A little education goes a long way...

[conuly]

I hate chtspk. With a vengeance. I also dislike people who type LiKe ThIs or IN ALL CAPS. Normally, when asking people to stop, I just say it's hard to read (not to me so I don't care!) or that it's rude (how is it rude, huh???).

Today, I tried something new.

"Please don't type in ALL CAPS. Some people can't see very well, so they use special programs to read the text to them. When those programs come across something in ALL CAPS, many of them read like this "Ay ell ell space see ay pee ess" instead of just saying "all caps". If that person can't understand your question, they can't answer it"

The response?

"Oh."

*grins* It's good to be overeducated and spend your time linkhopping on the internet. The things you learn...


And of course, you can extend this argument:

"I'm dyslexic/foreign, I can't read standard english very well, please help"
"I'm dyslexic and use a textreader which can't read ALL CAPS well...."
"I have a tendancy to seizures, and I'm worried that your weird blinking font might induce one (I don't know if this is possible, but the good thing is they probably don't either)
"I have a tendancy to migraines, and your font is hard enough to read that it is inducing one RIGHT NOW"
"I have a sensitivity to stupid, and your post is giving me hives"

Fun, eh? The key is not to say "rude" or "hard to read". If you have the problem, they have to fix it. I'm not sure why that is, but eh.

Comments

[xreferenced.livejournal.com]

Not all textreaders read all-caps letter by letter. Both of the visually impaired girls I know use software that doesn't have this feature. One of them uses a piece of software that actually tries to guess at acronyms, which produces some hilariously funny results at times... as its guesses are usually techspeak terms, and this girl is not interested in computers beyond using them for studying/reading, so the texts she reads aren't technical. I'd quote some, but they don't translate well to English.

Re:

[conuly]

Yes, *I* know that, but the odds are that the annoying stupid people don't. And any way, if even one text reader does that, I'm happy, I can use that as an excuse.