Quality evaluation of government websites

Abstract

This article describes a study on the quality evaluation of governmental Web sites of 20 countries with the highest level of competitiveness. The accessibility assessment was carried out to verify compliance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG 2.0) published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The main goal of this study is to determine whether people with disabilities are able to access and use government websites. In addition, we considered the Website Accessibility Conformance Evaluation Methodology (WCAG-EM) to determine how easily a website can be accessed according to WCAG 2.0. The WCAG-EM provides guidance on how to use the methodology and considerations for specific situations. From the results, we conclude that the majority of the Web sites do not achieve an acceptable level of compliance. The Web sites of governmental institutions with the highest level of competitiveness do not show a greater level of Web accessibility. Several non-compliance errors were found on the Web sites; by performing this evaluation, we have identified that there are major barriers for a large number of users. Therefore, there is significant work pending to make the Web sites examples of best practice in e-government sites.