Assessing the Usability and Accessibility of Malaysia E-Government Website

Abstract

Problem statement: With the proliferation number existence of Malaysia e-government websites, the usability and accessibility feature may has been overlooked by website developers. Approach: The main objective of this study is to investigate the usability and accessibility of Malaysia e-government websites. The usability measures are being measured by using Nielson usability guideline for the uploading speed and page size of the main page and number of broken links. The accessibility is measured by using Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (WCAG). Samples of 155 Malaysia e-government websites were selected from federal government websites and state government websites available at http://www.malaysia.gov.my. The usability and accessibility of the websites was analyzed by using several automatic evaluation tools such as Websiteoptimization, Axandra and EvalAccess 2.0 tools. Results: The evaluation process revealed several issues on usability and accessibility of Malaysia e-government website. There is high number of usability (speed and number of broken links) and accessibility problems for state website upon comparing to federal website. Conclusion/Recommendation: This study provides few recommendations for further improvement of the usability and accessibility features of e-government website based on the highlighted issues and key findings reported in this study.