Muhammad Asif Khan and Khalid Abdulmohsen Buragga
Keywords: E-government, usability, Saudi e-government, accessibility, Saudi Arabia.
Abstract: In today’s rapidly changing world, information technology has significant impact in almost all sectors of daily life. With greater internet penetration among individuals and organizations use of online services is becoming indispensable. The increasing demand of electronic services has forced governments all around the world to provide online services to their citizens and residents. The government of Saudi Arabia has also realized the need of such services and it is working on an accelerating pace to provide excellent electronic services infrastructure to its citizens. Internet is an exciting technological tool that requires innovative design in order to be accessible to everyone. The purpose of this paper is to examine and evaluate accessibility and usability of e-government websites of Saudi Arabia. A subjective assessments method has been used to carryout the study. The results of the study have been compared with web accessibility tools. This study investigates the issues that are required to make a website accessible and examines accessibility guidelines. It also evaluates the Saudi government websites in context of W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. The present study also presents some suggestions for improving e-government web sites to be more effective and beneficial to general public.
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