If you're reading this page you will have undoubtedly stumbled upon the image verification codes used in the forms contained throughout our website. Below we take a closer look at image verification, and explain what it is for.
Well, image verification, also widely-known as 'CAPTCHA' (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart), is a way of determining whether the end-user is a human, or is a bot or robot (i.e. an automated computer process).
It's a sad fact in this day and age that image verification on web forms has become a necessity. For the most part, we do of course recognise that the vast majority of our website users are indeed genuine bona fide human beings!
However, without the use of a CAPTCHA image verification device to confirm that the end-user is indeed a real human being, our forms would be open to abuse, and potentially susceptible to submissions from automated scripts used by spammers. This vulnerability can have a disruptive effect on our systems as well as our workload here, which may ultimately affect the service we are able to provide in turn to you.
So in a nutshell, image verification is vital!
We are aware of potential accessibility issues with image verification that may occur, and we're hoping that we will be able to improve upon the verification system used on our website in the coming months.
We're sorry to hear if you are having difficulty of any kind in using our forms because of the image verification code we facilitate or for any other reason and obviously that's the last thing we want!
Firstly, we would suggest if you find the image difficult to read, or if you are uncertain whether a letter may be a number, or a number may be a letter, then submit the form with your details completed together with what you think the CAPTCHA code is, and if your entry is wrong, your form will be redisplayed with a new random CAPTCHA code near the bottom containing a new sequence of letters and numbers to use for verification, and hopefully it should be a case of second time lucky.
We've put our image verification through extensive testing and we only come across difficulties about 5% of the time upon submission, so hopefully you shouldn't encounter any problems, or if you do, then using the above solution, your submission should hopefully be valid on the second or third submission attempt.
However, in the unfortunate event you are having difficulties still, may we recommend you call our head office regarding your form submission/enquiry, and we'll be glad to take it from there.
