Web accessibility, W3C, E-Government, Web standards

Today's people cannot bear a life without the Internet. It provides access to many things like news, email, shopping, and entertainment, at anytime and anywhere. Governments around the world have adopted the Internet as a channel to introduce their information and services to citizens, businesses and other government sectors.The government websites work as an interface between the government and the citizens. E-government applications utilizes web technology for making information accessible online to as many people as possible regardless of their disabilities. Accessibility is essential for governments that want to create high quality websites and web tools, and not exclude citizens from using their services. This thesis investigates the status of current government websites in Libya in terms of accessibility, which is one of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) criteria to develop high quality web sites. It tries to find out whether e-government websites comply with the guidelines developed by W3C. In this study, several web diagnostic tools are used for investigation. Several suggestions are offered based on the results of the research.