Lincoln University is a historically Black public university in Lincoln University, Pennsylvania, recognized as the first degree-granting HBCU in the United States. The project involved custom Drupal development for the university's website, completed while consulting with Eastern Standard, a Philadelphia-area digital agency with a focus on Drupal builds for higher education clients.
The work focused on improving the appearance and functionality of multiple departmental sites within the broader university web presence. Large university websites typically operate as a collection of semi-autonomous sites sharing a common platform — individual academic departments, administrative offices, and research centers each maintain their own subsection while existing within the university's overall Drupal architecture. Changes to departmental sections require understanding both the department-level content needs and the constraints of the shared platform.
The emphasis on ease of use and accessibility reflected the obligations of a public university website serving students, faculty, and prospective students across a range of devices and assistive technologies. Accessibility compliance in Drupal theming involves attention to semantic HTML structure, keyboard navigation, ARIA attributes, sufficient color contrast, and proper handling of dynamic content — requirements that need to be applied across all departmental templates that share the common theme layer.
The engagement with Eastern Standard placed development contributions within the agency's project workflow for the Lincoln University account, requiring coordination on which department sections were in scope and how theming changes needed to integrate with the university's existing Drupal content structure.
