Accessible Taxes? A Blind Consumer's Experience with the US Tax System

One of the most common, and least enjoyable, experiences of citizens of the United States is that of filing income tax forms. This year, Sachin Pavithran, who is blind, attempted to complete the forms and file them without assistance from sighted friends. Find out whether he was successful or not.

Bohman, Paul, Shane Anderson and Sachin Pavithran. WebAIM (2004). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility>Government

It's Only Words

Today, at least in this country, most government and corporate organisations are well aware that words online matter. A lot. Even when the technology is perfect, words can make or break the success of a web site or intranet. So sure, words now get due respect in many quarters.

McAlpine, Rachel. Quality Web Content (2004). Articles>Web Design>Writing>Government

Juror Information on the Web: A Usability and Design Study of Hispanic Populated Counties in Texas  

In response to the initiative of providing juror education materials online, this study proposes that unless Web sites are designed in a usable fashion, initiative could fail to enhance jury response and further aggravate the problem of under-representation by minorities. This study suggests that all online juror information Web sites be analyzed for “usability” if they are to be an effective education tool. Specifically, this study focused on online materials that will reach primarily Hispanic jurors. The state of Texas has 254 counties, of which 187 have Web sites or addresses. For this study, we selected all the counties with a Hispanic population of 50.1% or higher (34 counties). Of those 34 counties, 24 had actual Web sites. Of the 24 counties with Web sites, only five had juror education materials online and so were selected for this study. Prospective jurors were selected from each of the identified counties and were asked to evaluate the Web sites for usability. Participants were asked to visit each of the five Web sites and then complete both an evaluation instrument modified for this study but based on the work of Jonathan Palmer and a checklist of basic Web design guidelines modified for this study but based on the work of Jakob Nielsen. The resulting data will further contribute to the literature for future Web design by counties with a large percentage of Hispanic potential jurors that intend to implement No. 2188.

Jones, Irma, Jana Arney and Ann Blankenship. Association for Business Communication (2004). Articles>Web Design>Government

Using Scenarios for the Evaluation of Municipal Web Sites  

It appears to be difficult for experts to predict the problems users of documents and websites experience. Realistic usage scenarios may help experts to achieve better prediction rates, since they focus the experts' attention explicitly on the users and their use situations. We developed a set of scenarios for evaluating municipal websites, and used them to evaluate 15 websites. In this paper, we will describe the scenario evaluation method, and the feedback it helps to provide. The results suggest that a scenario-based evaluation method may be a fruitful way of enhancing experts' sensitivity for detecting user problems. open, except for the instruction to concentrate on potential reader problems.

de Jong, Menno D.T. and Leo R. Lentz. STC Proceedings (2005). Articles>Web Design>Assessment>Government

Serving Citizens’ Needs: Minimising Online Hurdles to Accessing Government Information  

With the rapid spread of the Internet across society, government institutions are taking advantage of digital technology to distribute materials to citizens. Is merely having a website enough, or are there certain usability considerations site creators must keep in mind to assure efficient public access to online materials? This project looked at typical people's ability to locate various types of content online, in particular, their ability to find tax forms on the web. Findings suggest that people look for content in a myriad of ways, and there is considerable variance in how long people take to complete this online task. Users are often confused by the ways in which content is presented to them. In this paper, two common sources of confusion in users' online experiences with locating tax forms online are distinguished: (1) URL confusion and (2) page design layout. Ways are also suggested to decrease these two sources of frustration, yielding less exasperating and more productive user experiences.

Hargittai, Eszter. Human Factors International (2003). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility>Government

This is How the Web Gets Regulated

As in finance, so on the web: self-regulation has failed. Nearly ten years after specifications first required it, video captioning can barely be said to exist on the web. The big players, while swollen with self-congratulation, are technically incompetent, and nobody else is even trying. So what will it take to support the human and legal rights of hearing impaired web users? It just might take the law, says Joe Clark.

Clark, Joe. List Apart, A (2008). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility>Government

Towards Seamless Knowledge: Integrating Public Sector Portals

The more connected our computer systems become, the more we realise how *disconnected* our information really is. Disconnectedness is not new; it is simply far more apparent nowadays: so much so that it underpins a renewed quest for ways to integrate information - and knowledge. One aspect of this is the focus on information integration within large organizations. Another is the spread of portals whose task is not so much to provide information directly as to provide consolidated, indirect access to information that resides elsewhere. In the public sector, in particular, portals have sprung up like mushrooms over the last 3-4 years.

Pepper, Steve. IDEAlliance (2004). Articles>Web Design>Government>Semantic