Blogging for the Blind

Some of my faithful readers are going to get mad at me because I'm answering questions out of order again. Don't worry, I'll resume to the submitted order after this one. It just so happened I was wondering the same thing, so I had to answer this one first. The question is:

"I was wondering if you knew what the little handicap symbol in the word verification section of blogspot comments is used for? I can't seem to figure out why it's there or who would be needing it..."

As I was thinking this, my train of logic went like this:
1) Audio verification? So the person must not be able to see
2) Wait a second! If the person can't see, how can they blog?

This is where my logic totally broke down, simply because I was ignorant of the fact that blind people can and do blog. Apparently there are screen reading softwares out there to enable the blind or the visually impaired to "read" what we see on our screens. (It's always good to be reminded how ignorant I am) Now that we got pass the first hurdle, the answer to this question should become more apparent.

Basically, some blind folks were frustrated that blogger had some features that can't be picked up by their software. And since blogspot uses this word verification method to filter out spam (by making you decipher funky images of letters the computers can't read), the blind community was prevented from making comments. The resolve this issues blogger released this new feature and are making a lot of blind people very happy =)