Political parties need to smarten up web sites
Political parties need to smarten up web sites
Australian political web sites have come under fire for not producing web sites that provide adequate information about their parties needed by the public during the run up to the election.
In addition, they have been criticised for not serving the needs of visually impaired users who typically access sites via text-to-speech screen readers.
The Hiser Group, interface usability experts, conducted a study in March and April 2004 that has revealed that Australia's six political web sites need to seriously rethink how they present their information, as voters become more web savvy and demanding.
These six major political party web sites included the Australian Democrats, Australian Greens, Australian Labour Party, Liberal Party of Australia, The Nationals and One Nation) were evaluated in regard to the usefulness and usability of each site.
Susan Wolfe, The Hiser Group's Managing Director, said. "Though political party web sites are rarely the sole factor driving voters' preferences, these sites do play an important role in filling in some of the gaps in loyal voters' and more importantly in swinging voters' minds.
"These sites should be tailored to assist people better understand the particular parties. Currently all, except the Labour party, and only marginally, are letting these swinging voters down - which translates to losing an opportunity to gain another vote for them."
The findings were based on swinging voters, who explored sites in search of information to help them discover what the party was offering.
Wolfe's biggest criticism was that the sites failed to comply with basic usability guidelines and good practice. Policies on topics were difficult to find because of poor information design, such as structure and labelling, poor interaction and visual design.
Failure to comply with W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) and Australian guidelines to aid blind users with reading sites is in direct conflict with the government's stated obligation to provide information and services to all users.
Wolfe concluded. "While parties are not currently serving to address the needs of the voting community, there's ample opportunity for one party to demonstrate leadership and provide a good experience to attract swinging voters. It will be interesting to see which political party will take up the challenge!"
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