I don't want anyone to get the idea I am defending faceless corporations like MySpace, Google etc. but the issues that lie behind the use of CAPTCHA technology is a very real one and not some random or not so random attempt at excluding the visually impaired population. On the one hand these online services are under very serious attack from botnets trying to harvest information which if successful can hurt all of us. On the other hand it is really very difficult to find a text only method of telling a human apart from a computer or bot or otherwise automated information gathering mechanism. So far as I know nobody has been able to come up with a purely textual method for telling a human apart from a computer (sort of a Turing test but from the point of view of the computer doing the sorting out). For now different organisations have found different ways around eg. using audio CAPTCHA or in some cases some other intevention that can catch these difficult cases. I think sometimes when people are confronted with this difficulty or similer end up throwing around terms like DDA and "discrimination" quite liberally without realising that there is another side to the equation. Whilst the frustration at not being able to do what is important is very real, the issues that lie behind the CAPTCHA are also too and this is behind what people perceive as inertia to do something. I speak from personal experience of having difficulty with the visual CAPTCHAs with my level of sight and it is not as if I am unaware of the difficulty from a user perspective either. There are also some really stupidly implemented CAPTCHAS which are so easy that an OCR program as part of a determined attempt would break the system (and indeed have). Audio CAPTCHAs are only a partial solution and again speech recognition being as advanced as it is can also be used in order to break the CAPTCHA system as well. Regards. Tristram Llewellyn tristram.llewellyn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Technical Support Sight and Sound Technology ** To leave the list, click on the immediately-following link:- ** [mailto:access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe] ** If this link doesn't work then send a message to: ** access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx ** and in the Subject line type ** unsubscribe ** For other list commands such as vacation mode, click on the ** immediately-following link:- ** [mailto:access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=faq] ** or send a message, to ** access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the Subject:- faq