I have just spent the past half hour trying to make a account to use steams forums, but I can not get past the image verification part. I am slightly colour blind so I can not read the characters. For me the letters just blur with the background, so I can only make out one or two. To make it worse every time I get it wrong it resets some of the fields so I have to enter some of my information again.

This whole thing is getting on my nerves and it keeps happening to me, as more and more websites are adopting this procedure. Some are better than others because a few websites have an option where you can have the letters read out to you.

But anyways my point is, Does anyone else have problems with image verification or am I just alone on this one?

(I can not contact steam about this issue, because you need an account to contact steam >.< )

I feel for you mate. That really sucks.
But you don't even have to be colour blind to have problems with the damn things. I often find myself refreshing the image until something pops up I can take reliable guess at. It really is very annoying.

I agree, I can see fine, 20/20 vision, not color blind, but I have issues. I remember this one time I spent a good 40 minutes entering that shit. Damn near threw the keyboard out the window.

I hate image verification. A lot of the sites that I have had to do it on were o.k., but there are a few that go way overboard with it. I had to try typing in the letters at least 10 times because they were so distorted and clumped together.

Have you seen the spam threads that sometimes pop up around forums? Well if a captcha (thats what its called) is removed all spam bots have an easer time.
I'm sure there are other reasons but thats the basic one.

Does it have an option to read you what is there?

Dear god, I know what you mean, when I was trying to update my myspace page I encountered an image verifier that was about 10-15 characters long.

Alexious:
I have just spent the past half hour trying to make a account to use steams forums, but I can not get past the image verification part. I am slightly colour blind so I can not read the characters. For me the letters just blur with the background, so I can only make out one or two. To make it worse every time I get it wrong it resets some of the fields so I have to enter some of my information again.

This whole thing is getting on my nerves and it keeps happening to me, as more and more websites are adopting this procedure. Some are better than others because a few websites have an option where you can have the letters read out to you.

But anyways my point is, Does anyone else have problems with image verification or am I just alone on this one?

(I can not contact steam about this issue, because you need an account to contact steam >.< )

I just want to know what does "slightly color blind" mean. In my experience with people use the qualifier "slightly" (slightly Hypoglycemic, slightly dyslexic, slightly allergic, slightly ADD) it translates to "not".

As for emailing steam. There is contact information on the valve website, saying you cannot send of an email to handle this issue is silly (I suppose if you don't really want a steam account it is as good an excuse as any).

While the image verification can get confusing and be an inane waste of time, I have never had any problems with it.

I just had to enter one of those after sending an e-mail, to myself. that damn thing was so picky about capital letters I had to re-enter it a few times. That pissed me off a little. In reality I've never had any huge problems with it, just little annoyances like that.

Isn't there some "Hard of sight" button? I thought that was Steam's but I could be wrong. It reads out words or something, but it supposedly makes it easier on people with bad vision.

Yeah, those things are really annoying. I've even seen sites where you needed to pass one of those to be able to just search through the site for something!

Some sites that I frequent require an image verification for every log-in. It's rather annoying, especially when it's nigh impossible to make out the words and refreshing loses your info.

I hate those things with a burning passion, my eyesight isn't what it used to be.

I'm also very hard of hearing, so the sound ones annoy me just as much.

i screw those up all the time and it makes me question my own humanity :(

Most image verification systems have a vocal component that you can use if you suffer from color blindness.

I've had problems with it in the past. Like 0's are really O's. Luckily, some sites are considerate enough to actually tell you the limitations of what the system does (e.g. case insensitive, no capital letters, no zeros, etc).

They are a pain in the arse, but I understand why they are necessary.....without them, a forum for instance is spam botted to heel and a handbasket.

But yes, some are easy to get thru. Others, the letters are all crammed together and you can barely make out what some of the letters are, and you have to try several times before one comes up that is actually legible.

God, I have 20/15 vision and those still completely baffle me. Most of the time I just take a guess or ask a friend what it says.

Only those on Steam, never had problems with them until Steam rolled in.

I'm dyslexic so sometimes those things can be a pain in the ass. I can read actual words because the characters are mixed around and i can figure it out. But when it's gibberish how do i translate it from other gibberish?

I usually have someone I'm living with read it to me.

Alexious:
I have just spent the past half hour trying to make a account to use steams forums, but I can not get past the image verification part. I am slightly colour blind so I can not read the characters. For me the letters just blur with the background, so I can only make out one or two. To make it worse every time I get it wrong it resets some of the fields so I have to enter some of my information again.

This whole thing is getting on my nerves and it keeps happening to me, as more and more websites are adopting this procedure. Some are better than others because a few websites have an option where you can have the letters read out to you.

But anyways my point is, Does anyone else have problems with image verification or am I just alone on this one?

(I can not contact steam about this issue, because you need an account to contact steam >.< )

Unfortunately spammers are to blame for the requirements.

If you are still having problems, pop me a PM with an imageshack link to the image verification thing and i'll do it as quickly as possible, and hopefully it won't have timed out (i'll be here for about 3 hours btw).

Some image ver things now have spoken word versions but to be honest they are pretty much obsolete now since spammers can break them ~50% of the time, so hopefully they should be gone soon.

Get to the verification screen, do a print screen on the page, copy it to a paint program and then use that program to reduce the colour depth. You should be able to gray scale it and adjust the image to make the text stand out much more clearly.

It is unfortunate, just try a different website, or have a friend fill in that field for you

It sucks. Alltho I have encountered sites where you can also have a robot voice read the verification. Sometimes this isn't very helpful since the voice appears to be generated by beating a dead horse. But in general it's easier than trying to read something that looks like it's written by a thumbless cripple.