Sunday, October 02, 2011

This is unacceptable

A few minutes ago I was reminded of a situation that has been allowed to continue on the Government of Newfoundland website that is completely unacceptable.

While the Department of Government Services provides online access to its Registry of Companies, one can only access the database if they are using Internet Explorer 6.

In case you aren't up on these things, Internet Explorer 6 was first released in 2001. According to the Wiki article about Internet Explorer 6 suggests that "Microsoft now considers IE6 to be an obsolete product and recommends that users upgrade to Internet Explorer 8." A Microsoft website dedicated to eradicating Internet Explorer 6 goes are far as to say "Now that we’re in 2011, in an era of modern web standards, it’s time to say goodbye." This same site also suggests that only 2% of Canadians use this browser.

So to get back to my original point, by allowing access to the database exclusively through an outdated browser the Department of Government services is effectively failing to provide access to this data about Newfoundland companies to the vast majority of the Canadian population. That this situation has been allowed to persist is completely unacceptable.

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