Don't let your child become a victim of autocorrect

Some 22.6 million adults in the UK have experienced autocorrect changing their name, or their name being flagged as incorrect, that's 41 percent of the population.

A new campaign I Am Not A Typo (IANAT), is calling on the tech giants to correct autocorrect and spell-check spell-check to make the technology more inclusive and has released some results of a survey carried out by Censuswide to back up its cause.

Among people who experience autocorrect changing their name or having it flagged as incorrect, 61 percent say they feel negatively about it (whether that's feeling uncomfortable, angry, disrespected, upset, excluded and/or resentful) -- and one in ten say that the technology is 'racist'. More than four in 10 (41 percent) say that technology companies need to update their naming dictionaries to better reflect today's multicultural society.

The mis-naming phenomenon is most prevalent for 16-24-year-olds, with 62 percent considered 'typos' -- and whose names appear in the pages of new free ebook and audio book 100 Incorrect Baby Names.

Cathal Wogan, IANAT campaigner, says:

As the title suggests, this book contains 100 incorrect baby names. 'But', you might say, 'a child's name can't be incorrect, surely'. Well, you're right. However, your phone or your laptop might disagree with you.

Every day, would-be parents leaf through baby name books to find the beautiful or inspiring names that they might give to their children. But if they come up with something too ethnic, too interesting, too culturally divergent, that name could be incorrect. Wrong. A typo. That's why we have written 100 Incorrect Baby Names, and that's why we want the tech giants to correct autocorrect and spell-check spell-check.

A whopping 2,227 out of 5,672 (39 percent) names given to girls in England and Wales (with minimum of three occurrences) were 'typos' in I Am Not A Typo's testing. For boys, 2,930 out of 6,400 (46 percent) names were 'typos'. Of 16-24s, 58 percent know someone else whose name is autocorrected or has been flagged as incorrect.

Wogan adds, "It's clear that this is an issue that deeply affects and upsets millions of people. The number of typos is creeping up and while we've seen some famous names added to dictionaries, there’s still an enormous number of popular baby names that are still typos. Is big tech favoring the famous over the numerous? What we do know is that 43 percent of baby names are still typos, which means our job is not done yet. We've been left on read by the tech giants for one year. And we will not stop until the issue is solved."

IANAT is launching a billboard campaign to raise awareness, there's an example below.

Image credit: kleberpicui/depositphotos.com