OSS advocates file human rights complaint against SA election body

Using Firefox, it was extremely easy to access the website in question, merely by switching the "User Agent Switcher" add-on for Firefox to mimic IE7. The add-on has saved a lot of frustration on many websites with browser incompatibility issues for me.

It's a neat hack, but regrettably it also inflates the perceived msie market share. It would seem to strengthens microsoft's case "see, everybody runs msie, don't worry about any other browser".

It's good to have the user agent switcher hack available, but it's even better to go to the root of the problem as this complaint attempts to do.

True....but the complaint, as stated, is a little less than accurate, since it deals with the actual ability to access the website and not advertising market shares....

"The complaint says that, “unlike the vast majority of websites on the world wide web, and unlike other South African government websites, this website [the IEC website] is not accessible to viewers, except those who have purchased a particular software product from a specific software vendor."

Certainly, it would be great to resolve the problem at the root, but there is not a denial of access...and often, your need of access trumps all else. I've had the same situation with banking websites and I suppose I have the choice of not being able to my banking until the banks change their attitude, or opt to take the necessary means to conduct my business.

So do what you must to get access to your account right now, and yell at your bank about their practice of locking out non-microsoft customers.

You really should not have to resort to a hack like that to get access. To a linux savvy veteran like you, it's a trivial workaround, but to poor Aunt Martha, it would be a nightmare.

I agree, you shouldn't have to lie to your government to get information that is available (i.e. not secret).

Try the user agent hack on my.t-mobile.com, some things work and some don't. My guess is they're looking for an Active X control or something.