WengOnline

Turing numbers and CAPTCHAs have become a staple of registration sites and password recovery procedures in the last few years. Recently, it has become a PITA to decipher these photos. The other day, I forgot my login credentials for Youtube and the password recovery pages generated images like these for me to decipher. Took several tries because the images that time were similar to the second sample from the bottom-with one or two characters fading into the background.

I’m not color blind, but those characters/images were very hard to read. What more if I was really visually impaired, how would I get through these new security measures? Some sites offer a ‘reading’ of the characters if you’re having problems viewing the image, but again, it’s not a perfect solution.

A while back when I was still with my old company, I chanced upon a call that came through a call center–a very different call center. This one was where deaf and mute people called in or rather streaming video-ed in.

The call came in one lazy workday afternoon. It had been a relatively quiet day and few irate customers were calling. Most of the calls were inquiries and I had spent that day taking care of some administrative tasks. That call would make me think about how lucky ordinary people are.

The call was a bit weird when it started.

Caller: Hi. This is XXXX, I work in a call center in the USA that assists hearing impaired and mute (I forget if that’s really the term they used) people to place calls. I’m calling for YYYY. YYYY is hard of hearing and is using sign language to communicate with me and I will be translating for her. There will/might be some moments of silence while I translate your replies to her.

Me: Okay (As if I could say anything else.)

Caller: Alright, Ms. YYYY has a few questions about your service. She has a friend there in the Philippines who she would like to assist to have some additional income. She would like to know if … (company related service inquiry).

Me (thinking): Wow! She’s mute and she wants to help someone halfway around the world and even spends time and money to find out about a service which might be beneficial to this friend of hers.