popups for urgent notifications, service changes, or emergency messages.
- Automatic French translation powered by Google Translate, expanding accessibility for French-speaking users.
- Full AODA and WCAG 2.1 Level AA compliance, ensuring the site meets modern accessibility standards.
Strong project management, collaboration, and attention to detail ensured the website was built to meet both patient and administrator needs.
The Result
The new SJGHEL website is modern, fully accessible, and easy to navigate. Patients and visitors now benefit from improved functionality, real-time emergency wait times, and better access to critical information. The careers section has streamlined recruitment, while administrators have full control to manage and update content with ease.
Following launch, Shout Media provided training, hosting, and ongoing support to ensure the SJGHEL team could confidently manage the platform. The project was well received by staff and stakeholders, who praised the site for its ease of use and accessibility.
Today, SJGHEL has a website that reflects its role as a trusted healthcare provider, supports its recruitment needs, and ensures compliance with accessibility requirements.