2
The website’s homepage
Labs dot com
In this issue, we review the website of
the Abu Dhabi Education Council. The
website aims to achieve the Council’s
vision of providing a world class educa-
tion system that supports all learners in
reaching their full potential to compete in
the global market.
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 using the
top Arabic domain (.
امارات
).
It appears among top results when
searching for phrases related to the edu-
cational system in Abu Dhabi.
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.
It would be a good idea to add text-to-
speech feature.
File attributes (i.e. file size and type)
are missing from downloadable files
(screenshot 1).
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.”
Following are a few remarks on the
website in this regard:
I
n each issue of Smart Government magazine, we re
-
view 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 gov
-
ernment services easily and conveniently anytime any
-
where in line with the UAE Vision 2021.
Rich in services and well-organised
