A political own goal
A political own goal
As the nation waits with bated breath for news of when the impending federal election will be held, Australia's political parties have come under attack for failing to hit the back of the net when it comes to their web presence. Stuart Finlayson reports.
The word was that it was going to happen on September 18, but Australia's obsession with all things sporting took precedence over the country's political future, with little Johnny putting the kibosh on any notion of naming the date for the federal election during the Olympics so we wouldn't be bothered by politicians wanting to shake our hands and kiss our babies while we were watching Thorpie and co go for gold in Athens.
One might ask whether announcing polling day now would make a blind bit of difference in that regard, seeing as how the party leaders have been campaigning in earnest for months now anyway, but delaying the event may make a little difference to those undecided voters among us who rely on the political parties' websites. That is if the leading parties take heed of a damning new report which bemoans the lack of user friendliness of such sites and do something to remedy the problem before the electioneering gets into full swing.
The six major political party websites (Australian Democrats, Australian Greens, Australian Labour Party, Liberal Party of Australia, The Nationals and One Nation) all came under fire for failing to produce websites 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 study, conducted by interface usability experts The Hiser Group earlier this year, concluded that Australia's six political websites need to seriously rethink how they present their information, as voters become more web savvy and demanding.
Each website was evaluated in regard to the usefulness and usability of each site. Susan Wolfe, The Hiser Group's managing director, says "Though political party websites 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 themselves another vote." 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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