1
MOHESR
website homepage
Labs dot com
In this issue, we review the website of
the Ministry of Higher Education and
Scientific Research. The website aims
to achieve the Ministry’s mission and
develop higher education and scientific
research in the UAE, through managing
scholarships for Emirati students as well
as higher education institutions to en-
sure quality.
Following is a quick review of the web
-
site in three main areas; Accessibility,
Usability and Design, and Content.
Accessibility:
Accessibility refers to providing a web-
site that is comaptible with a wide range
of web browsers. The URL should be
easy to remember and the website eas-
ily accessed 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 top results when
searching for phrases related to certifi
-
cate equivalency, scholarships, etc.
It is compatible with different browsers
such as IE, Chrome and Firefox.
The website gives the option to change
font size to help the visually impaired.
However, the text-to-speech tool doesn’t
allow for reading a specific part of the
page.
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 measur
-
ing and managing ease of use for users
interacting with a website. A key meth-
odology for assessing usability is User-
centred Design (UCD) which is defined
as “The active involvement of users, and
a clear understanding of user and task
requirements.”
Ministry of Higher Education
and Scientific Research
website
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.
Achieving leadership in higher education and
global competitiveness in scientific research
