Abstract
Understanding users 'needs and cultures are considered two of the most important aspects of user interface design to ensure the highest level of usability. This paper presents some cultural characteristics for Arabic electronic television news web sites, through the adoption of heuristic evaluation technique. The results from the heuristic evaluation identified some major Arabic web site characteristics which are influenced by the culture. In contrast, the findings from the extensive survey have indicated the tasks needed by Arabic users, which were organized based on frequency of usage.