The BBC’s consumer TV show Watchdog has slammed Nintendo DS game Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training for discriminating against northern accents.

The programme, hosted by Nicky Campbell, claims that the voice recognition technology used in the game struggles with northern accents, in particular the words ‘blue’ and ‘yellow’.

During the show, Manchester-based disc jockey Michelle Livesey said: “Basically you have to say the different colours that flash up on the screen as quickly as possible. I’m saying, blue, blue, blue and it’s saying no, even though it was blue.

“Then it got to yellow. 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.”

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