Test results for Birmingham City Council
According to our records, this website last had a major update on 2016-08-01 - webteam members can update this information themselves.
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| Totals | Navigation | A-Z | Site search | Readability | Score | Tests | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total scores | 5 | 5 | 12 | 12 | 0 | 34 | ||
| Number of tests | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 9 | ||
| Usability Index (total score ÷ number of tests) | 3 | 3 | 6 | 6 | 0 | 4 |
About the scores
Each task can be tested according to five different criteria - navigation from the home page, navigation using the A-Z directory (where present), searching on Google, searching using the site's internal search, and the readability of the page. Scores are assigned according to 10 = Very easy, 8 = Easy, 4 = Difficult, and 1 = Gave up. As more users complete any given test, the score for each aspect of each task becomes a mean average of all the individual testers scores, and thus the more tests are completed the more reliable an indication of the usability of the website can be seen. The total scores in the table are thus the sum of the averaged scores for the whole suite of tasks which have been tested.
The Usability Index is the sum of the scores of all the tests which have been carried out, divided by the number of tests which have been taken for this council, resulting in an index score between 1 and 10, with 6 being the score which a nominallly usable website with room for improvement might be expected to achieve. If any criteria have had fewer than 15 tests, or the site as a whole has had fewer than 50 individually tested items, the final Index scores are shown in a grey background to indicate insufficient testing for the result to be a reliable indicator.
The Importance column shows the mean average of how important all the testers considered the ability to complete this task to be, ranging from 0 = Unimportant to 5 = Very important.
Specific comments made about this council
Adult education courses - find information - 2016-09-16
Google took me to http://www.learnbaes.ac.uk/; internally, being under Schools and Learning may make some people miss it thinking that section is just for children.
Antisocial behaviour - complain about it - 2016-09-16
There doesn't appear to be much that you can actually report; what's the point of it? There's no clue of where it could be in the main navigation.
Broken street lights - report - 2018-09-18
took me 2 clicks to get to the page with the broken streetlights form
Council housing - apply for it - 2017-01-11
Started off easy enough, but was taken to a separate website where I had to give up. Internal search results were useless. Navigation was useless - I couldn't find anything referring to council housing in the navigation.
Council meeting - read the last full council minutes - 2017-01-11
I get to a page called CMIS - Committee Management Information System, which I assume is the place, but from the very, very, very long introductory text on the page it appears you have to register in order to access any minutes. This is outrageous.
Council meeting - read the last full council minutes - 2019-10-10
That was very confusing. I found the committee section of the website very easily, but got lost from here onward. I didn't understand what the icons were for, so mostly ignored them to start off with.
Council news - find it - 2017-01-11
The latest news on https://www.birmingham.gov.uk/news seemed to be from a week ago.
Council tax / housing benefit - apply - 2017-01-11
The readability of the pages as I went through the process just got harder and harder. There's a lot of confusion around Universal Credit, but to be fair I'd hope that real benefit claimants would be better able to know what it is they're claiming for.
Councillors - find who mine are - 2017-01-11
I'm sure the wording on the page /councillors could be snappier
Cycling strategy - find it - 2017-01-11
I found half a page of aspiration, but no actual detail of strategy. They appear to have a separate dedicated cycling website, but I couldn't find anything there either.
Death - register one - 2017-01-11
The initial information page is easy enough to find, but it tells me I need to make an appointment to do it in person, but it doesn't offer an online appointments system.
Economic condition and strategy for the area - find it - 2017-01-11
I'd actually go as far as saying this actual section of the site is an excellent example of good practice for other councils to follow! It's a shame though I could only find it by search, I gave up looking for it by navigation.
Elections - find out when the next ones are - 2017-01-11
I found the date of the next election from an internal search which took me to an election results page, almost as a footnote. I wouldn't expect to find the date of the next election on the page about past elections. Couldn't find any information by navigating.
Employment help for people with disabilities - find information on - 2017-01-12
I assume this council doesn't offer this service.
Events - find council ones - 2017-01-12
It's easy to find the events section, but finding events I might be interested in is terrible - there's no categorisation by event type, and most of the events listed are ongoing activities like martial arts classes, rather than individual events on specific dates. The link from the home page could very easily be missed.
Flood protection - find information - 2017-01-12
I found a page for reporting that the street was flooded but no information about flood protection by search. I did find some information by navigation, but the user journey was very convoluted.
Food hygiene problem - report one - 2017-01-12
Finding the form via search was really easy. Once I got to the form it was terrible - some address boxes wouldn't accept input, and the nuance of whether I'm reporting a food product complaint or a food business complaint is lost on me. Navigating from the home page I found it from both Business, and Environment, though I'm not sure either of those options would be obvious to most people.
Freedom of Information Act request - make one - 2017-01-12
Finding the form was easy, but the actual form itself was awful.
Jobs - find a council job - 2017-01-12
Finding the jobs page is easy, but the display of the full list of jobs is really difficult to scan through.