From context I assume it's referring to offline recognition where there's no stroke order to work with. I doubt it's anything to do with the fact that people a

From context I assume it's referring to offline recognition where there's no stroke order to work with. I doubt it's anything to do with the fact that people are inconsistent about stroke order - that's true, but they're not that inconsistent and there's no reason a recognition system couldn't account for variations in order just as it does for other factors.