I support standards. In my own way I like to help develop them within my own capabilities. I was recently invited to join the British Standards Institute to help with the work of one of their committees, IST/41. IST/41 is responsible for document description and processing languages and represents the UK in the work of the International Committee: ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34, which maintains and develops standards for SGML (and extentions to support HTML and XML), DSDL, HyTime, ISMID and presentation standards such as SPDL and DSSSL.

Within a few emails it became clear that the setup was riddled with acronyms so I asked about tutorial help. I was pointed to this page, in particular e-learning. Great I thought. Then I signed up for one of the courses. Or tried to. this page is the log in page. Note the text (if you haven't paid the Microsoft tax)

* You must have internet explorer browser version 5 or above to use this LMS, please change your browser type.

Ah. I enquired. I'm on Linux, using Firefox, seemingly not good enough. The first response was

At present the only browser that the learning management system operates fully is Internet Explorer. In developing the elearning system it was not possible to have it function on a variety of browsers and operating systems; we had to work within certain constraints and limitations. This is something that will be investigated in the future but at present there are no timescales for this.

Not possible. OK. I thought this rather discriminatory, must I buy a Microsoft Operating system to view the training material? Seems so. And since I have no reason to travel to London I wasn't in a position to take up the offer of using a local machine in Chiswick, London.

A later email stated

To the best of my knowledge all computers purchased come with Internet Explorer as standard, although it is up to the individual to make the decision regarding using the program.

I found this a little disturbing, coming from a standards organisation. I suggested that although hard to prove, browser distribution wasn't quite as black and white as was being suggested. I suggested HTML might be a reasonable format for the courses. The reply was

The Learning Management systems does not recognise HTML files, which is why the courses were not written in HTML, and why we will not be able to provide a the courses in HTML, in the future.

I wondered what magic IE has that allows it to read these files, that Firefox can't!

So. In summary I'm collecting a list of ISO acronyms and wondering which other countries standards bodies are perhaps a little more understanding of non Windows users interested in ISO processes. Any suggestions?