2
The website’s homepage
Labs dot com
In this issue, we review the website of
the Ministry of Public Works. The web-
site aims to achieve the Ministry’s vision
in organising, planning, construction and
maintenance of infrastructure and federal
housing projects in the cities and towns of
the UAE according to the highest interna-
tional standards based on qualified com-
petence citizens.
Below is a quick review of the website in
three main areas: Accessibility, Usability
and Design, and Content.
Accessibility:
Accessibility refers to providing a website
that is comaptible with a wide range of
web browsers. The URL should be easy
to remember and the website easily ac-
cessed through search engines. People
with special needs should be able to use
the website with no difficulty.
Below are a few remarks on the web-
site in this regard:
The website has an easy to remember
URL
). However,
we couldn’t reach the website through the
top Arabic domain (.
.)امارات
It appears among top results when search-
ing for phrases related to public works in
the UAE.
In general, the website is slow and takes a
long time to navigate between pages.
The website provides the option to in-
crease font size. However, the size doesn’t
increase much. It would also be useful to
add text-to-speech tool to help the visually
impaired.
File attributes (i.e. file size and type) are
missing from downloadable files.
Usability and Design:
Usability refers to “The extent to which a
product can be used by specified users to
achieve specified goals with effectiveness,
efficiency and satisfaction in a specified
context.” For websites, it could be defined
as the process of measuring and manag-
ing ease of use for users interacting with
a website.
Below are a few remarks on the web-
site in this regard:
The homepage is user-centric and pro-
vides services most used by users
(screenshot 1).
I
n each issue of Smart Government magazine, we review
one of the government websites to highlight its main
strengths as well as areas for improvement. Our common
goal is for the user to be able to access government ser-
vices easily and conveniently anytime and from anywhere
in line with the UAE Vision 2021.
Enough information, slow website
