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

4ASSESSING USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY OF WEBSITES
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

6ASSESSING USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY OF WEBSITES
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

7ASSESSING USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY OF WEBSITES
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-

9ASSESSING USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY OF WEBSITES
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

10ASSESSING USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY OF WEBSITES
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

11ASSESSING USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY OF WEBSITES
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

12ASSESSING USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY OF WEBSITES
website accessibilities on those nations have been lower and needed further improvements. Another
study that was conducted in Greece utilizing Bobby tool evaluated the accessibility of government
Web sites. They have reported the accessibility to be much lower and needed a quick improvement
towards reinforcing trust of users (Galvez and Youngblood 2016). With the help of automated
testing tools like EcalAccess 2.0, Axandra and Websiteoptimization assessed that accessibility and
usability of more than 150 government websites at U.K. They also found that there have been
essential challenges about accessibility and usability.
In another instance, online testing tools were used for analyzing accessibility of more than
over 150 government sites at U.K. This was done as per the maturity levels as defined by WCAG.
Outcomes of the study indicated that about 25% of the sites fulfilled the level one criteria of WCAG
and about 7% of then achieved the conformance of WCAG 2.0. Accessibility of banking sites at
Russia was investigated through utilizing automatic evaluation tool by WCAG 2.0 and WCAG 1.0
principles (AKGÜL and Vatansever 2016). Furthermore, it was seen than none of those banking
sites evaluated were entirely accessible to people having disabilities. This indicated that every one of
them has been violating guidelines for web accessibility.
Moreover, researchers also showed that vulnerabilities taking place in e-government that
more than 80% of e-government sites have been vulnerable towards common attacks like SQL and
XSS injection. It was seen that the e-governments of developed countries have been more vulnerable
than the developing ones. It can be said that in the former case, it has been about 90% and for the
later ones it has been 50% (Rau et al. 2016). Again, another research done for identifying e-
government vulnerabilities in developing countries showed that more than 50% of government sites
have been suffering from 12 to 14 types of vulnerabilities that are known publicly. It has involved
XSS and SQL injection. Those vulnerabilities have been obstructing e-government services and

13ASSESSING USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY OF WEBSITES
leading to a notable change for the provided services and jeopardizing trust of users (Gonçalves,
Martins and Branco 2014).
3.2. Some prior e-Government ICT Strategy at U.K:
A coalition government at U.K. appointed in the year 2010 claimed that their intentions have
been revamping public sector, upgrading the role of ICT and transfer from vendor lock-in and huge-
scale supplier software solution. Following this assumption of power, the government founded
efficiency and reform group within the Cabinet Office. Here the mission has been to undertake an
active, coordinated approach for tacking waste and developing accountability and efficiency around
every government departments that have been including ICT. Within a year later, the Cabinet Office
then published another ICT strategy whose expectation was to set out to develop a record of
government ICT (Aizpurua et al. 2015). It has been particularly in delivering programmes and
large-scale projects. It got followed by publishing four focused strategies. They were “Government
End User Device”, “Government ICT Capability”, “Greening Government: ICT” and “Government
Cloud” (new tech observations from the UK (ntouk), 2018). Here, the primary target of the strategy
has been reusing and sharing ICT resources, improving efficiency and productivity, reduction of
waste and a various likelihood of project failures. Moreover, the primary elements have been an
application of different agile project management methods for ICT procurement and delivering to
respond to altering requirements and assuring that those solutions have been meeting business
requirements. Further, the significance of interoperability by using open and common standards has
been emphasizing with creating of cross-government standards on applying program interfaces and
developing quality assurance mark (Debevc et al. 2015). To cope with various contemporary
challenges, the strategy also involved a set of critical activities that were delivered for over a year.
Examples of this include the following.

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 Creating a level of playing field for the open source software highly streamlining
procurement and then specifying the results instead of the inputs.
 Creation of a presumption against those projects along with a lifetime value exceeding a
hundred million pounds
 Imposing compulsory open standards
 Beginning with security and interoperability
 Developing a comprehensive resource register Forming a cross public sector applications
 Encouraging boards for holding senior officials and ministers for accounting regularly for the
progress of ICT programmes and ICT projects (It.ox.ac.uk, 2018).
Besides, the strategy has been aiming to help the creation of the infrastructure that has been
underpinned through as a set of common standards. Thus, it has been created on ICT moratorium,
contract renegotiations and project review. It has permitted U.K. government in appraising and
taking control of spending and assuring their project demonstrates money valuation and
effectiveness (Yoon et al. 2016). Apart from this, it has been seeking to underline the commitment of
U.K. government in increasing transparency. These are done through actions like the publishing of
ICT contracts of U.K. government through the Internet. Different governance measures of the
strategy document have included plans of forming a new body known as CIO or Chief Information
Officer’s Delivery Board. It has comprised of CIOs from colossal delivery departments and that has
to set above CIO council and advised ministerial (Zitkus et al. 2016).
Here the CIO Delivery Board was developed in 2011 and then it took ownership of
implementation and delivery of ICT strategy that was supported through action from every
department. Further, U.K. government board later published accompanying SIP or Strategic
Implementation Plan for translating the vision of Government ICT Strategy to real outcomes.

15ASSESSING USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY OF WEBSITES
Besides, SIP has been provided with an overview regarding how that strategy was implemented and
summarization of individual plans for every delivery sector (Debevc et al. 2015). Further, the
initiatives were funded through current spending plans. The methods have been implying spending
of money better instead of spending more and could be used as exemplars of U.K. governments
methodology of significant projects.
3.3. Government Digital Strategy at U.K.:
The U.K. Government’s digital strategy has been setting out how it must redesign their
digital services for making them convenient and straightforward. This makes the users prefer to do
so. Thus, the strategy has been setting out the way in which U.K. government can turn out to be
digital in a digital manner (Baazeem and Al-Khalifa 2015). Further, it has been estimated that
moving the service from offline to digital channels has been saving between 1.7 billion pounds to 1.8
billion per year. The strategy has been implemented as per following standards.
Table1: “Government Digital Strategy at U.K”
Improving
departmental digital
leadership
Every department must undertake any end-to-end service redesigning
transactional services over 100, 000 transactions every year. Every re-
designed and new transactional service that has been going live after 2015,
must meet new digital by Default Service Standard.
Developing digital
capability across
civil service
Every department must assure that they have possessed proper levels of
digital abilities in-house including expertise skills. Further, cabinet office
must support developed digital capabilities across departments.

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Increasing number
of people using
digital services
Departments have been raising awareness of their digital services such that
more people must know about using them. And then look at ways for using
incentives for encouraging digital adoption.
Providing constant
service for people
rarely or never been
online
It has been vital that anyone left behind under this, move towards digital
scenario through a default approach. Government departments must identify
and understand the people’s necessity that has not been using digital
services and additional methods to analyze services for individuals who
have needed them.
A widening range of
those who have been
tendering to supply
digital services
This has been including small and medium sized enterprises. Cabinet
offices have been offering leaner and lightweight tendering procedures close
to best practice in U.K. industry as allowed by regulatory requirements.
Creating common
technology
platforms regarding
digital by default
services
Cabinet Offices must lead in the delivery and definition of a new suite of
various common technology platforms for underpinning a new generation of
by default digital services (Casare et al. 2016).
Removing
unnecessary
legislative barriers
Cabinet offices in U.K. have been working with departments for amending
legislation unnecessarily preventing users from creating convenient and
straightforward digital services.
Settling service
decisions over timely
and accurate
management
U.K. government departments should be supplying a constant set of
management information as per the definition of Cabinet Office. This has
been for their various transactional services (Shawgi and Noureldien 2015).

17ASSESSING USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY OF WEBSITES
information
Improving ways
through which
government has
been making policy
and communicating
with people
Governmental departments have been encouraging policy teams for using a
broad range of digital tools informing with and consulting people. This has
been both at U.K. and overseas.
Collaborating with
partners in
voluntary, private
and public sectors
helping more people
to move towards
online
Governmental departments have been creating digital inclusion to every
relevant program and policies and collaborating with private and third sector
agencies removing obstacles for internet usage. This has been irrespective
of causes that have been taking through trust, access motivation and skills.
Helping third-party
agencies creating
new services and
useful information
access for their users
This is done through opening up transactions and government data. Here,
different departments of U.K. government have been undertaking cross-
government discovery work along with GDS. This is to understand needs of
users for services delivered externally to GOV.UK. This has also been
considering APIs and open standards that should be needed to support them.
Further, GDS must undertake development work on that site for making
every data held in it easily reusable (Petrie, Savva and Power 2015).

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3.4. The background analysis of Usability and Acceptability testing:
Table 2: Reasons and Discussions of Usability and Acceptability Testing
The reasons Discussion
Assuring that the
users of every type
of abilities can
utilize the products
Any product technically accessible is unusable, particularly for individuals
having disabilities and using assistive technology. This testing of
accessibility includes measurement of ease in which users can finish various
everyday tasks on the website.
Testing people with
disabilities
The different interactive accessibility has been recommending
consideration of next step that must go beyond different technical
compliance. This is done through the inclusion of various accessibility
guidelines and standards. It has been focusing on overall usability of the
products and providing a diverse number of usability testing having
numerous advantages (Domínguez Vila, Alén González and Darcy 2017).
First of all, it has been developing the understanding of the way how people
having disabilities have been using the application or website. It has been
maximizing the customer satisfaction where any user can smartly
accomplish tasks that have been more satisfied along with enhancing brand
recognition and some site visitors.
Apart from this, the experience of every user is improved where the
usability improvements have been gearing towards users having disabilities
and providing benefits to every user.
Importance of At first, the government websites are intended to provide a usability test

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Usability and
accessibility testing
deliverables
plan, describing every step in details under the testing process. As the test is
conducted a detailed report is submitted. This comprises of a summary of
findings and entire data collected in every test. This involves success rates,
satisfaction ratings and task times for every test participant. Moreover, there
has been a list of recommendations on how to perform optimization of
usability for people having disabilities. Here recommendations have been
including appropriate code samples. Next, it involves prioritization of
suggestions for identifying the critical aspects of repairing.
The process and
time of conducting
the testing
Industry-standard techniques are applied here for usability evaluations. It
has been including input from the team, preparing and designing tasks for
participants. Moreover, there has been recruiting users with a wide range of
disabilities suitable for the project, conducting a pilot test for identifying
problems with testing protocol (Acosta-Vargas, Luján-Mora and Salvador-
Ullauri 2016). Further, there has been performing the testing in usability tab
or by different remote testing. At last, there is analyzing and prioritization of
the finding and making recommendations. To be cost-effective, conducting
of accessibility evaluation and correcting accessibility challenges are to be
done prior testing usability. Ad further corrections are implemented they are
to be tested with people having disabilities for identifying particular ease-of-
use problems.

20ASSESSING USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY OF WEBSITES
3.5. Usability traits:
To make the government web-sites of U.K. more user friendly, some of traits identified are
demonstrated below.
Table 3: Traits and Discussion
Traits Discussion
Mobile compatibility The first step for this is to check the way the current website has been
appearing on mobile. As the website cannot be accessed on mobile a mobile
version of the website can be developed free.
Accessible to every user For people who are elderly, blind and disabled, screen-readers can be used
typically for accessing Internet.
Well planned
Information Architecture
The information presented on the e-government site must be well organized.
This is helpful to attract the target market.
Well-formatted content
that is easy to scan
Average intent users have been skimming through the content of the web pages
apart from reading all the words from top to down. Users have been tending to
scan through the primary parts of the pages very fast determining what is
needed to be done.
Fast loading times It is important the e-governance sites loads very fast and placing the site at the
top of search engine ranking.
Browser consistency Compatibility of browser is overlooked many times from the sites of reputed
organizations. It is not good for branding and has adverse effects on usability of
websites.
Effective navigation Simple JavaScript and HTML menus tend to work more smartly and appear
consistently on every browsers and platforms.
Contrasting color scheme Proper contrast of the content and background is an important feature of the

21ASSESSING USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY OF WEBSITES
usability.
Usable forms These are helpful for users to interact with the site. They are also vital to
generate leads for business.
3.6. Website accessibility:
Government agencies at U.K. have intended to deliver service across any channel that
should make that equally available for every citizen. As per as Global e-government survey was
done through World Market Research Centre and Brown Industry, there has been about 2% of
government sites across the world having some for disability access. Further, here only 7% of the e-
government websites has been accessible (Chapman et al. 2017). Necessities of every citizen have
been able to interact without any obstacle with a responsive government along with a multitude of
technological channels. It has been the running the risk to increase social exclusion. This technical
awareness also enhances the benefits of monopolizing direct access to U.K. government.
3.7. Introduction to WCAG 2.0:
WCAG 2.0 or Web Content Accessibility Guidelines has been defining the ways to make
contents of the web more accessible for people having disabilities. There guidelines has been
covering a wide range of problems, covering a broad range of issues. However, they are not unable
to address necessities of people with every kind of combinations, degrees and types of disabilities. A
guideline of WCAG 2.0 makes contents to be more usable by elder people having changing abilities.

22ASSESSING USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY OF WEBSITES
Layers of Guidance of WCAG 2.0:
For meeting the varying necessities of audience, various layers of principles are provided that
includes principle, general guidelines, criteria of testable success and huge collection of adequate
techniques, documented common failures and advisory techniques having codes, resource links and
examples.
Table 4: Features of WCAG 2.0 and discussion:
Features of WCAG
2.0
Discussion
Principles There are four top principles providing the basis of web accessibility. They
are robust, understandable operable and perceivable.
Guidelines Below the principles lie the guidelines. A total of 12 guidelines have been
providing the basic goals that are used to make content more accessible for
users having different disabilities. These guidelines are also not testable and
providing framework and objectives helping authors understand success
criteria and effective implement of the techniques.
Success criteria Here, for every guideline, different testable success criteria are delivered
allowing WCAG 2.0 to get used where conformance and requirement testing
are needed. This includes contractual agreements, regulation, and purchasing
and design specification. Various levels of conformance are denies by
various categories like A or lowest, AA and AAA or highest.
Advisory and sufficient
techniques
For every success criteria and guidelines in WCAG 2.0 document itself the
working group is also documented through a broad range of techniques.
These techniques are informative and have been falling into two categories.
The first one is those that are sufficient to meet the success criteria and then

23ASSESSING USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY OF WEBSITES
the next one is the advisory. Further, the advisory techniques have been
going beyond what has been needed by the success criteria of people. Further
some advisory techniques have been addressing accessibility barriers not
covered by testable success criteria.
3.8. Overview of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG):
It is created considering the W3C process taking individuals and agencies throughout the
world. Its goal has been providing a single shared standard for accessibility of web content meeting
individual needs, governments and organizations globally. WCAG documents explain the way in
which web contents are made more accessible for people having disabilities as discussed already
(Shawgi and Noureldien 2015). Here the term “web content” indicates to information in a web
application or web page. It has been including natural information such as sounds, images and texts
and markup or codes defining presentation and structure and so on.
3.9. Various lists of central government open websites at U.K. that are evaluated:
To retrieve transparency data, various primary e-government sites are highlighted below.
They are extracted from U.K. government’s website of digital service updated from October to
December 2017. All of them have been falling under the parent department of Cabinet Office
(Gov.uk, 2018).
Table 5: List of organizations and their description:
Organizations Description
Boundary They are impartial and independent public body. It has been reviewing

24ASSESSING USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY OF WEBSITES
Commission for
England
limitations of parliamentary constituents at U.K. Further, they are distinct
commissions reviewing parliamentary constituencies at various nations of
Europe and boundaries of local government at U.K (Elkabani et al. 2015).
Centre for Public
appointments
Here all kinds of latest elections for the boards of a public body, advisory
committee and government department are searched. Considering public
nomination provides scopes to influence and shape society and decisions
affecting people’s lives.
Civil service
commission
It regulates the recruitment for civil service. It ensures that appointments are
made on merit through open and fair competition. This is also helpful to
promote values of civil service regarding impartiality, objectivity, integrity
and honesty. They are also ready to hear various complaints falling under civil
service code. It is independent of government and civil service (Sohaib and
Kang 2016).
European
memoranda
This website helps in consulting with Ems or government Explanatory
Memoranda on EU documents that are submitted to parliament from 2012
along with corresponding EU institutional document and various related
Ministerial letters. All of these record store primary EU documents over
which Ems are based.
Intelligence and
security committee
or ISC
This was initially established by Intelligence Service Act on 1994 examining
the policy, expenditure and administration of security services, secret
intelligence service (SIS) and GCHQ or Government Communications
Headquarters. It was reformed by “Justice and security Act 2013” making that
a committee of parliament, delivering higher powers and rising its remit. It
has been including oversight of operational activity and broader intelligence

25ASSESSING USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY OF WEBSITES
and various security activities of Government.
3.10. Evaluation of tools:
Table 6: The tools, their developers and description:
Tools Developed by Description
508 Checker Formstack It helps in quick checking of webpages regarding 508
compliance. It assures easily accessible technology
needed by law for any organization getting federal
funding. It provides every visitors access to a brand of the
organization (Lorca, Andrés and Martínez 2017)
A- Tester Evaluera Ltd It checks the pre-developed version of a web page
which is designed with a developed improvement
against Evaluera's "WCAG 2.0 Level-AA” statements of
conformance for HTML5 foundation markup. It has
been making report serving as a comprehensive and
easily confirmed claim. This pre-enhanced version of a
web page which is created for progressive development
can act as a conforming version under WCAG 2.0. This
takes place as long as the claims of conformance are
made for pre-developed version. Here every developed
version is very much conformant (de Souza 2015).
ChromeLens Nishita Wojnar It is set of developer tools allowing to code websites

26ASSESSING USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY OF WEBSITES
that should be better suitable for people who are visually
impaired. Here three devices are available presently.
They are filters to experience any site, scanners
regarding audit and various trackers visually showing
the path.
Examinator Carlos Benavidez It is an online tool for automatic evaluation testing
various techniques and failures from WCAG 2.0 through
a metric. It has reflecting outcomes in a quantitative
manner.
MoutValid Macmout Inc. It has been an entirely automated web accessibility
compliance report complying with various requirements
of various legal accessibility and standards.
Pally Nature Publishing
Group
Monitoring accessibility of websites with pally-
dashboard and safeguarding against accessibility errors
that have been creeping towards codebase (W3.org,
2018).
4. Methodology followed:
Here different governmental websites at U.K. are chosen as discussed above that are to be
analyzed and the evaluated as per as their usability and accessibility are concerned. These sites have
been based on results that are generated by a search engine. Different results from keyword search

27ASSESSING USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY OF WEBSITES
www.gov.uk/government/organisations from google.com were collected. This has been an
interesting exercise for accessibility and usability of the website since this has been serving as a
good indicator regarding how must accessible and usable the U.K. government websites have been.
The primary points to be investigated are whether e-government websites at U.K. has been highly
rated regarding accessibility and usability. Next, it is determined whether these outcomes of the
evaluation have been related to the different results of usability evaluation.
To understand these various statistical analysis techniques has been adopted. For the former
one, different means and standard deviations of usability and accessibility ratings were calculated.
Then a further investigation is carried out through heuristic evaluations. Moreover, expert
evaluations with the use of assistive technology are employed for the carrying out the study. Next,
for the second question bivariate correlation for every website analyzed has been calculated. This is
to determine whether usability and accessibility have been related. As demonstrated the QCAG 1.0
is utilized in the analysis.
Here 14 guidelines are followed where each of them has described as a general principle
regarding accessible design. Here, all the instructions have covered the primary theme as per as web
accessibility is concerned and is related to one or more checkpoints describing how to make the
guidelines applicable to specific features of web-pages.
Table 7: The various guidelines:
Guidelines Applications in the analysis of current e-government websites of U.K.
Guidelines 1 Providing equivalent alternatives for auditory and different visual contents.
Guideline 2 The analysis has never been depending on the colour only
Guideline 3 Using markups and style sheets properly

28ASSESSING USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY OF WEBSITES
Guideline 4 Clarifying using natural language
Guideline 5 Creating tables that have been transforming gracefully
Guideline 6 Assuring that the pages have been featuring new technologies that have been
transforming gracefully
Guideline 7 Assuring user control of various time-sensitive content changes.
Guideline 8 Assuring that there has been the direct accessibility of various embedded user
interfaces.
Guideline 9 Designing for device independence
Guideline 10 The analysis was comprised of different interim solutions
Guideline 11 Providing orientation and context information
Guideline 12 Providing orientation and context information for the current analysis
Guideline 13 Providing a clear mechanism regarding navigation for the study
Guideline 14 Assuring that documents have been simple and clear.
In the current research total of 65 WCAG 2.0 checkpoints are assigned by priority level over
the impact of accessibility of different checkpoints. First of all, the priority 1 should be satisfying all
the requirements. As it is not done in that way, it must be impossible to access the web content in the
current analysis. Here, conformance to this level is denoted as A. In the next priority or priority 2,
the web developers have already satisfied the requirements. Otherwise, the analysis would be
difficult in accessing the web contents for the study. Here, conformance to the level is demonstrated
as AA or in other words, “double-A”. At the last level or priority 3, web developers should be
satisfying those requirements for making that more comfortable for the study for getting access to
the needed web content. Triple-A or AAA is the term given to the conformance level.

29ASSESSING USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY OF WEBSITES
Lastly, one point is worth motioning about WCAG Samurai. It is a team of developers who
have been independent of W3C. Developed by Joe Clark, they have published corrections and
various extensions to WCAG 1.0.
5. Results:
The results have shown relatively huge compliance of about 70% with WCAG 0.1 guidelines
as proposed by WAI. Further, there has been a low usability rating for maximum of the websites
chosen above. The rating has been 1.78 on over a 1 to 3 scale. Here, the accessibility approval has
been found to be correlated notably with the entire ratings of usability of those government websites.
In the following tables, a qualitative representation is retrieved from some of the e-government
websites of U.K., taken as instance correlating usability and accessibility.
5.1. Example of direct test result from 5 sorted websites:
Table 8: Analysis of 5 chosen websites:
Websites of
the
organizations
analyzed
Web site
links
Results of Usability Analysis Results of Accessibility
Analysis
Boundary
Commission
for England
consultation
.boundaryco
mmissionfor
england.ind
ependent.go
v.uk/
The body element comprises a
single main component. The head
element comprises of one or even
zero number of script elements.
Html element consists of a lang
attribute that is set to a text value.
Elements are arranged as per as
the required position of the
content according to reading
order of the content displayed.
Elements are arranged
according to the intended

30ASSESSING USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY OF WEBSITES
Further, img elements have
possessed an alt attribute. Img
elements are the only contents of
“a” elements having “alt”
attribute
position of their content in the
tabbing order of the displayed
content. Elements have been
forming the part of the
template like functionality,
generic, links and block of
navigation links have been
provided in the similar way in
which every time is used.
Centre for
Public
appointments
https://
www.gov.u
k/
government/
organisation
s/
government
-digital-
service/
about
Every element has been
containing a targeted set of text
value referred to as “_blank”
containing a title attribute that is
set towards a text value including
a message “Opens New
Window”. Further, “input”
elements comprising of “type”
attribute is set to a text value
known a “text” that contains the
“maxlength” which is set to a
particular text value
Every reference has been made
to a particular item within a
text that is intended to get
displayed including extra
information allowing the item
to get located and recognized
instead of any knowledge of
the colour. Every piece, in this
site, has been displayed a test
enclosed by a “lang” attribute.
Civil service
commission
HTTP:
//civilservic
Here an HTML5 doctype
declaration is provided. The
Every piece of the content has
been illustrated as a deleted

31ASSESSING USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY OF WEBSITES
ecommissio
n.independe
nt.gov.uk
elements have not possessed any
style attribute. “Head” element
comprises of a metadata element
along with a “charset” attribute
that is set to the text value called
“UTF-8”
text like from a document. It is
enclosed by “del” element. All
parts of the contents are
required to be displayed in an
overlayed dialogue box
enclosed by a dialogue
element.
European
Memoranda
http://
europeanme
moranda.ca
binetoffice.g
ov.uk/
Here, the elements have not
possessed any style attribute. “A”
elements have been containing a
target attribute that is set to a text
value containing a “title”
attribute. Every group of different
logically related controls has been
intended to get displayed as group
enclosed by “fieldset” element.
Examples of these include
textarea elements, select elements
keygen and input elements
Here, every functionality
provided to the users are
presented across the execution
of only functions of server-
side. All the server-side
services have been providing
functionality to users by
submission of form initiated by
a user or activating of a
hyperlink generated by the
element.
Intelligence
and security
committee or
ISC
HTTP:
//isc.indepen
dent.gov.uk
Here, b elements are not used in 3
cases. Moreover, body element
consists of a single main element.
This has been true in one case.
Again, this body element
Every content piece is intended
to get displayed as a single box
to collect a DateTime-local
data retrieved from the user. It
is created from “input” element

32ASSESSING USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY OF WEBSITES
comprises of various h1, h2, h3,
h4, h5 or h6 elements that are
arranged properly as per as
hierarchy. Here the contents are
ignored enclosing article elements
having a “type” element
attribute set to the “DateTime-
local” value. This is true as
uncontested in the analysis. In
this study, a user check is
needed for the HTML source
code. All the contents are
developed from “input”
element with an attribute type
that is set to the “date” value.
Every part of the content is
designed from “input” element
with attribute “type” set to the
“month” value.
5.2. Accessibility analysis on 50 e-governance websites at U.K.:
Table 9: Discussion of Priority levels:
Priority
Levels
Checkpoint with HTML
elements
and various attributes
Number of sites
that violated the
checkpoint
Percentage count
of those websites
1 1.1. Button, Alt 48 96
1.1. Applet, Alt 6 12

33ASSESSING USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY OF WEBSITES
1.1. Area, Alt 1 2
1.1. Image, Alt 1 2
2 3.4. Table, Width 40 80
3.4. Table, Cell pad 36 72
3.4. Table, Border 48 96
2 6.4. Input, on mouse over 4 8
6.4. Input on Click 3 6
6.4. Input, on mouse out 4 8
6.4. Input on key press 3 6
6.4. A, on click 1 2
6.4. A on mouse out 1 2
6.4. A on mouse down 2 4
6.4. A, on mouse up 1 2
6.4. Area, on click 1 2
2 7.2. Blink 4 8
2 7.3. Marquee 27 54
2 10.1. A, Target 46 92
10.2. Applet 3 6
11.2. Base, font 1 2
11.2 Font 44 88
11.2. Center 25 50
11.2. U 25 50
2 12.4. Input, Id 47 94

34ASSESSING USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY OF WEBSITES
12.4. Label, For 1 2
2 Title 3 6
6. Discussion and conclusion:
6.1. Evaluations of the above findings:
By the results of an evaluation, conducted in the above research, various set of design is
identified. They have been addressing present state accessibility and usability problems are
supporting the development of efficient designing solutions for websites of e-government at U.K.
Accessibility and usability checklists that are identified are demonstrated hereafter.
A “longdesc” and “alt” tag is needed to be provided in place of non-text elements or within
element contents. Every frame must be provided with a title where title frames must be facilitating
navigation and identification of structures. Alternative text for every image must be provided. Here
equivalent alternatives must be given for all kinds of multimedia presentations. Every data needed to
navigate or know the meaning has never been depending on the ability to identify particular colours.
Further, the documents are required to be readable instead of any necessity related to a style sheet.
Data tables must provide a reference to headers of row and columns.
Moreover, the pages must be usable as various programmatic objects, applets and scripts are
turned off or been not supported. They must be providing equivalent information on alternatively
accessible pages. Further, a proper method must be used for facilitating the smooth tracking of page
content. It has been providing users of the assistive technology with the change to swap various

35ASSESSING USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY OF WEBSITES
navigation links that are repetitive. Moreover, background colours are needed to avoid because
schemes of colour create issues with legibility.
Again, a text version of those websites must be provided in the site of e-government of U.K.
Descriptive and intuitive text links are to be used avoiding the usage of vague references like
“more”, “here” and “click” and so on. Moving or flying tests are needed to be avoided. Further using
of “…” within the contents are must not be done. The government sites must assure that user gets the
usage power on those pages every time. Furthermore, the link named “Home” must be incorporated
in every page of the websites and they must be identical to the users. A navigation scheme must be
provided to show users where they have been in the context of a hierarchy of the site. For example,
at European Memoranda proper labels must be added for every field. For Boundary Commission for
England a good form designing principles must be followed, and number of field must be kept to
minimum. At the site of Intelligence and security committee or ISC an on-screen message must be
displayed on completion and for Civil service commission proper validation must be followed. Apart
from the e-government sites of U.K. must also deploy a good search feature, various ways for
exploring content, custom the 404 page with good internal linking and an effective header and
footer.
Thus ensuring of usability and accessibility of services has been helpful for individuals
suffering from a disability. This has been among various fundamental aspects of United Kingdom’s
e-government. Different, outcomes assessed from the above literature has helped in understanding
the massive amount of usability regarding some broken links and speeds along with accessibility
issues are present. This has been for state websites on comparing to various federal websites. In this
way, future improvements are needed to be made by multiple web developers such that e-

36ASSESSING USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY OF WEBSITES
government sites become for smart inaccessible and convenient to use. Apart from this relevant
model for government readiness assessment is feasible in providing grounding assessment.
6.2. Conclusion drawn from the report:
Summarizing the various results found from the above research, it is assured that e-
government sites at U.K. are rated higher relatively regarding different accessibility. Moreover, the
investigated outcomes show that any website is usable never indicate that it should also be accessible
and vice versa. This means that correlation between the two has been much low. It must be reminded
that accessibility is always the subset of usability. It refers to the creation of user interface that has
not been efficient, effective and achieving satisfaction for the users. However, it has also been
inclusive of additional people in other situations. Nowadays, usability has also been assumed to be
accessibility. Nonetheless, outcomes of the above analysis highlight that availability is a sub-part of
usability problems. Possessing high rated availability using present-day usability analysis tools,
never implies that any website is ranked high as per as usability is considered. Further, it is worth
noting that usability has been including a combination of various criteria such as memorability,
learnability, ease of use and aesthetics and so on. Low rating in those sectors has been resulting in
very poor web usability. It has been no matter how much access the analyzed websites have been.
However, interestingly those guidelines have often been exclusive of each other. Moreover, it has
been advantageous for the website designers, researchers and practitioners to possess a smart set of
guidelines addressing all the issues regarding accessibility and usability. It has been enabling the
design of truly accessible and usable websites eventually achieving the goal regarding “design for
all”.

37ASSESSING USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY OF WEBSITES
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