A Report on Assessing Usability and Accessibility of UK Websites

This report assesses the usability and accessibility of e-government websites in the UK, emphasizing the importance of these factors for user experience, especially for individuals with disabilities. It reviews prior work on accessibility and usability, including e-Government ICT Strategy and the Government Digital Strategy in the UK. The report introduces WCAG 2.0 and outlines the methodology used for evaluating a selection of UK government websites, utilizing tools from the Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools List. The findings from the website evaluations are presented and discussed, drawing conclusions about the current state of usability and accessibility in UK e-government websites. The report highlights the need for innovative web designs to improve efficiency and ensure universal access to online services, referencing various studies and statistical data to support its analysis.

Running head: ASSESSING USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY OF WEBSITES
Assessing usability and accessibility of websites
(E-government websites at U.K.)
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author Note

1ASSESSING USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY OF WEBSITES
Abstract
In this current era of digital business, governments at the United Kingdom and various other nations
have been in a competitive edge to make their services available online. These kinds of services are
always natural monopolies. Hence efficient usability and accessibility of their websites are still
needed. These are helpful for users to achieve the best possible experience, particularly for the
people having disabilities. For better understanding, some of the favorite e-government websites are
chosen that are analyzed regarding accessibility and usability. The investigations are done through
WCAG 1.0 tools that are also described in the report. Lastly, the results are discussed along with
demonstrating the findings drawn from the study.
Acknowledgements
I am thankful to my senior supervisors and team mates to complete the task. I have learnt many
things during the research. I appreciate the efforts of my team members also.

2ASSESSING USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY OF WEBSITES
Table of contents
1. Introduction:......................................................................................................................................4
1.1. Definition:...................................................................................................................................4
1.2. Brief description of the paper:....................................................................................................4
1.3. Aims and objectives:...................................................................................................................5
2. Background and motivation:..............................................................................................................5
2.1. Purpose behind the motivation:..................................................................................................5
2.2. Some basic investigations on the background:...........................................................................6
2.3. Degree of sophistication and usage of distinct websites:...........................................................8
3. Previous related work:....................................................................................................................10
3.1. Prior reviews on accessibility and usability of websites:.........................................................10
3.2. Some prior e-Government ICT Strategy at U.K:......................................................................12
3.3. Government Digital Strategy at U.K.:......................................................................................14
3.4. The background analysis of Usability and Acceptability testing:............................................18
3.5. Usability traits:..........................................................................................................................20
3.6. Website accessibility:...............................................................................................................21
3.7. Introduction to WCAG 2.0:......................................................................................................21
3.8. Overview of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG):...............................................23
3.9. Various lists of central government open websites at U.K. that are evaluated:.......................23
3.10. Evaluation of tools:.................................................................................................................25

3ASSESSING USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY OF WEBSITES
4. Methodology followed:...................................................................................................................26
5. Results:............................................................................................................................................29
5.1. Example of direct test result from 5 sorted websites:...............................................................29
5.2. Accessibility analysis on 50 e-governance websites at U.K.:..................................................32
6. Discussion and conclusion:..............................................................................................................34
6.1. Evaluations of the above findings:...........................................................................................34
6.2. Conclusion drawn from the report:...........................................................................................36
7. References:......................................................................................................................................38

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List of Tables
Table1: “Government Digital Strategy at U.K”..........................................................................14
Table 2: Reasons and Discussions of Usability and Acceptability Testing.................................18
Table 3: Traits and Discussion....................................................................................................20
Table 4: Features of WCAG 2.0 and discussion:........................................................................22
Table 5: List of organizations and their description:...................................................................23
Table 6: The tools, their developers and description:..................................................................25
Table 7: The various guidelines:..................................................................................................27
Table 8: Analysis of 5 chosen websites:......................................................................................29
Table 9: Discussion of Priority levels:.........................................................................................32

5ASSESSING USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY OF WEBSITES
1. Introduction:
1.1. Definition:
Evaluation of websites keeping accessibility and usability in mind provides every user with
the best possible user experience. Any product is accessible technically and is usable, particularly for
people having disabilities through assistive technology (Ismailova 2017).
Testing of accessibility has been including measurement of ease in which users can finish
their everyday tasks on different websites. Various government agencies at U.K. have been making
services as possible through online. As these e-government services are as natural monopolies,
excellent usability and accessibility of those e-government websites are vital. To solve those issues,
different innovative designs are needed for web developers in making their sites more efficient.
1.2. Brief description of the paper:
The following report analyzes the background and motivation behind performing usability
and accessibility tests. For this various prior reviewed articles are demonstrated along with an
evaluation of tools. Next, some of the websites collected from U.K. government’s official website
and analyzed through various online means. These tools are retrieved from Web Accessibility
Evaluation Tools List. Furthermore, the results are examined separately regarding usability and
accessibility. Lastly, discussions and conclusions are drawn over-evaluation of the tools relating
back to the literature described.
1.3. Aims and objectives:
The aim of the report is intended towards providing different advantages to change the way
people have been studying and becoming a tool for U.K. government sectors providing services and
information to their citizens. This is because with the expansion of ICT or Information and

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Communication Technology globally, users have been choosing to conduct various official
communications with government through utilizing web-based technologies.
To achieve this, the objective of the report lies in the following factors:
 Analysis of accessibility and usability of government websites at U.K. concerning WCAG.
 Reviewing the published comments and materials.
2. Background and motivation:
2.1. Purpose behind the motivation:
UK government has identified the significance of the Internet and various opportunities
surrounding it. E-government or electronic government has been implemented and described as
electronic delivery of public services for different citizens with the help of World Wide Web and
Internet. A primary aim of e-government has been to help citizens in carrying out additional
transactions or various dealings made with numerous public companies “electronically” (Rodriguez
et al. 2017). Since e-government websites are gateways for the public in accessing services and
information delivered by a government in the current age of information, e-government websites are
intended to be easy for every citizen to use. This must also include the people with disabilities and
thus universal accessibility has turned out to be a crucial problem as per as designing is considered.
Various people having disabilities are expected to develop significantly for the upcoming ten years
both at U.K and world’s population has been becoming rapidly older. On the other hand, amount of
Internet Users under old age has also been rising exponentially (Debevc et al. 2015).
At U.K., e-government services were introduced due to another background reason. It has
been to maintain transparency and assure interoperability. A strategic plan policy at U.K.
government has articulated the necessity to raise the usage of ICT under public institutions for

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enhancing work efficiency and develop service delivery for the public. While designing websites for
those public institutions, the primary principle must be considered to make that easy for users in
accessing services online. Any site is considered to undergo some basic principles regarding web
standards as it is error free, memorable, efficient and providing satisfaction to users (Kondoro and
Mtebe 2017). Thus the necessity to assess U.K.’s e-government websites’ security, accessibility and
usability are needed. The usability is defined as the attribute of quality referring to promptness. With
the help of this, the users become aware of using something, efficiency to attain while making that in
use and how easy it has been for them to remind how they can use it. It has also been denoting how
error-prone it has been and level of satisfaction they have been attaining through using it.
2.2. Some basic investigations on the background:
According to National Bureau of Statistics, to the overall population of U.K. in 2017 has
been projected to be 66,181,585. Among them, 5,987,552 individuals have been found with
disabilities having hardship in seeing the posted reported kind of limitation with 1,223,760 people.
As per as Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA), the total of internet users in the
nation has been 19.22 million (Mifsud, 2018). Here the internet penetration rate has been 14.7%. As
per as 2016 United Nations eGovernment Survey, U.K. has scored 0.3533 in EGDI government
Development index. 0.0900 under Telecom Infrastructure Component has been 0.3974 under Human
Capital Component. They have rated it about Medium to EGDI Level. However, apart from its
medium size rating under E-government Development Index, the amount of internet and web users
have been continuing to grow every year at U.K. Various factors has been contributing to the rise
includes a rise in some different smartphones. It has also added a substantial decrease in cost to use
Internet services and completion of (NICTBB) National ICT Broadband Backbone (Youngblood and
Youngblood, 2018). Thus, various public sectors at U.K. have needed to implement accessible and
usable sites conforming to the needed information security standard.

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Web accessibility has been defined as the subset to use and need that people with different
disabilities can use that. Thus, a website is accessible to people at U.K. with disabilities have been
perceiving, understanding navigating and interacting with the Internet. Moreover, they are intended
to incorporate information for the web. Here the disabilities considered are hard-of-hearing,
deafness, focusing on the massive amount of data, inability to concentrate or remember the huge
quantity of data, distractibility, learning disabilities, slow response time, inability in using a mouse,
colour-blindness, low vision, blindness and many more (Kushalnagar et al. 2015). The various
researches conducted for assessing factors impacting the adoption of e-governance service showed
that accessibility, usability and security are the most critical challenges. A data breach report
conducted on 2016 displayed that about half of the security breaches have been because of hacking
of web applications, particularly cross-site scripting. Another report on web vulnerabilities pointed
out that more than 70% of those vulnerabilities of web applications have been because of XSS and
SQL injection.
It has led to the motivation that various website designers of current age have needed to cater
the problems of content accessibility while designing their websites. Hence an evaluation and
analysis of content and usability accessibility of UL’s e-government sites are conducted regarding an
investigation (Debevc et al. 2015). This is needed to be done to determine how the much better
quality of public services are provided by e-government in reality and universal access is given to
the services from the Internet. This also included the finding of how e-government agencies have
been enabling citizens in carrying out additional dealings and transactions with various public
agencies in an electronic manner. The activities also intend to find out how much high the speed and
loading time of U.K’s e-government website has regarded logos and websites (Roy, Pattnaik and
Mall 2014). Another motivation of the research is to find the accessibility standards that are followed
by e-government websites of U.K. Lastly, the analysis also answers the query in what way the e-

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government websites have been providing information security to their users (Kamoun and Basel
Almourad 2014).
2.3. Degree of sophistication and usage of distinct websites:
The degree of sophistication and usage of distinct websites has been varying. However, the
way for future has been premised over continuing different substantial investment. It is seen that
individual participants in the current business world have been in a hurry in adapting to use digital
world efficiently or the risks left behind to falter. Governments at every level have experienced same
pressure in adopting more aggressively the current digital world’s potential. E-governance websites
have been providing the perspective of facing most of those efforts related to taking benefits of the
chances created in this digital era. Maximum of its related energy in developing e-government is put
under “product development” (Al-Khalifa, Baazeem and Alamer 2017). Problems like proper
protocols and contents have been dominating most of the thinking. Here, the considerations also
involve an assumption of a sequential and linear development progression. It has been extending
from posting static information towards more salient interactive features.
To a wider extent, the movement has been seemed to reach a level of development. Here,
further transactions and interactions have seemed to be possible. However, it has not been achieved.
Moreover, few of the challenges related to future development is lack of complete understanding of
current state of affairs (Debevc et al. 2015). Additionally, there has been a lack of vision concerned
about proper future models. Further, most of the practitioners and scholars have been facing a
struggle for defining a field that must consistently undergo through the development and unpredicted
change in many instances. As many of them might overrate the potential for e-government for
changing the way the governments have been functioning particularly in direct communication with
public served. On the other hand, few have denied that information technology and computers have

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been substantially facilitating transactions and developed operational efficiency for governments like
U.K. (Giraud, Thérouanne and Steiner 2015). Besides, websites have been providing the original
public face of governmental agencies to the online world and have been the main study of much
investigation and research. Since most of the research has been designed for providing basic
information regarding product development, the main motivation of the study has been extending
behind the approaches of product development and the idea of E-governance
In this way, websites have been presenting the public face of U.K. government to their online
constituents. They have been the focus of investigation and research as such. Since several of those
investigations have been designed for providing primary information regarding product
development, the motivation of the research has intended to look beyond product development
approaches. This motivation has been leading towards e-government and investigating present
emerging strategies and trends regarding website development (Shitkova et al. 2015). As per as
development of e-governance website development is considered, its strategic models and future
trends has been focusing on three functional aspects of websites of e-government. They are namely
theories and concepts influencing e-government website development, analysis and description of
those experience from various national viewpoints. Various emerging possible models can give
direction for further e-government development.
3. Previous related work:
3.1. Prior reviews on accessibility and usability of websites:
There have been various prior studies to assess the accessibility and usability of websites of
e-government in various sectors of the world. Previous findings have highlighted that those studies
have been assisting web developers regarding web-development websites in paying attention to

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particular usability, accessibility and security features that are commonly neglected. Website
usability has been raising trust in e-governance (Karkin and Janssen 2014). However, various
researchers revealed that e-governance web portals have tended to possess accessibility and usability
issues. As examined from the accessibility and usability of U.K. university site and the results
showed that those accessibilities required enhancement for complying with W3C guidelines.
Another survey reported that the official websites at U.K. possess the usability error rate of
55% and 74% of accessibility error rate. Further, security vulnerabilities in those sites got revealed.
According to another study launched for analyzing and testing various problems. This included
issues of HTML validated browser compatibility problems, metadata elements and inline multimedia
elements, different server-side image maps, style sheets, time from the last update, download times
and broken links. These were done through Australia, Hong Kong, Canada, Finland and Singapore
for best practices (Siddhanamatha et al. 2017). Here, the results revealed that there had been
extensive variations in services and information delivered by those portals and also significant work
is required to be undertaken for making portals the instances of best practices regarding e-
Government services. Moreover, usability is also found facing substantial barriers like improper use
of images, navigation, multimedia and graphical issues. Various used feature investigation methods
for investigating usability for six government websites at Denmark found that the investigated sites
have been partially usable. Various researchers from numerous nations have tried to analyze,
evaluate and assess accessibility and usability of e-government websites regarding multiple regions
(Fietkiewicz, Mainka and Stock 2017).
Through using viable NET LIFTA, validator of W3C HTML and Watchfire Bobby a study
has been conducted for evaluating web accessibility of e-Governance websites of Italy and Ireland.
They adapted the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. The outcomes reported that the