Accessibility, Quality and Performance of Government Portals and Ministry Web Sites: A View Using Diagnostic Tools

Abstract

Accessibility, quality, and performance of government websites and portals are key issues for e-government programmes. Although the number of government sites has increased rapidly in the past few years, their ultimate success will largely depend on their accessibility, quality and performance. This paper reports the results of an evaluative study of 19 e-government websites and portals using a common set of Web diagnostic engines. The findings reveal that none of the sites evaluated meet the recommended Priority AA conformance level. A number of accessibility, quality, and performance weaknesses were identified. Majority of the sites assessed fail to comply with perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust principles of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Several non-compliance errors were found on the websites. The page load time for most sites falls far below the acceptable level, spelling errors and bad links were also found. Significant work needs to be done in order to make these websites examples of best practice e-government sites.