intheventofire

So I guess this is an open Letter to the folks that make these captcha landmines…

Before I start I want to say I understand why these things exist and I appreciate the work they do in saving me from Online Pharmacies, penis enlargers, Russian brides, and (never really) free I pads…

I just wish there were more ways round them for us special kids…

I have been stuck behind these diagrammatic nightmares for ten or twenty minutes before and the last thing you need after 30 minutes of data entry is a freaking hurdle. I don’t know what it is about these things.  In theory they are just simple pictorial puzzles, but in my mind they mostly look like those stupid 3d magic eye puzzles that were big in the 90’s and they only ever gave me headaches…

Now, I applaud the clever boffins who have added the Audio Captcha option, but some of us have been forced to learn our spelling phonetically, hidden away in our bedrooms terrified that someone will find out that we have problems reading… at least I did when I was younger.

My English teacher, who was what can only be described as a heartless black blooded witch, was completely unable to comprehend the fact that some words are not spelt the way they sound and therefore those of us forced to try fit the square peg in the round hole could never have used a dictionary to spell a word. She once belted me for my inability to  complete this simple task… I kept my head down after that…

The problem lies with phonemic awareness and if you have a problem with that then you’ll understand my issue….They call it a weakness, but come round my house for a game of scrabble or read any of my work and you’ll soon see that it can lead to a unique and interesting style and an unusually high vocabulary.  (Basically to avoid using words that we are unsure of how to spell, people like me will write themselves out of the corner in a thesauric display of literal splendidness.)

Anyway I’m getting off the track here… My point today is that as most of the world moves away from paper and on to the crystal clear retinal displays, we the dyslexics and co are going to get stuck behind these bloody indecypherable minefields… or worse yet we’ll just give up.

So… Dear Captcha, please can you make something on your devices that allows us left brainers to sneak past your little anagrammatical digital doors… Why not do little pictures? I could even draw you some. I mean sure eventually one’s mac book pro is going to get the logic to recognise a stick cow, but that’s years off. So until then, can we please have some indication that you are listening and want to help us get our downloads,  join those forums, or pay our bills. We’re not stupid, in fact think of us as Supermen and your little gatekeepers as kryptonite.*

*mental note funny how I can spell kryptonite first time, but I can never work out how many R’s there are in around…

PS. Please consider putting a little button on your captchas along the lines of…  “Having Problems with this Captcha? Are you dyslexic?” and then maybe a relevant link?

Anyway rant over…

Look Mr and Mrs Captcha my own version and you can use it for free!

p.p.s. it’s a cow