Usability and Accessibility of Air Force Intranet Web Sites

The Air Force is moving to a network centric environment where information must be data visible, accessible, and understandable. This transformation has seen the adoption of the Internet web browser as a de facto standard for information access. The Technology Acceptance Model suggests that information systems must not only be useful but also be usable and a large body of usability engineering knowledge exists to support usable design. In addition, the U.S. government mandates specific minimum design features required to support disabled user access. This research effort seeks to establish an understanding of how well common practice usability design principles and government mandated accessibility guidelines are followed by Air Force intranet web sites. Heuristic evaluation is used to investigate web site usability. Accessibility is inspected against government guidelines. The results of this study suggest that Air Force intranet web sites do not adequately comply with many usability principles and that accessibility compliance varies from site to site. Furthermore, although the majority of usability and accessibility design principles are not captured in military guidance, scores were higher for those principles that are captured in the guidance than for those that are not

Exploring the Usability of Municipal Web Sites: A Comparison Based on Expert Evaluation Results from Four Case Studies

The usability of public administration web sites is a key quality attribute for the successful implementation of the Information Society. Formative usability evaluation aims at finding and reporting usability problems as early as possible in the development process. The objective of this paper is to present and comparatively analyze the results of an expert usability evaluation of 4 municipality web sites. In order to document usability problems an extended set of heuristics was used that is based on two sources: usability heuristics and ergonomic criteria. The explanatory power of heuristics was supplemented with a set of usability guidelines. The evaluation results revealed that a set of specific tasks with clearly defined goals helps to identify many severe usability problems that occur frequently in the municipality web sites. A typical issue for this category of web sites is the lack of information support for the user.Formative Usability Evaluation, User Testing, Expert Evaluation, Heuristic Evaluation, Ergonomic Criteria, Usability Problem, Municipal Web Sites

Evaluating global e-government sites: A view using web diagnostics tools

This is the post-print version of the Article. The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2004 The AuthorsSeveral governments across the world have embraced the digital revolution and continue to take advantage of the information and communication facilities offered by the Internet to offer public services. Conversely, citizens’ awareness and expectations of Internet based online-public-services have also increased in recent times. Although the numbers of the different national e-Government web portals have rapidly increased in the last three years, the success of these portals will largely depend on their accessibility, quality and privacy. This paper reports the results of an evaluative study of a cross-section of e-Government portals from these three perspectives, using a common set of performance metrics and Web diagnostic engines. Results show that not only are there wide variations in the spectrum of information and services provided by these portals, but that significant work still needs to be undertaken in order to make the portals examples of ‘best practice’ e-Government services

Cloud based testing of business applications and web services

This paper deals with testing of applications based on the principles of cloud computing. It is aimed to describe options of testing business software in clouds (cloud testing). It identifies the needs for cloud testing tools including multi-layer testing; service level agreement (SLA) based testing, large scale simulation, and on-demand test environment. In a cloud-based model, ICT services are distributed and accessed over networks such as intranet or internet, which offer large data centers deliver on demand, resources as a service, eliminating the need for investments in specific hardware, software, or on data center infrastructure. Businesses can apply those new technologies in the contest of intellectual capital management to lower the cost and increase competitiveness and also earnings. Based on comparison of the testing tools and techniques, the paper further investigates future trend of cloud based testing tools research and development. It is also important to say that this comparison and classification of testing tools describes a new area and it has not yet been done

An Assessment of the Quality of the Romanian Urban Web Sites

The local authorities are giving increasing prominence to provision of information online through websites. Seen in a wider perspective, the urban web sites play a key role in allowing every citizen to achieve their full potential and to participate fully in society. Conversely, citizens' awareness and expectations of Internet based online public services have also increased. Although the numbers of the different urban web portals have increased rapidly in the last years, the success of these sites will largely depend on their accessibility and quality. The purpose of this report is to present the results from a comprehensive assessment of the urban web sites across Romania. An instrument has been developed for evaluating the quality of the websites. It is based upon approaches to evaluation that have been documented in the published literature, interviews of people responsible for websites, and testing of websites at different levels of local government. Results show that not only are there wide variations in the spectrum of information and services provided by these urban web sites, but that significant work still needs to be undertaken in order to make these sites examples of "best practice" e-Government services. The overall picture shows that there is still much work to be done, but the study identifies key areas of concern which, if dealt with, would lead to the situation improving significantly.urban web sites, e-government, quality

Evaluation of the use of web technology by government of Sri Lanka to ensure food security for its citizens

Web technology is one of the key areas in information and communication technology to be used as a powerful tool in ensuring food security which is one of the main issues in Sri Lanka. Web technology involves in communicating and sharing resources in network of computers all over the world. Main focus of food security is to ensure that all people have fair access to sufficient and quality food without endangering the future supply of the same food. In this context, web sites play a vital and major role in achieving food security in Sri Lanka. In this case study, websites pertaining to Sri Lankan government and link with food security were analyzed to find out their impact in achieving the goals of food security using web technologies and how they are being involved in ensuring food security in Sri Lanka. The other objective of this study is to make the Sri Lankan government aware of present situation of those websites in addressing food security related issues and how modern web technologies could be effectively and efficiently used to address those issues. So, the relevant websites were checked against several criteria and scores were used to assess their capabilities to address the concerns of food security. It was found that the amount of emphasis given by these websites to address the issues of food security is not satisfactory. Further, it showed that if these web sites could be improved further, they would generate a powerful impact on ensuring food security in Sri Lanka.Comment: International Conference of Sabaragamuwa University of Sri Lanka 2015 (ICSUSL 2015

Improving Screencast Accessibility for People with Disabilities: Guidelines and Techniques

Screencast video tutorials are increasingly popular in libraries, but may present access problems for people with disabilities unless specific accessibility features are added during screencast creation. This article reviews existing standards for accessible web-based multimedia and gives guidelines on how to create accessible screencasts based on these standards

Issues in Evaluating Health Department Web-Based Data Query Systems: Working Papers

Compiles papers on conceptual and methodological topics to consider in evaluating state health department systems that provide aggregate data online, such as taxonomy, logic models, indicators, and design. Includes surveys and examples of evaluations