E-Government Web Site Accessibility in Australia and China

Abstract

This article examined the accessibility of provincial government web sites in China and state-level web sites in Australia in December 2004 and again in September 2005. This research found that there were serious accessibility problems on Chinese e-government web sites in the first audition, and the situation was even worse in the second audition. This demonstrates that no efforts have been made to build accessible e-government web sites in China. As for the Australian e-government web sites, although they generally did well in terms of accessibility, some small errors found in the first audition were not eliminated in the second audition. It thus suggests that more efforts are still needed for Australian government web sites. Through the comparisons between China and Australia, some valuable lessons can be learned, especially for the development of accessible Chinese e-government web sites for people with disabilities.