Digital divide: A study on Portuguese Municipalities' web sites

This paper presents a study performed on Portuguese Municipalities' web sites in relation its usability with regard to digital inclusion. A recent study has shown that Portugal ranks among top in making available e-government facilitators (i.e. web sites and portals) to its citizens. Through a desktop qualitative cognitive walkthrough, using a set of pre-selected usability guidelines linked with digital literacies, a subset of municipalities' web sites were assessed and results showed that in terms of usability for digital inclusion only two of the municipalities' web sites evaluated scored good and a clear majority of 65% of these scored reasonable. This means that there is a long way to work in order to bridge this digital divide. This paper makes an innovative contribution to the discussion about minimising digital exclusion through usability guidelines. © 2011 IADIS.