Accessibility and usability analysis of Indian e-government websites
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Accessibility and usability analysis of Indian e‑government websites Surjit Paul1 · Saini Das1
© Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019
Abstract E-government provides a platform to deliver government services to stakeholders, and many countries have adopted e-government websites for good governance. Successful e-government implementation and service delivery depend on how the underlying information present in government websites is made accessible and usable to every individual. This article investigates the accessibility and usability of e-government sites in India. Our sample consists of 65 Indian e-government websites. The analysis was carried out using automatic evaluation tools. The results of the accessibility tests highlight the existence of accessibility issues based on Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (WCAG 1.0) and WCAG 2.0. Usability tests also reveal that e-government websites give low priority to such aspects during website design and development. Hence, there is a need to improve the overall accessibility and usability of Indian e-government websites in order to improve the quality and in turn the E-Government Development Index rank of India. Keywords E-government · Accessibility · Usability · WCAG · EGDI
1 Introduction E-government has come into existence due to the development of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and uses tools and techniques of e-commerce to provide government services to stakeholders [1]. In today’s rapidly growing world, ICT enables governments to deliver services more efficiently by facilitating ubiquitous information sharing [2]. More and more governments across the globe have introduced e-government services to reduce costs, save time, improve service efficiency, and increase viability [3]. Though e-government initiatives are extremely critical in service delivery, the lack of citizen trust in them is a major inhibitor in their widespread adoption. Website quality plays a vital role in engendering trust and ensuring successful e-government implementation and service delivery [4]. The major factors that impact the quality of an e-government website are its accessibility, usability, content, citizen participation, services, features, and security and privacy [5, 6]. * Surjit Paul [email protected] Saini Das [email protected] 1
Vinod Gupta School of Management, IIT Kharagpur, Kharagpur, India
Accessibility is an essential criterion used to evaluate e-government website quality. It measures how distinctively capable individuals can access, understand, interact, and navigate the site and is determined by a number of parameters such as page layout, color choice, readability, and browser independence. Similarly, usability is another important characteristic that determines the quality of an e-government website [7]. The usability of a website is measured by factors such as download speed, page size of the home page, and broken links [8, 9]. Both accessibility and usability of websites affect effective e
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