Greetings... just found this group. I've been screened for Irlen
syndrome this year and
appear to have it; though they still don't get rid of all my visual
distortions, the tinted
lenses I got definitely help *lessen* my visual quirks and make
things somewhat easier to
read and see.

Anyway, I mention my new-member status because of the annoying hurdle
Yahoo makes
all new group members jump through. You probably know what I'm
talking about: that
bit of distorted text you have to read in order to prove you're not a
spam bot. Problem is,
with my visual processing problems, 5 out of 6 times I'm mistaken for
a bot. :-)

Apparently even people with *normal* visual processing have trouble
with these things.
And it does make sense. There are so many characters in our alphabet
and number
system that look similar when ever-so-slightly distorted-- 8 and B; 7
and T; 6 and G; l
and I and 1... and there's no redundancy, because most of the
verification codes are a
randomly generated assortment of letters and digits, rather than a
coherent word.

You'd THINK by now that Yahoo would have come up with an accessible
alternative-- more
accessible than the one buried in the image's ALT text, which tells
you to go to a certain
URL and have a Yahoo support representative sign you up. Yeah,
that's all well and good,
except that you'll only see it using a text-only browser (hey, some
of us have visual
processing issues and DO load graphics!), and that it's naturally
slower because the
request actually has to go through a human. MSN and PayPal have a
far better idea-- offer
a sound file with a computerized voice reading the letters and
numbers in the image.
Granted, my auditory processing's not the greatest either, but with
the visual and audio
*together*, I can usually figure out what the code is on the first
try. The software that
drives these things is open-source and freely available-- so why
can't Yahoo bother to try
installing an update to solve this issue?

--
Cody B. / "codeman38"
cody@...
http://www.zone38.net/