The Research, Development, and Evaluation Commission, Executive Yuan (RDEC) commended the Accessible Web Development Guidelines (AWDG) project to the Taiwan Assistive Technology and Vocational Rehabilitation Association (TATA), which is in charge of formulating for providing good quality websites for the governments in Taiwan. According to the e-government’s AWDG, all the government websites need to be certified and have received a rating of ‘A+’ in order to be considered as adhering to the guidelines of website design. This study was conducted to verify whether the government websites with a high level of accessibility had good usability. Twelve government websites were selected with the aim of testing their performance and the subjective satisfaction derived from using them; all the websites had been evaluated as good accessibility websites by the RDEC in the year 2005. The results of the study were as follows. First, the websites that were rated as having good accessibility had low usability (performance measurements) and resulted in low subjective satisfaction. Second, based on the results of the literature review, usability testing, subjective satisfaction, user observation, W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and general website design principles, this study helped in the formulation of website design guidelines for incorporating accessibility and usability.
