Re: Web User Verification Screens

  • From: "E.J. Zufelt" <lists@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2010 11:06:10 -0400

Good morning Peter,

This is not as easy as it may seem.

The purpose of these scripts is to deter automated systems from being able to 
successfully pass the challenge.  embedding information about the solution to 
the challenge within the page is not a successful means of ensuring that 
automated systems cannot pass the challenge.

There are some things that can be attempted.

Question / answer challenges.  Although these are not really a CAPTCHA, since 
they are not "completely automated", they can be solved more easily by some 
users than standard visual / audio challenges.  I have some anecdotal data that 
shows that these styles of CAPTCHA are more easily solved by automated systems 
than visual and audio CAPTCHAs.

Another method is to provide a contact link where users can request to have 
their accounts exempt from the challenge.  This as well can be problematic.  
For starters this is not a real time solution to the problem, users have to 
wait to receive a response, sould they ever receive one at all.  Secondly, this 
may not be possible on sites where users are not authenticated with 
credentials, such as the CAPTCHAs required on some sites to expose e-mail 
address or to send contact forms.

This is a complicated problem with non-trivial solutions.  I think that the 
most important, by far, factor to consider when contacting an organization 
about the CAPTCHA on their site is to allow them to know that you fully 
recognize their need to have some form of automated verification system to 
protect their site and other users.  This means that the conversation will 
start from a position of respect.

HTH,
Everett Zufelt
http://zufelt.ca

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On 2010-08-17, at 10:56 AM, Peter Donahue wrote:

> Hello everyone,
> 
>    Also include the ability to make this information available to screen 
> readers while hiding it from spam bots. There are people being left behind 
> such as the deaf-blind. Audio captchas won't work if you cannot hear them. 
> This population is tired of being left out of Web accessibility.
> 
> Peter Donahue
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Tom Ladis" <tom@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Tuesday, August 17, 2010 8:48 AM
> Subject: Web User Verification Screens
> 
> 
> Hello all. I have been running into more and more of the web based
> verification screens that ask me to read a bunch of scrambled text, which I
> usually cannot. Sometimes they offer a "speak it out loud" link, but that
> often gets stepped on by JAWS announcing the popup.  There are third party
> solutions to the problem, but they require that the user knows about them
> and that they work correctly with their browser.
> 
> Does anyone have any ideas for a good replacement for the screen that would:
> 
> 1. Present the scrambled text
> 
> 2. Speak it out loud without a popup
> 
> 3. Be portable across the many platforms
> 
> ?4. Be a simple replacement to existing solutions
> 
> 
> 
> I feel that it would be a huge advantage to have all of the necessary
> features built into an accessible control that I could present to some of
> the major web sites for their use, to replace the mess that is spreading
> across the web with the many solutions which all have problems.
> 
> 
> 
> Maybe something like a Macromedia Flash control but accessible and portable.
> 
> 
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Tom Ladis a
> 
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