diff --git a/oletools/rtfobj.py b/oletools/rtfobj.py
index 4f2259a..0878bd4 100644
--- a/oletools/rtfobj.py
+++ b/oletools/rtfobj.py
@@ -578,7 +578,7 @@ class RtfParser(object):
             # it should be treated as a null length:
             binlen=0
         # ignore optional space after \bin
-        if self.data[self.index] == ord(' '):
+        if ord(self.data[self.index:self.index + 1]) == ord(' '):
             log.debug('\\bin: ignoring whitespace before data')
             self.index += 1
         log.debug('\\bin: reading %d bytes of binary data' % binlen)