FEMA Demands Use of IE To File Online Katrina Claims 1165
WebHostingGuy writes "As reported by MSNBC, if you survived the hurricane and are a Mac, Linux or Firefox user you cannot file a claim online. Further, you must have javascript enabled or face rejection. From the site: 'We are sorry for not being able to proceed your requests because you have failed our tests.' Opera and Netscape don't work either." Also reported at InformationWeek. From that story: "To file a claim online at FEMA's Individual Assistance Center, where citizens can apply for government help, the browser must be IE 6.0 or later with JavaScript enabled. That cuts out everyone running Linux or the Mac operating systems, as well as Windows users running alternate browsers such as Firefox or Opera. When TechWeb tested the site using Windows XP and Firefox 1.0.6, the message 'In order to use this site, you must have JavaScript Enabled and Internet Explorer version 6. Download it from Microsoft or call 1-800-621-FEMA (3362) to register' popped up on the screen." Update: 09/08 13:48 GMT by Z : Added word 'Online' to title to clarify story.
One line of code. (Score:5, Informative)
From TFA:
American citizens must use windows... (Score:2, Informative)
Next you guys will have to use Windows to be considered citizens, get passports, a social security number...
How can a government possibly limit it's services to people who use a certain software package? Is this discrimination? What would happen if it said "Sorry but because you're black you can not use this website" ?
Yeah, that would be an issue...
Re:you know... (Score:5, Informative)
I hate this stupid shit. And I know it's not even malicious, because I've seen it happen before at government agencies. It's out and out incompetence. Although it seems that given all the other crap FEMA has fucked up lately, this won't even register to most people.
Let FEMA know! (Score:1, Informative)
from the above link:
Written Correspondence: FEMA P.O. Box 10055 Hyattsville, MD 20782-7055 Fax: (800) 827-8112
If FEMA has requested information from you in writing, you may send it to the address or fax number listed above. Please include your name, social security number, and Registration ID number on all correspondence.Technical Assistance: (800) 745-0243 Monday- Friday, 8:00am - 5:00pm ET The technical helpdesk provides technical support for the on-line registration and user account creation applications and cannot answer disasters assistance related questions.
Please though, remember these people are a federal aid agency working overtime. PLEASE BE CORTEOUS when asking them.
Re:you know... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:you know... (Score:5, Informative)
I wonder if opera using it's browser masking could do it?
Don't know about Opera, but Firefox running the User Agent Switcher set to IE 6 works just fine (tested it myself), so I would assume that Opera with browser masking would work as well.
Anyone out there with Opera installed that could give us a definitive answer?
Re:The problem (Score:4, Informative)
This just one of a growing number of complaints against the FEMA. It's so bad that some are calling for its director, Micheal Brown, to be fired. Apparently, he's had problems in prior positions as well, as described HERE [dailykos.com]
Also, to address your point, I'm guessing that people will be filing their claims OUTSIDE of those areas.
Re:One line of code. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:ADA? (Score:5, Informative)
The Section 508 accessibility [section508.gov] guidelines are a requirement for all U.S. government sites. I have helped to develop several .gov sites, and we take 508 compliance very seriously. I think the people responsible for www.fema.gov are about to get dragged over the coals, and rightly so. Making their website work in one *one* browser is the antithesis of accessibility.
Re:Should wait until the site is cross compatible (Score:3, Informative)
I assume you are being sarcastic? You are looking at it backwards. Websites start out 100% cross-browser compatible. It takes more work to go from standard HTML forms that work in every browser to complicated XML data islands that only work in software from a single vendor. Somewhere, some incompetent web developer decided that simple HTML wasn't good enough, and put in extra work to make it more complicated and in doing so, locked people out.
Re:IE on Mac (Score:3, Informative)
The version of IE for Mac had very little to do with the Windows versions. Different code base etc. I tried to use it recently and most sites that require IE won't work with IE for Mac anyway so there is really very little point in having it. The thing is so slow it isn't funny and the look of it is quite unlike modern Mac applications as it is still covered in the old pinstripe stuff. Safari is much better and has much greater compatibility than IE for Mac these days so yes, MS is right, there is no need for IE for Mac.
Re:Just Another Asinine Hurdle (Score:2, Informative)
If you're going to start looking at who did what wrong, you should at least get your facts straight.
First of all, FEMA has been largly dissolved into the Department of Homeland Security. That means that their resource level has changed.
Second, FEMA had staged three days before the hurricaine hit.
Third, the Mayor of New Orleans knew that a category 4 hurricaine was coming, and didn't declare a mandatory evacuation until 24 hours before the hurricaine struck.
Fourth, George Bush told the NO Mayor to evacuate two to three days before that, but was ignored.
Fifth, the NO Mayor tried to declare martial law. The NO Mayor doesn't have the power to declare martial law. S/he must request the Governor do that.
Sixth, in order for the Federal government to get involved, the state government must declare a state of emergency, then declare that it cannot cope with the emergency without further assistance, and request that the Federal government provide that assistance. There is Federal law by which Fed (which includes both FEMA and the National Guard) is barred from assisting with a disaster without the express request by the state. Besides, didn't the mayor and governor state that they wanted this resolved locally?
Seventh, one third of the NO police force abandoned their duties. I have heard arguments that they had a duty to their families, first. Sorry, but I just don't buy that. If you take up a position to serve your society, take an oath, and put on a uniform - be it police, military, or other - you fulfill your duty. You don't go off and loot. You don't abandon your post because it's tough. You do your duty.
Now, you may believe that the Federal government obeying the law, and waiting until it's invited is a bad thing. I happen to believe that the Fed should not break the law, and that when the government obeys the law, that's a good thing. You can argue that the law is incorrect, but be careful about abdicating power from the people, or from the states to the federal government.
Re:Sorry but the subject of this article is mislea (Score:3, Informative)
Client-side error checking is an optional extra. It's not necessary. The only things that are necessary to take information down from people are standard HTML forms that work in any browser.
Cross-browser client-side validation isn't exactly rocket surgery either though. Checking field values in anything more recent than Netscape 4.0 is essentially identical.
No, it's not. It's difficult to do so if you want to incorporate fancy extras like animation, complex styling, dynamic page sections, etc, but none of that kind of thing is needed for a government website intended to take down peoples details. All they need are standard HTML forms with cookies to maintain state - things that have been working reliably in common browsers for a decade or so.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:You knew it was coming... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:you know... (Score:1, Informative)
Daft thing is you can make data islands work with FF no bother:
Re:Sorry but the subject of this article is mislea (Score:3, Informative)
Something like this [usps.com], perhaps.
Working fine in Opera 7 (Score:5, Informative)
Of course, I didn't finish the registration process fully, so I can't say for sure. But it looks like the broweser banning is just a choice on their part rather than a technical limitation.
Re:Sorry but the subject of this article is mislea (Score:2, Informative)
It isnt difficult to make it cross platform, and basically if you code to the standard most browsers will work, then you just modify a bit here and there so that IE will now work.
it isnt a big deal.
and it just goes to show how truely incompetent a lot of developers are.
Re:Nothing for you to see here. Please move along. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:You knew it was coming... (Score:1, Informative)
Get your facts straight... Rightwing Timeline [nyud.net]
Leftwing Timeline [talkingpointsmemo.com]
The text is wrong or was wrong... (Score:5, Informative)
That's not true. Opera works. I spent last weekend volunteering at the Reunion Arena shelter in Dallas. We booted one machine with Knoppix because the Windows install was bad. Mozilla and Konquerer failed to load the page correctly. So I downloaded Opera and it worked. Unless FEMA have gone out of their way to eliminate Opera, you should be able to register with Opera. In other words, there is nothing on that page that Opera cannot handle. We've registered a few hundred people already and a few with Opera.
The stupid site really ticks me off. Even with IE you will have problems. I think they did the stupid thing in ASP. Every stupid action you take requires exchange of states between you and the server. If you click before that's complete it will give you and error and you might have to start all over. There was nothing on that page that could not have been done with simple HTML
BTW, yesterday was the first day FEMA started working fully in Dallas. Their computers couldn't network properly so they had to take over OUR PCs to register people by doing exactly the same thing we've been doing. Not only that, they only want those computers, which do not belong to them, to be used only for FEMA registration. In the words of a FEMA worker, "People need money not email or Internet." That would be great if they all knew where the family was or our government was competent enough to provide them with that information. Unfortunately, most people have to look for their family on their own on the Internet.
Re:You knew it was coming... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:One line of code. (Score:5, Informative)
This kind of thing already exists. You don't ask if Javascript is available, you code your HTML as if it weren't, and make your Javascript alter the document structure. If the Javascript executes, then the structure is how you want, if the Javascript doesn't execute, then it remains in the compatible state.
Finer-grained control is possible too - Google for object detection versus browser detection. There's also DOM interfaces to check for support for certain things, but they aren't widely supported. "DHTML" is nothing but a buzzword - it's not something a browser can support, frames already have a fallback method, and so on.
The User-Agent header is important for working around actual browser bugs, e.g. not being able to cope with compressed content correctly despite claiming to do so.
George Bush IS a mac user... (Score:2, Informative)
George W. Bush IS himself a mac user [maczoom.com].
Which means he'd better fire the FEMA director for this one... as a fellow Mac using Republican, I would expect no less! Either that, or beat him [liquidgeneration.com] with his iPod. [engadget.com]
Re:One line of code. (Score:5, Informative)
Server: "Can you handle PNG's?"
Client: "Yes"
Server: "Are you sure?"
Client: "Yes"
Server: "The entire spec?"
Client: "Yes"
Server: "...Are you I.E. 5?"
Client: "Yes"
Server: "You're a dirty liar."
Oh, sure I.E. thinks it handles CSS properly. It will probably even tell you it handles tables properly. It just doesn't.
I'll be happy the day we can ditch the user agent string. But then again, I'll be happy the day we can use alpha transparency in a PNG on the web.
Woman calls FEMA and gets runaround (Score:5, Informative)
She called them in order to make a claim and they asked her for her address so they could send her the required paperwork (not sure HOW she called them). She told them she no longer had an address as her home no longer existed. They then asked for her home phone number so they could call her back...she again informned them she no longer had a home. They then asked for her cell phone number. She again told them there was no cell phone service where she is located. They then asked her for her fax number...then her email address....you get the picture.
FEMA's motto must be "Let's make it hard for people to get the support they need."
Is FEMA living in a hole, in a cave, in the middle of a desert or what?
accessibility is the way to do this (Score:5, Informative)
Surely they can be nailed on the accessibility.
There is a nice helpful link [fema.gov] on every page saying that they are committed to accessibility.
There is even a email address, to allow people who think that accessibility to this site is sub-optimal, to contact them.
If you know anyone who feels this way, maybe they should send an email to
FEMAOPA@dhs.gov
and I'm sure they will be pleased to sort it out.
Re:you know... (Score:1, Informative)
Very easy to get around this site's requirements (Score:4, Informative)
How do you we do this once Proxomitron and Gryphen's filters are installed? Easy! Open up
User - Include - Exclude.txt
Then add the following into this file.
www.fema.gov $SET(keyword=.js.ajs.code.flash.popup.iesite.)
Once this is done - you can now visit the site using any god damn browser you want. In my case I tested the registration page under Opera, Firefox, and Mozilla, and as far as FEMA site was concerned, this was my user agent.
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)
So really, I don't know why moronic webmasters, especially for a government or government related site, want to pull shit like this for users whom may not know how to get around "IE only" requirements.
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Sorry but the subject of this article is mislea (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Nothing for you to see here. Please move along. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:you know... (Score:5, Informative)
Link [arstechnica.com] and the below snippet:
This is a case many of us are all to familiar with. One where the 'product' is being used in an environment that it was not intended.
"Mike Quealy, a FEMA spokesperson, explained to me that they are aware of the issue, and are currently working on a application that supports all of the most popular browsers. Quealy said that the application in question was originally an in-house tool, meant to be used by call center people. Internet Explorer was the official in-house browser, so the application was coded with IE in mind."
So we have an *INTERNAL* app that was opened to the public, thus adding new browsers for which it was not designed to it's possible clients.
It's also a good lesson for designing things even when you *know* the environment in which it will be used...that can change and it's best to work with standards rather than the easiest, but perhaps proprietary choice.
Re:you know... (Score:2, Informative)
Those Bastards! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:accessibility is the way to do this (Score:3, Informative)
That Feature is; [drum roll] (Score:3, Informative)
This is part of a string of bad moves from FEMA. Brown is a serial Incompetant. [bostonherald.com] This is a man kicked out of the International Arabian Horse Association for gross stupidity.
Re:you know... (Score:3, Informative)
As usual, Slashdot is late by several days with this story. Read FEMA website doesn't work with any browser except IE 6 [blogspot.com] at The CDCer [cdcer.com].
agreed (Score:2, Informative)
Re:you know... (Score:5, Informative)
And people have run tests that show the website doesn't actually use any IE only features, it simply checks to make sure it is IE and then locks your browser out if it reports as something else. So there is no reason that the site is IE centric anyways.
Re:you know... (Score:2, Informative)
While a lot of public terminals have IE, many of them have Firefox or are Macs, and you cannot run anything else, even if IE is installed or installable.
Likewise, the people using Firefox can't run extensions to fake IE. Because it's a public terminal.
Re:accessibility is the way to do this (Score:1, Informative)
He's notorious in the horse community... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:you know... (Score:5, Informative)
$250 million was cut from the levee maintenance program, which ended up costing the country $50 billion.
More on this ridiculous state of affairs here [pnionline.com]
Re:Isn't there a IE for Mac? (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/downloads.aspx#IE [microsoft.com]
Re:there IS be a law... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:you know... (Score:3, Informative)
Standardizing on a platform (even if it is a lousy platform) can save you money in the long haul.
Re:you know... (Score:3, Informative)
Take a look at some threads further down, some people have used the site successfully after changing their browser's user-agent http header.
The website is too important to wait for a completely new application to be written.
Re:you know... (Score:4, Informative)
Everyone should know that big gov. takes time. It always has and it always will. That's why people at the local and state level need to have plans in place and be prepared for these events.
I know the NO flooding was a unique event and can't really be compared to any other hurricane scenario, but I've been through a cat 4 hurricane (Hugo '89). The mayor and the gov. of where I lived at the time knew wtf they were doing and were able to manage things until more help could arrive. They had a plan and while not everything went perfectly (does it ever), I think they did quite well.
Re:you know... (Score:3, Informative)
Such people had more credibility before the disaster than after, when they are clearly being paid to help in a major CYA operation. The cutbacks in levee construction only became "bipartisan" once it was realized they were terrible mistakes. If you want the truth, rather than the shitstorm of BS that is flying around at the moment, there are plenty of newspaper articles covering this issue that are available from the past few years. -New Orleans Times-Picayune June 8, 2004
Re:you know... (Score:5, Informative)
Even worse, Bush fired Clinton appointee James Lee Witt, who came to the job with several years of experience as head of disaster management in Arkansas. Witt revitalized FEMA, and was highly respected by both Republicans and Democrats, but Bush chose to replace Witt with Joe Allbaugh, Bush's campaign manager. When Allbaugh left the job, Bush appointed Brown to this crucial post--another man with no experience in disaster management (or indeed, any evidence of competence of any kind).
Now Posted On FEMA Site (Score:2, Informative)
Slashdot Effect in Action. Slashdot Activism is Cool
Re:you know... (Score:2, Informative)
> Now that's something I didn't know...
George Bush doesn't care about Netscape users!
Re:you know... (Score:3, Informative)
More than a year, actually. Google for "Hurricane Pam" to read all about it. Over 17,000 hits right now.
For those who aren't familiar with the term, Pam was the name of a simulated hurricane in an emergency-planning exercise that was done by a long list of government agencies in 2004. One recent summary that I read was that they predicted nearly everything that has happened in the last couple weeks; the only major thing they missed was the looting.
Also, the Army Corps of Engineers has done ongoing studies of the situation. You know that 17th-Street Canal whose broken levee was the main reason for the flooding? Repairing and strengthening that section of levee was the top item in the Corps' recommendations for the past couple years.
What happened in New Orleans is exactly in line with the predictions of hordes of engineers who have studied the situation in detail.
FEMA web designer? (Score:1, Informative)
Looking at http://web.archive.org/web/20030417184051/http://
There is a comment in the source by Jarrod Dieppa
A web search on that name brings up : http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-validator
so the person works for http://www.mbakercorp.com/ [mbakercorp.com]
Baker has over the years obtained various contracts from FEMA.
Also the website http://www.bakerproject.com/fema [bakerproject.com]
has links for FEMA exranet and
other fema information. Their webmaster is bperez@mbakercorp.com
or jdieppa@mbakercorp.com.
Hence most likely FEMA website is maintained
by Baker Corp.
konqueror 3.4.0 seems to work (Score:2, Informative)
I just tried with Firefox and got the nasty IE message. Then I set the browser ID to IE6/Win5.1 and tried with konqueror. After a few glitches probably attributable to a busy server, it worked!
This tells me that it probably should work with Firefox, but they have set it to give the error when it gets that browser string!
I know some of these guys like M$, but this is ridiculous!