diff --git a/Doc/whatsnew/2.6.rst b/Doc/whatsnew/2.6.rst
index 0c3c694bf21..3a0096c6fac 100644
--- a/Doc/whatsnew/2.6.rst
+++ b/Doc/whatsnew/2.6.rst
@@ -108,7 +108,7 @@ PEP 343: The 'with' statement
 
 The previous version, Python 2.5, added the ':keyword:`with`'
 statement an optional feature, to be enabled by a ``from __future__
-import with_statement`` directive.  In 2.6 the statement no longer need to
+import with_statement`` directive.  In 2.6 the statement no longer needs to
 be specially enabled; this means that :keyword:`with` is now always a
 keyword.  The rest of this section is a copy of the corresponding 
 section from "What's New in Python 2.5" document; if you read
diff --git a/Modules/posixmodule.c b/Modules/posixmodule.c
index c36b712f735..92a8b281f5c 100644
--- a/Modules/posixmodule.c
+++ b/Modules/posixmodule.c
@@ -1565,8 +1565,11 @@ finish:
 		/* File does not exist, or cannot read attributes */
 		return PyBool_FromLong(0);
 	/* Access is possible if either write access wasn't requested, or
-	   the file isn't read-only. */
-	return PyBool_FromLong(!(mode & 2) || !(attr & FILE_ATTRIBUTE_READONLY));
+	   the file isn't read-only, or if it's a directory, as there are
+	   no read-only directories on Windows. */
+	return PyBool_FromLong(!(mode & 2) 
+	                       || !(attr & FILE_ATTRIBUTE_READONLY)
+			       || (attr & FILE_ATTRIBUTE_DIRECTORY));
 #else
 	int res;
 	if (!PyArg_ParseTuple(args, "eti:access",