1
MOE
website homepage
Labs dot com
In this issue, we review the website of
the Ministry of Education. The website
aims to achieve the Ministry’s vision of
implementing an educational system in
line with best international practices and
to prepare students for productive and
constructive contribution through continu-
ous education with a global dimension to
achieve sustainable community develop-
ment in the UAE.
Following is a quick review of the website
in three main areas; Accessibility, Usabil-
ity 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.
Following are a few remarks on the
website 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 the top results when
searching for phrases related to educa-
tion services in the UAE.
It is compatible with different browsers
such as IE, Chrome and Firefox (screen-
shot 1).
The website is bilingual. However, many
pages (such as services, special needs,
Curriculum) are available only in Ara-
bic. Clicking the language link opens
the homepage not to the corresponding
pages.
The website gives the option to change
font size to help the visually impaired.
However, the text-to-speech feature
needs improvement since it opens a new
window.
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 us
-
ers to achieve specified goals with effec
-
tiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a
specified context.” For websites, it could
be defined as the process of measuring
and managing ease of use for users inter-
acting with a website. A key methodology
for assessing usability is User-centred
Design (UCD) which is defined as “The
active involvement of users, and a clear
I
n each issue of Smart Government magazine, we re
-
view one of the federal government websites to high
-
light its main strengths as well as areas for improve
-
ment. Our common goal is for the user to be able to
access government services easily and conveniently
anytime anywhere in line with the UAE Vision 2021.
Latest news and updates of the ed-
ucational field in one place
