Abstract

Readability refers to the ease of reading and understanding a text. The need to ensure the readability of Web pages is related to universal access to products and services in the information society, which aims to provide an Internet for all. This article describes a study conducted to assess the readability of textual contents of Web portals of 40 universities at the top positions in international university rankings to determine whether the best universities have readable web pages. Mathematical formulas that evaluate syntactic difficulty of text oriented to texts written in English or in Spanish were applied.

Abstract

Since its launch several years ago, Europeana has continued to improve the quantity and quality of its content, attempting to offer new services and differentiate itself from the more popular search engines. The Assets  project has contributed to this goal by developing innovative content-based search technologies and services, improving existing functionality, and designing more user-friendly interfaces. This paper describes in detail some of the new services that were implemented in a replica of the Europeana website. A user evaluation process was conducted in several European countries, with a total of 51 usability tests performed. The results reveal the benefits and drawbacks of the portal. The identified problems were systematically prioritized. In the final phase of the project, a redesign resolved 74% of all usability incidents. The result is a number of features that enhance the original Europeana portal, giving the user more and better search tools.