University front-facing webpages, such as homepages and course entry details, provide essential information to prospective students and external stakeholders, necessitating accessibility, usability, and security. This study evaluates the web accessibility, usability, and security of 242 front-facing webpages from the top 10 higher education institutions in the UK, Africa, and Israel, based on Webometrics rankings. Automated tools were employed for assessment. Findings indicate that African universities require more work on web accessibility than those in the UK and Israel. All three regions violated accessibility success criteria, with most issues occurring at level A, the minimum standard for accessibility conformance. Over 80% of webpages scored at or above average in usability. The security analysis revealed numerous vulnerabilities in African and Israeli institutions' webpages, including outdated architecture, missing certificates, and lack of encryption. This study suggests that strict web accessibility legislation does not necessarily guarantee improved webpage accessibility.
In the era of digital transformation, the need for more efficient self-service technologies has increased, particularly after the COVID-19 pandemic, which highlighted the importance of reducing physical interactions. Although there is research on commercial self-service technologies, there is a shortage in studies focusing on self-service portals designed exclusively for internal use within an academic organizational environment. This study aims to address this gap by examining the usability of a self-service portal in a university in Sweden. The study adopts a mixed-methods approach, incorporating data collection techniques such as cognitive walkthrough, usability testing and semi-structured interviews. In addition, a system usability scale and interaction log file data were used to understand user behavior and satisfaction. Findings reveal important factors influencing the user experience, which are further materialized into design guidelines aiming to enhance the usability of the self-service portals.
The proposed SquiRide Rank algorithm is designed by integrating the Squirrel Search Algorithm (SSA) with the Rider Optimization Algorithm (ROA), respectively. The concept of fictional computing and the foraging behavior realize the re-ranking process more effectively in the web environment. However, the features extracted from the web pages makes the process more effective and achieve global optimal solution through the fitness measure. The proposed SquiRide Rank algorithm effectively captures and analyzes the ranking scores of different search engines in order to generate the re-ranked score result. However, the proposed SquiRide Rank algorithm provides satisfactory results using the metrics, like precision, recall, and F-measure, which acquired with the values of 0.964, 0.996, and 0.980, respectively.
Web page ranking is the one of the key components in search engine. Ranking aims to offer ranked list of web documents that are relevant to the user query. Even though, various re-ranking algorithms are developed, providing prompt responses to the user query result a major challenge in the dynamic web environment. Therefore, an efficient and effective ranking algorithm named Squirrel Ride Rank (SquiRide Rank) algorithm is developed to re-rank the web documents in the search engine. The proposed SquiRide Rank algorithm is designed by integrating the Squirrel Search Algorithm (SSA) with the Rider Optimization Algorithm (ROA), respectively. The concept of fictional computing and the foraging behavior realize the re-ranking process more effectively in the web environment. The features extracted from the web pages makes the process more effective and achieve global optimal solution through the fitness measure. The proposed SquiRide Rank algorithm effectively captures and analyzes the ranking scores of different search engines in order to generate the re-ranked score result. However, the proposed SquiRide Rank algorithm provides satisfactory results using the metrics, like precision, recall, and F-measure, which acquired with the values of 0.964, 0.996, and 0.980, respectively.
Handheld devices such as smartphones, tablets, and PDAs are commonly used for online shopping. In order to satisfy web page requests on these devices, web developers are using a responsive web design approach, where websites dynamically adapt to different screen sizes and orientations. One of the challenges faced by web developers is to provide a usable experience across different devices. Motivated by this, a mobile-first usability guideline was established by extracting good usability practices from five popular responsive e-commerce websites. Validation of the usability guideline was conducted, and results indicate that it will have a positive impact on the overall user experience.
The evolution of the Internet and smartphones, people are able to use Internet banking (IB). In addition, banks are able to reduce their operational costs and attract more customers when utilizing IB. The Covid-19 Virus outbreak in encouraged clients to use IB to limit their physical interactions with others. This research utilized the extended Unified Theory for Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT-II) to assess how bank customers adopt IB. 375 online surveys were collected to test eight hypotheses. Results indicated that Performance Expectancy, Social Influence, Security, and Habit were significant predictors of the behavioral intentions to use IB, while Effort Expectancy, Facilitating Conditions, Perceived Value, were insignificant. Age was used as a moderator to habit-behavioral intentions relationship, but data failed to support its role. The overall coefficient of determination was 0.86, which exceeded the original model. Further discussions and conclusions are reported at the end of the paper.
Stored information in the databases is heterogeneous, from various sources, and of large volumes. The web service selection becomes nontrivial, as the users are easily overloaded by vast amount candidates. Using the keyword-based search method, users are struggling to choose the best web services among those having similar features. In the traditional methods, the users set different constraints and QoS parameters of a web service from what's claimed by the provider. Moreover, different researches challenge this problem, introducing semantic discovery process to enable relevant and desired search results. These approaches don't give importance to users' opinions and the selection history. The classical development of the ontology is typically entirely based on high human participation. In this paper, the authors use ontology-based querying, user profile to know the history, new collaborative filtering to calculate user, and query similarity and QoS as the final step for web service selection. The approach combines the syntactic and semantic methods to increase the selection precision.
One of the critical challenges in health information systems is interoperability. The clinical, strategic, and operational decision depends on quality data and the ability to exchange data inter-systems and inter-health organizations. The Semantic Web plays a cornerstone role as a technology to enable functional and semantic interoperability without substantial changes in existing systems and to improve data sharing capabilities and, consequently, its quality and completeness. However, a common concern is data security. In this context, this research proposes a framework for securing health data, with a real case scenario focused on tuberculosis data exchange over the Semantic Web. The needs of security for the Semantic Web were satisfied, helping to build trust in the data and promoting its use in contexts that were not initially created to openly disseminate data without a significant technological apparatus.
This paper aimed to recognize the role of virtual reality to enhance cultural communication by allowing to the participators who divided into three groups to watch the same substance in three different displays—virtual reality, normal video, images and text—to measure the process of retrieving information or events with a specific cue. The results of the study indicate that the virtual world experience enhances people's awareness of the culture. This new medium, VR, allows for participants to be immersed in the culture in ways that are not possible through the use of other media. Also, it can have an effective impact in cultural communication by allowing the participators to be virtually present at civilized events.
Redesigning of the whole portal or some of its webpages does not always lead to a positive result despite the designers' expectations. Nowadays the opinion on how to carry out the redesign of web portals varies. A web portal being in service and in a wide use, a sudden change in its design may result in a drop of the number of clients. The usability evaluation has become important to make a decision on what design of webpages to choose. The paper proposes a method to redesign of commercial web-portals which is based on usability evaluation of some webpages. The evaluation can be undertaken by surveying the staff of the business organization where such a web portal is being developed. The hierarchy made of the Choquet integrals aggregates the results of the questionnaire and allows for the interdependencies between individual metrics of usability. Then, a decision about the redesign of a certain webpage is made on the basis of the aggregated results. The described experiment has shown a great impact of this innovative approach.
With the growing trend of digital transformation, electronic business has become a crucial part of business operations for many companies. Some of the most critical steps in successful transformation pertain not only to data and information acquisition and digitalization but also to adequate publishing and organization of these information resources. Companies share information through their websites, so the structuring of the web content becomes critical during the digital transformation of business. In this paper, the authors present a conceptual model of the managerial tool that is based on semantic analysis of web sites in order to obtain information about the structure of web sites in a particular domain. The resulting ontological model contains information about best practices in web information organization and can be a valuable resource for management when deciding on the organization of their own web content. The system is based on grounded theory and uses current information retrieval methods, natural language processing, semantic networks, and ontologies.
Having an online presence is essential for any company regardless of its size and type of business. Users are currently striving to interact with companies through the web, regardless of their access device. In this sense, responsive web design emerged as a very useful technique that allows the dynamic adaptation of the design regardless of the size and resolution of the access device. Despite the unequivocal advantages associated with this technique, there are also limitations which turn this approach not feasible or advisable for all projects. This study, through the realization of five case studies, seeks to identify the main limitations of responsive design and responsive design frameworks. Additionally, this study suggests further development models that may be more effective in the dynamic adaptation of the design and contents according to the features of the access device, such as the adoption of adaptive design, use of native apps, and hybrid models.
In mobile business (m-business), a client sends its exact locations to service providers. This data may involve sensitive and private personal information. As a result, misuse of location information by the third party location servers creating privacy issues for clients. This paper provides an overview of the privacy protection techniques currently applied by location-based mobile business. The authors first identify different system architectures and different protection goals. Second, this article provides an overview of the basic principles and mechanisms that exist to protect these privacy goals. In a third step, the authors provide existing privacy protection measures.
Information retrieval systems built with a service-oriented architecture have numerous advantages, and portlets are a key technology to implement services which interact with each other in the presentation layer. This work presents an efficient approach for the communication between the components of an information retrieval system based on multiple portlets in a single user interface. It also presents the architecture and the main methods of the system implemented as a case of use for this approach. It is shown that the proposed solution yields the best inter-portlet communication mechanism in each situation, while possessing the ability to deliver aggregated search and superior user experience.
E-loyalty has received great interest from researchers as a key element for customer retention and the growth of firms as well as gaining new customers. This study aims to investigate the impact of the electronic website services quality on e-loyalty in the companies listed within Paltel using electronic satisfaction as a mediating variable. Seven dimensions of e-service quality are examined including content, structure, interaction, presentation, responsiveness, e-security, and reliability. The quantitative research approach is conducted on the returned 393 valid surveys. The findings revealed and emphasized the role played by e-satisfaction as a mediating variable between the independent variable's dimensions and the independent variable.
Predictive maintenance predicts failures and determines the equipment's remaining useful life, which provides maintenance time to plan their interventions, preventing breakdowns or reducing their impact. This paper presents a software application, implemented in a web platform, to support the implementation of a predictive maintenance plan. The developed system currently monitors certain parameters of a plastic injection molding machine. Furthermore, this system has real-time alerts that notify the maintenance team when the measured temperatures are outside the defined limits. Some extras were added, such as the report page, which calculates, automatically, performance indicators, the access management page, and a page that permits the realization of autonomous maintenance interventions, the verification of its fulfilment, and the visualization of the performed interventions' results. After the system's implementation, it was tested in real operating conditions. Following the test time, it was concluded that the desired parameters were measured correctly, which supported the work's continuation.
Security assessment is crucial to the implementation and use of secure web portals. Literature reports studies about knowledge representation models for systems assessment and information security areas; however, there is a lack of conceptual formalization for the security assessment area. The security assessment ontology (SecAOnto) objective is to formalize knowledge on security assessment. It is based on ontologies, taxonomies, vocabularies, glossaries, and market guidelines. This paper presents an application of SecAOnto with the objective of identifying concepts in descriptions of security assessment items; the coverage of security characteristics is determined by using a coverage calculus algorithm. The application of SecAOnto and of the coverage calculus algorithms to the well-known standard ISO/IEC 27001 highlights its expressiveness. The proposal is useful for security experts and researchers in the context of security assessment, as well as to support web-based conceptual architectures.
The use of social media platforms by university students and teachers has been found to facilitate the learning and teaching processes. This includes providing opportunities for students to share and discuss relevant ideas and issues, thus making the task more enjoyable and raising the level of achievement. This study explored the use of social media platforms by public universities in Egypt. It investigated how these universities utilized social media platforms, and whether they are used for educational purposes or not. The data was collected from 21 universities using a questionnaire survey of 2100 undergraduate and postgraduate students. The official social media pages of each university were surveyed and analyzed using content analysis method. The results revealed that the use of social media platforms by public universities was for the purpose of communicating with the general public more than the students. This study also found that the majority of students consider social media platforms of their universities to be useless and not supporting their academic studies. This paper offers practical implications and recommendations for universities' decision makers and social media developers.
The world wide web (WWW) plays a significant role in information sharing and distribution. In web-based information access, the speed of information retrieval plays a critical role in shaping the web usability and determining the user satisfaction in accessing webpages. To deal with this problem, web caching is used. The problem with the present web caching system is that it is very hard to recognize webpages that are to be accessed and then to be cached. This is forced by the fact that there are broad categories of users and each one having their own preferences. Hence, it is decided to propose a novel approach for web access pattern generation by analyzing the web log file present in the proxy server. Further, it tries to propose a novel hybrid policy called popularity-aware modified least frequently used (PMLFU) that best suits for the current proxy-based web caching environment. It combines features such as frequency, recency, popularity, and user page count in decision-making policy. The performance of the proposed system is observed using real-time datasets, empirically using IRCACHE datasets.
