11 Comments

  1. Hello.
    Nice article. This has been on my mind for a while now.
    I wanted to mention that due to alpha imaging, your lead illustration is illegible when in dark mode agitating as dark grey on black.
    I shared the story and discover this result in posting to my team.
    Best.
    ~m

    1. Hello Michael,
      Images on this site are new addition, my visual assist is working on them & she has extraordinarily little accessibility knowledge. I will work with someone who can investigate this & got some experience in accessibility space. As a blind person it is difficult to investigate things like these.
      Thanks for sharing this info.

  2. Nice article! If Google decides you are suspicious, they make it impossible to pass their audio challenge. A correct answer will fail. I have noticed this when using a VPN. Even if it works, it is still impossible for many people with hearing disorders. hCaptcha seems like the best solution so far.

    1. Hello Leo,
      Agree, I had challenges with google captcha system, the hack I follow is that I use the Gmail account while activating the checkbox. Hcaptcha seems like a suitable alternative & I gave it a spin, for now I like the experience.

  3. “CAPTCHA is generally easy for people with normal eyesight to complete…” Sorry, I disagree completely. They stink for everyone. If all of the tech companies in all of the countries of the world wanted to end spam and hackers, it could be done. But they would lose lots of money.

  4. Hello john,
    I wrote the post from the perspective of someone who is blind like me. When I get challenged with a captcha, I ask my visual assist to help with it. My visual assist gets through the captcha in few seconds. So, this gave me the reason to put those words in there.

    I agree with your comment.

  5. I’ve got a question about CAPTCHA’s in general:
    Why is it my responsibility as a user to help a site prevent spam? It’s not my fault that spam exists, so why should I be blocked to use any part of any website for any purpose? It’s easy to pass the buck to users, but is that fair?

    In my opinion the exemption in WCAG for CAPTCHA only applies to the text alternative for an image CAPTCHA. So the reCAPTCHA checkbox needs to pass all success criterions including “Timing Adjustable” and “Non-text Contrast”, therefore it’s use is not WCAG 2.1 AA compliant as far as I can tell.
    Also see https://www.w3.org/TR/turingtest/
    “It is important to understand the limitation of the WCAG CAPTCHA exemption. It applies only to the content of the CAPTCHA. WCAG still requires that alternative text identify the graphical object as a CAPTCHA. Conformance with all other WCAG guidelines also remains critical for web accessibility.”

    1. Hello Teun,
      Yes, as users we are not supposed to be fighting spam, there should be more automation and secure alternatives.

      You are correct, the captcha systems like google reCAPTCHA is not fully WCAG compliant. Most of the times the checkbox allows user to pass through security and when it fails the audio is not useful as it is not clearly audible.

    2. Hello Teun,
      I agree with each of your points, I added google reCAPTCHA and will consider removing it. In my view google reCAPTCHA is mostly allowing users pass the captcha by checking the checkbox. All points you made are valid and I will update the post.

      Thanks!

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