Evaluating the Usability and the Accessibility of Saudi E-Government Websites

E-government services provide citizens with an efficient way to manage their information. Achieving usability and accessibility within e-government websites is vital due to its role in facilitating online transactions for citizens. This paper provides an empirical study to investigate the usability and the accessibility of a representative Saudi e-government website. The usability of each of the tested Saudi e-government websites was evaluated based on Nilsson's 10 heuristics. The accessibility was examined based on Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0) principles and used two automated tools. The results of the usability test shows few usability issues. However, our study shows that the minimum level of WCAG 2.0 accessibility conformance level was not met by the tested Saudi e-government sites. Finally, a list of some practical recommendations regarding accessibility and usability evaluations that could be generalized to other e-governments websites is provided.