Additional View conducted a website quality audit and analysis of all Tasmania Council websites over a three day period in February 2009. The objective of the study was to develop a Website Quality Index™ and benchmark comparison of Tasmania Council websites based on a set of defined standards in three vital areas - Accessibility, Usability and Search Engine Optimisation.
Methodology
To ensure the analysis was conducted based on a high level of objectivity a number of professional standards were chosen to effectively measure and compare each of the websites in the areas of Accessibility, Usability and Search Engine Optimisation.
Accessibility
Website accessibility was measured using the W3C Website Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) to the WCAG 1.0A and WCAG 1.0AA level of accessibility compliance. This standard was chosen based on the recommendation provided by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission and to comply with recommendations for website communications detailed in the Australian Disability Discrimination Act.
Usability
The usability guidelines from which an heuristic review was conducted were based on those set of detailed criteria generated by Usability.gov and W3C standards. The usability.gov guidelines provide one of the worlds most robust and comprehensive set of usability and user behaviour standards. These usability standards were developed from usability research and have undergone thorough analysis by usability experts and industry panels. Usability guidelines are constantly reviewed and updated based on the latest published research and user experience knowledge. The study considered the W3C best practice for constructing usable websites and the readability of websites based on content and structure.
We build websites