CAPTCHAs on Social Networking Sites Shut Out Blind Users

AFB is urging MySpace, Friendster and Facebook to offer an audio alternative to their CAPTCHAs.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• accessibility
• captcha
• socialnetworking
• myspace
• friendster
• facebook
• blind
• visuallyimpaired
• AFB
• screenreader

[SymphoniaProductions]

Catchas are a pain even if you are not blind.

[itzme10]

THATS WHY THEY HAVE THE SCREEN READER! man i swear people can be so stupid on youtube

[bluegrassbaby86]

Good job, AFB, but can we have something besides a voice talking backwards? What about a staticky AM radio sound in the background or something if you have to distort it. I for one find backmasking to be one of the creepiest sounds in the history of ever. Some sites now have a captcha where they play clips from old TV shows and you have to type it. I like those the best.

[cblazer]

@C0LL1N funny you say that because it is know that the gov has bots than can access comments on social site to sway public opinion and take the temperature on topics. I think they know computers can solve them but people just get pissed and leave abandoning their comments

[TheVerandaguy]

I think these captchas are getting out of hand. I can post one comment without having to fill out the captcha form, and then have to deal with increasingly complicated, and often erroneous captchas. I recently had to fill one out with a combination of Latin, Greek and (get this) Mandarin Chinese characters. I filled it out, having a lot of time on my hands, perfectly, and was greeted by an error message.

[razoraresharp]

captcha wont stop bots, because they relay many of them to porn sites and forums. when user enters that site, they actually help bots solve youtube, or facebook's captcha.

[FuckNewbs]

Decaptcher ftw it's cheap and it will work on any system since real people solve them. IMO captcha is pointless since everyone that uses a bot for whatever has built in access to connect with decaptcher.

[vouchsafeme]

Absolutely right. I've been working with Accessibility Standards Canada to come up with a solution that doesn't suck fr the visually impaired for our new CAPTCHA replacement technology: vouchsafe. We have side-by-side comparisons on our website, but unfortunately, no one seems to be all that excited because (we're told), the visually impaired are to small a market to matter. Our product is called VouchSafe if you're interested.

[sharks445]

Microsoft Sam is the best TTS screen reader!!

[RequiemForChange]

captcha is the most annoying, brain numbing thing to have to put up with yet...

they could at least use a real word to make everyone better spellers, or find a different algorithm to block the bots or whatever...but no, another dragnet solution to annoy the shit out of people similar in situation to the TSA and their grope everyone crap.

this country is becoming dumber by the second.

[C0LL1N]

Captchas keep out people in general.

[stefanush]

Spam is technology. Some spam bots are spreading like wild. Captcha is an example for the solving of a problem that we created. And we solved it very stupidly. Imagine if we would convert all the captcha keystrokes that everyone has to type daily into mechanical energy. We could power a small village.