[7952]

A few years ago I visited an office in Birmingham which is less than 100 miles. Someone was trying to tell me a password and I had to get them to write it down after several failed attempts. The basic sound of some of the letters was just completely different. I also have a strong accent which can be much harder to understand than a none native speaker.

[brandmeyer]

NATO phonetics (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, etc) helps with this. The words were chosen specifically to be resistant to accent differences.