A recent episode of Watchdog on the BBC criticized Brain Training for the Nintendo DS (Brain Age here) for not recognizing particularly strong British and Scottish accents.
During the segment, Manchester radio personality Michelle Livesey complained about the stroop test in *Brain Training, *which requires the player to say different colors like "yellow," and "blue."
"I'm going, 'yeller' and everyone's saying to me you need to be a bit posher. You need to say, 'yellow' and as soon as I did, it picked it up," she said.
Watchdog host Nicky Campbell took this as evidence that Brain Training "clearly discriminated against" strong accents, particularly those from Northern England and Scotland.
Brain Training's instructions include troubleshooting tips in case the game isn't recognizing your speech, including: "Pronounce each word as clearly as possible, and try to avoid using strong dialects or accents."
With all due respect to Ms. Livesey, Brain Training's inability to recognize certain accents is neither a unique problem nor limited to the UK. I'm from the suburbs of Philadelphia and I could never get the damn thing to understand me when I said "blue."
I don't think I have a particularly strong accent, either, though the chuckles that I get from various inhabitants of my new residence of Durham may indicate otherwise.
Brain Training Discriminates Against Northerners, Says Watchdog [CVG]
