diff --git a/contrib/check-code.py b/contrib/check-code.py
--- a/contrib/check-code.py
+++ b/contrib/check-code.py
@@ -30,7 +30,7 @@
     opentext = open
 else:
     def opentext(f):
-        return open(f, encoding='ascii')
+        return open(f, encoding='latin1')
 try:
     xrange
 except NameError: