Blawnox officials have revamped the borough’s website to make it easier for residents and visitors to use.
The site was updated with new software and assistance from CivicPlus in order to be more Americans with Disabilities Act compliant on March 31.
The biggest change is the accessibility tool to the right of the main page of blawnox.com.
Users who click on the small icon that looks like a person doing jumping jacks will see a menu pop up with ways to personalize their online experience.
People can increase the cursor and text size, shift colors, change fonts, adjust word spacing and more. Users also can report any accessibility issues via the new menu.
The “window” option lightly darkens the entire page and creates a horizontal lighted bar, giving the illusion of peeking through a window blind.
Borough Manager Cory Dennison said the site is still in its testing phase and more data from the old site still needs to be transferred over. The upgrades cost about $3,000.
“It was time to upgrade,” Dennison said. “We wanted to make it easier for both customers and residents of Blawnox to use the website and make it handicap-accessible.”
Assistant Manager Mallori McDowell was instrumental in the project.
She said changes were necessary to keep up with the ever-changing web landscape.
“We didn’t make the change to get a better website. We had to make the change,” McDowell said. “I do hope the residents will find it easier to navigate. I think most of the positives are on our end though because I think it is easier for us to maintain.
“The platform that was hosting our old website was ending so we had to migrate our website. We migrated to a platform already used by CivicPlus and so they changed the website theme. All of the active content should be the same other than the calendar and news items. They were not migrated. There were a few things we posted after the migration occurred but before the launch. I have a list and those things will be added this week.”
Councilwoman Katie Specht-Coban accessed the site via her phone and tried out the new features April 6.
“It looked more user-friendly for someone of my age,” said Specht-Coban, 58. “I’m a fan of the brightness and the bigness. It grabs your attention.”