I was banned from the hCaptcha accessibility account for not being blind (2023)

The author was essentially too smart to be blind.

I wonder whether talking about "looking at the javascript console" somehow made them think that this person cannot possibly be blind, since how could a blind person "see" the JavaScript console? (But "having my screen reader read the content of the JavaScript console to me" is a bit of a mouthful.)

You know, that's a good point, and it hadn't occurred to me. For the overwhelming majority of blind people, language like "looked at" is just metaphorical. I mean, all language is symbolic anyway. The map is not the territory and the menu is not the dinner. Some of us are taught very young to use common terms like look in that kind of a metaphorical way. Partially so that we fit in and are comfortable with the rest of sighted culture. And then once in a great while, we get condescended to for it. There's a really good example of this in the second season episode of DS9, The Alternate.

``` ODO It was a dilemma for me. I'd never seen anything like these creatures either.

     MORA
   "Seen" isn't really an appropriate 
   description.  He had no eyes per 
   se...

     ODO
   I was only trying to describe it in 
   simple terms...

     MORA
    (ignoring that)
   He had never perceived anything like 
   us before... go on...

```

I can pretty much guarantee that every blind person has had a condescending, patronizing douche canoe like Mora in their life at least once.

This is how use of language concealed aphantasia for so long. When you use a word in a context similar to how another used it in that context there seems to be a presumption that the subjective experience is the same in that context.

Given how we learn languages and words based upon encountering them in contexts, it makes sense that terms that we use in outwardly similar contexts reflect the subjective experience that each of us relate to those terms. We don't have access to another's subjective experience so I can see how it would encourage the assumption that we all perceive things the same way.

There might be many undetected variances in perception akin to aphantasia lurking in us waiting to be discovered.

Here's the thing. We're talking about people who are the accessibility team for hCaptcha. They should at least have a figleaf of an understanding of life for blind people.

The other problem we have is that online companies tend to be accountable to no one. Short of law suits, my friend who got banned from hCaptcha for "not being blind" has no recourse, because nobody is accountable.