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Election Sites Fail Voters

The Internet offers a broad and rich new channel to market for the coming General Election. But the UK's top political parties are failing in the web accessibility and usability stakes new research reveals. Still counting on lavish TV ads we'd wager...

Independent research conducted by The Usability Company reveals that UK political party websites are failing miserably at basic usability and web accessibility.

The Internet offers a broad and rich new channel to market for the coming General Election, but the Labour Party, Conservative Party, Liberal Democrats, Green Party and the Veritas Party are all offering websites that are difficult to navigate, sparse in useful information, and offer confusing links and images.

Key findings:

Labour Party - ranked 1st

* Its manifesto is only offered in Flash or PDF format, which makes the content impossible to access by the visually impaired
* The main site offers good accessibility, but content is shallow, and the same links are repeated three times on a page

Conservative Party - ranked 2nd

* Text is in 8.5 font, making it difficult to read
* Little prominent content explaining what the Conservative Party is about
* Tony Blair's photo is displayed several times throughout the site, including a flash banner of him on every web page, which communicates a confusing message

Liberal Democrats - ranked 3rd

* Much of the text is in white against a yellow background, which can be illegible to those with low vision or users with monochrome displays
* Information is only available by scrolling and clicking through links, as large graphics are positioned in the centre of each web page
* The manifesto is offered in both Word and PDF format, making it accessible to the visually impaired

Marty Carroll, director of The Usability Company, comments: "All of the political party websites are failing miserably with usability, and web accessibility is similarly an afterthought for most of them. Most of the sites are lacking in key information, making it impossible for the electorate to research political parties online in the run up to the General Election."

"Party leaders should be mindful of the fact", he continued "that those using the Internet are exactly those people that they want to vote for them, such as lifetime party voters, and floating voters."

A closer look at two of the smaller parties sites is also telling is usability and accessibility terms...

Kilroy-Silk's Veritas Party

* Usability: The first impression of this site is of a religious site recruiting members or an infomercial site with its swirling purple background Robert Kilroy-Silk glamourr pose. Reasonably easy to move around on, it's nonethesless inconsistent in navigation and overly text-heavy.
* The site fails to offer some basic accessibility features: many images were missing alt text descriptions; each item in the navigation menu is an image of text rather than actual text; the site is divided into 3 frames which are difficult to navigate, bookmark, and print and the titles given to identify each frame are not very meaningful.
* The frame titles used to identify each frame are not meaningful. On the plus side, the full manifesto is available in HTML, a format accessible to all, which many of the other parties site failed to achieve.

Green Party

* The Greens seperate their manifesto from their main site, assuming people view these as separate entities. First impressions are deceptive as the manifesto's main themes are clearly displayed with accompanying short paragraphs of text and useful photos but for more on the topics you're linked to lengthly PDFs.
* The manifesto pages use a Microsoft-tree type navigation - these links and their purpose will likely mean little to users who do not think of moving up within navigation.
* The actual party site is more intuitive in layout and use. While the green and brown background is tiring on the eyes, it's easy to move around the site and find information. Too much text and elusive links dents its impact.
* The accessibility of the site was poor with high priority accessibility issues failing to be addressed - images failed to contain appropriate alt text; table headings weren't appropriately marked up. The site also offered poor contrast between link text and background colours and only offered the full manifesto as a PDF file.

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About The Usability Company:

The Usability Company is a global-leading provider of independent, business-focused usability consultancy. We use Human Computer Interaction (HCI) expertise to improve the customer experience across all digital platforms including websites, wireless services, Intranets, mobile devices and i-TV providing expertise at all stages in the development cycle. Their merger with web analytics firm WebAbacus was announced 14 April, with the aim of providing a “comprehensive customer experience service”. The as yet unnamed new company will fuse usability consulting and analytics technology. The company now has a client roster including 43 of the Top 100 FTSE companies, and employs nearly 40 people.