I'm Not a Robot! So Why Won't Captchas Believe Me?

Like so many this winter, Norine McMahon was searching for a Covid-19 vaccine appointment, hitting Refresh on her browser continuously. The Washington, DC, resident was elated to find an opening in late February, but delight turned to disappointment when she failed the captcha user-verification test, even though she swore she entered the letters and numbers correctly. "Then I would do it really slowly to make sure I was getting it correct, because of course the pressure is on. It happened a dozen times. The captchas weren't working," says McMahon, 61, a facilities director who gave up that day but eventually secured an appointment.