Emma Lazarus High School: A Fast, Easy Website Migration
Transitioning a school website to a new platform can be a daunting process…but it doesn’t have to be. eChalk helped Emma Lazarus High School for English Language Scholars transition their content and launch a brand-new accessible website in less than two and a half weeks, with no hassle or headaches for their team. Now, they have a website that is beautiful, easy to update and maintain, and fully accessible and translatable for their school community.
Making Content Accessible to Everyone
ELHS is a transfer high school within the New York City DOE, serving English Language Learners (ELLs) who need to catch up on credits to get on track for graduation. Nearly 94% of their student population consists of new immigrants learning English for the first time, some with little or no formal schooling background. To meet the diverse language and accessibility needs of students and parents in their community, they needed a website that would provide an easy method for translation into the 22 languages spoken at their school as well as accessibility features for users with disabilities.
Acting Principal Joel Heckethorn and IT Tech Raymond Subero discovered eChalk at the NYC DOE Website Accessibility Summit November 2019, where Dave Milne, eChalk’s VP of Product and Technology, led a full-day workshop. They knew that they needed to replace their current free website platform with something more accessible to meet the requirements of the district’s agreement with the Office of Civil Rights (OCR).
Raymond says that eChalk’s easy-to-use CMS and built-in accessibility features made the decision easy. “We really liked what eChalk had to offer, not just because of the way the websites looked but because of the ease of constructing the websites. The platform was so user friendly, whether you’re building a page from scratch or rearranging things. And the accessibility checker tells you right away if you are missing something like alt text or making an accessibility error, so you can fix it right then and don’t have to go back later.”
They also were attracted to the built-in translation tool on eChalk sites—something missing from the free platform they were using. Raymond explains, “We have many languages spoken in our community, with people coming in from all over the world. Having a website that can be translated into many languages was a big concern for us.”
Emma Lazarus purchased eChalk’s ADA Transition Package, which includes website planning and design, content migration, professional development, eChalk GUIDE (eChalk’s built-in accessibility tool), and the eChalk Notify mobile emergency alert system.
A Fast, Headache-Free Transition to a New School Website
Once they made the decision to switch, the transition happened very quickly. Raymond says, “I was a little concerned about the transition. I didn’t know how things would happen and we had a whole lot of information on the current website to transfer over. But it turned out to be such an easy and effective transition.”
The large banner images on the Emma Lazarus home page highlight special activities at their school.
The eChalk team worked with Joel and Raymond to identify the content that needed to be moved, map out the navigation structure for the website, choose a website theme, and choose page layouts and design elements. Then, they got to work making it happen. In Raymond’s words, “The website building team was not only friendly and good to work with, but things just seemed to happen smoothly in the background. We would have a meeting and two or three days later I would get an email from Tinsley saying everything we asked for was done. It was so much simpler than I had imagined—a smooth transition with no headaches at all!”
eChalk helped Emma Lazarus plan their new site and migrate all of their critical content over from their old site.
After the site was built, eChalk provided onsite professional development for Raymond and the parent coordinator to make sure they were ready to have the site handed over to them. Raymond says, “Dana was really good when she came to the building. The session was very informative. I was afraid it would be overwhelming, especially for our parent coordinator who isn’t very computer savvy. But when Dana sat down and showed us everything, it was all so user friendly and it did not seem overwhelming at all. After she left, I felt confident I could navigate through the CMS and do everything I wanted to do.”
The whole process took less than two and a half weeks—and Joel admits that part of that time was a result of eChalk waiting for input from the school.
A School Website that is Beautiful, Accessible, and Easy to Maintain
The result is a website that is more attractive, functional, and accessible than their previous free platform. Raymond says, “One of the things that really attracted me to eChalk in comparison with other platforms is how professional the sites look. A lot of this is because they have the preset themes that make it easy to set up an attractive page and easy to switch from one theme to another or set up new subpages with the same look and feel. With our previous platform, everything you wanted to do you had to build from scratch. With eChalk, it just takes a click or two, and everything you want is just there.”
Information on the home page is organized and easy to find in the eChalk Reprise theme.
Raymond also appreciates how easy it is to update and maintain the site in the eChalk CMS. “Before, any changes we wanted to make to the website always felt like a really big project. It was hard to do and figure out, and they didn’t have a lot of supportive video tutorials or anything to help. It’s so much easier now—anything I want to do just takes three or four clicks and it’s done in a few minutes.”
The new site better meets the needs of their community, too. The translation tool is built into the theme, so their ELL students and families can easily translate every page into their native languages. They have not put eChalk Notify to extensive use yet but look forward to using the mobile alert system next school year once they get families signed up.
The Parent Corner collects all of the information parents need to stay involved with their children’s school lives.
A Dramatic Reduction in Accessibility Errors
The website accessibility features ensure that their site will meet accessibility requirements outlined by the district and the ADA. In January, with its previous CMS, Emma Lazarus’ website had 18.5 accessibility issues per page based on an automated 3rd-party scan, which gave it a “3” on the NYC DOE’s accessibility grading system (equivalent to a low “C” grade). In April, after the transition to eChalk, Emma Lazarus had only 1.8 accessibility issues per page, moving to a “5” (equivalent to an “A”) on the NYC DOE accessibility scale.
Ongoing Service and Support—Just a Phone Call Away
Raymond now feels confident that he will be able to maintain an accessible school website on his own. He loves all of the support materials and tutorial videos in the eChalk Help Center. And he knows that if he has any questions, the eChalk customer support team is only an email or phone call away.
When he needed some advice on the best way to post video transcripts so they would be both accessible and translatable, he reached out to Jenny on our team. He reports, “Jenny was so knowledgeable and understood exactly what I was talking about. She gave me some great ideas and when I got off the phone, I was able to do it in five minutes with no problems.”
Joel says, “The whole eChalk team has been incredibly professional and very efficient and easy to work with. I would absolutely recommend this process to other schools who need a solution for web accessibility.”