The Challenge
The Admissions and Apply landing pages at the University of Texas at Arlington serve as the primary digital gate for thousands of prospective undergraduate, transfer, and graduate students. The legacy infrastructure suffered from key paint points:
- Platform Fragmentation: Disconnects existed between marketing sites, Sitecore CMS modules, and Slate CRM backends, resulting in inconsistent messaging.
- Accessibility Friction: Form structures and interactive links presented challenges to keyboard-only navigation users, preventing proper screen reader flows.
- Mobile Bottlenecks: Non-responsive data structures forced prospective students to pinch-and-zoom on mobile devices during critical early-funnel operations.
The Strategic Approach
We reorganized the site structure by decoupling heavy static pages into responsive, componentized layouts. Our strategic focus centered on three areas:
User-Centric Architecture
Dividing application paths cleanly by student taxonomy (First-Year, Transfer, Graduate, International) to shorten click-paths.
Slate CRM Gateway
Embedding responsive, AJAX-based Slate forms into Sitecore containers, eliminating off-site redirects.
Technical Implementation
Using Sitecore's custom layout parameters, we developed a system where front-end Bootstrap constructs are natively integrated. We wrote modular SCSS files targeting specialized layout grids.
To guarantee accessible dynamic states, we refactored custom forms to utilize ARIA attributes dynamically based on user input, ensuring screen readers receive immediate context changes:
// Accessible Slate Form Integration Hook
document.querySelectorAll('.slate-embed-form').forEach(form => {
form.addEventListener('submit', () => {
const liveRegion = document.getElementById('form-status-announcer');
if (liveRegion) {
liveRegion.innerText = "Submitting form, please wait...";
liveRegion.setAttribute('aria-live', 'assertive');
}
});
});Impact & Outcome
The resulting system provides a faster and more inclusive onboarding pipeline for applicants. Key qualitative and quantitative indicators include:
- Inclusive Performance: Complete resolution of WCAG contrast, structure, and label alerts, achieving clean status audits via digital compliance scanners.
- Data Reliability: Clean routing of prospective student demographics straight from initial web interactions directly into Slate CRM lead-funnel queues.
Project Details
- Client: UTA Admissions
- Role: Web Developer
- Platform: Sitecore & Slate
- Compliance: WCAG 2.1 AA