#MissingType: Here’s how to take the lifeblood out of any webpage and raise NHS awareness

The NHS hit the headlines today as it launched its #MissingType campaign. No, it’s not a spate of wide spread vandalism that means hundreds of signs across the country are missing the letters O, A and B. The move is to raise awareness that there is a real shortage of blood donors and encourage more and more people to donate.

What makes this such a great campaign is that it looks beyond its own social media network. The NHS needs to attract the attention of people who aren’t already donating and a simple but wide reaching publicity stunt such as this certainly ticks that box. It has got the whole nation talking and hopefully soon they will begin donating.

So… what if the world is suddenly ran out of A, B and O?

Would you notice anything different?

At Babel, our search team are always playing around code on websites, generally to better optimise it for search, but occasionally for fun. Our team have found a simple way to take out the A’s B’s and O’s from any web page.

To get behind the #MissingType campaign, just use Firefox browser and install the FoxReplace Plugin:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/foxreplace/

Once installed, just create a replacement rule to replace A, B and B with blank spaces.

The next time you load webpages, all the A’s B’s and O’s will have ‘disappeared’.

Share the most confusing page you found with A’s B’s and O’s missing with us on Twitter @BabelPR and get behind the #MissingType campaign.