FEMA requires Internet Explorer

Following up on the Copyright Office's proposal to have copyright registration limited to Internet Explorer (IE) users (see What the Copyright Office / Internet Explorer rule tells us about government information), we have news today that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is doing something similar:

• The Online registration requires Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6.0 or above

IE version 6 is only available for Microsoft Windows and has problems of standards compatibility. More information here:

• FEMA requires IE 6 and JavaScript. "I tried the latest Safari, IE and Firefox, none work. Heaven help all the Mac users in the South...."

As government information moves increasingly from documents to transactions and government web-sites become "e-government" sites where every individual user gets different information, the importance of standards-based web sites and usability becomes more and more important.