BlogHer - BlogHers and CAPTCHA: Is There a Better Way? - Comments

Some of them are just plain hard to read

jaycee — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 17:37:39 -0600

I agree with Debra's first comment, and Liz's comment. I often get them wrong and sometimes it gets to the stage where it's just too hard to leave a comment. I understand why people do it. I'm a fan of Askimet for Wordpress. They seem to have it sussed and since I made the move to wordpress at the beginning of this month Askimet has caught more spam than I've been left real comments.

Jen at Semantically driven and Safari suit

It's not you

Virginia DeBolt — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 07:45:43 -0600

The problem is with the CATPCHAs, not with you.

Or, on a deeper level, the real problem and the reason for the creation of such an unfriendly technology, is the vast number of people who lack the social, emotional or moral intelligence to use comments appropriately.

http://www.webteacher.ws/
http://first50.wordpress.com/

I always get them wrong...

Liz Rizzo — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 23:39:48 -0600

I can't tell you how many times I've had to try to get a captcha right multiple times. I'm always wondering if there's something wrong with me, because it happens a lot.

Liz Rizzo

I blog at Everyday Goddess.

Moderation

Virginia DeBolt — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 19:02:17 -0600

Moderation is great as an alternative, in my opinion. Once you've approved someone, they don't have to go through the wait a second time, at least with Wordpress and Blogger. And if you mark a comment as spam, you're teaching your spam filter about a spammer at the same time.

I've also seen some sites using a simple random question such as "What is 3 + 1?" which is read out as text by screen readers and would easily allow a blind user to enter a 4 in the field. And it's much friendlier to people like Debra and me. I sometimes have to try two or three times to get those squiggly letters right.

http://www.webteacher.ws/
http://first50.wordpress.com/

I hate captchas, but I don't

kperfetto — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 12:57:29 -0600

I hate captchas, but I don't have the time to police my blog 24-7, and people get a little antsy when it's been 12 hours and their comments haven't been approved. It's not perfect, but it saves me the trouble of weeding out non-humans.

Available Light & Five Dollar Radio

Laughing!

Kalyn Denny — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 09:17:47 -0600

Really laughing here because as soon as I finished leaving that comment I clicked into my e-mail and there was one of those "advertising" comments, nothing about the post, just a link encouraging people to visit a commercial site. I just hit reject and BAM. It was gone. Of course the control freak part of my personality loves having the power to prevent those kinds of things from showing up!

Kalyn Denny
Kalyn's Kitchen

Comment Moderation is Better!

Kalyn Denny — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 09:11:19 -0600

I used to hate it when sites used comment moderation (I guess I liked the immediate gratification of seeing my comment appear!) However after I started having someone post ads for other sites on my blog repeatedly, sometimes as many as 50 comments when I would wake up in the morning (obviously a human because I did have a comment verification "captcha" in place) I switched to comment moderation,. I realized it was much easier to reject an unwanted comment than it was to have to manually delete the comment. Later I realized it also eliminates the need for the comment verification. Love it! Now I can just reject those kinds of comments when they show up in my e-mail.

For me, it's a nice bonus that it makes it a bit more user-friendly for people leaving a comment. I would never go back. This is on Blogger, which has a very user-friendly system for comment moderation.

Kalyn Denny
Kalyn's Kitchen

Bad Capcha!

debra roby — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 09:02:34 -0600

I am not seeing impaired, just have older eyes, yet I have a challenge with some of the captcha sites. They put wiggly thin text in black on a textured gray background, at angles, and I can distinguish a miniscule, bent angled "r" from an "n". Sometimes not that easy. Or they use a type face that squishes letters so close together...

I understand requiring the text, but making it difficult for a fairly normal sighted person to see and understand is taking the "anti-spam" a bit too far. Every time I have problems, I wonder about those who see even less easily than myself. There are better ways..

Debra
A Stitch In Time
Deb's Daily Distractions

BlogHers and CAPTCHA: Is There a Better Way?

Virginia DeBolt — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 07:15:35 -0600

If you already know what CAPTCHA is, skip the next paragraph. For those of you who need a reminder, here's how Wikipedia describes it.

A CAPTCHA is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to determine whether the user is human. "CAPTCHA" is a contrived acronym for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart", trademarked by Carnegie Mellon University. A CAPTCHA involves one computer (a server) which asks a user to complete a test. While the computer is able to generate and grade the test, it is not able to solve the test on its own. Because computers are unable to solve the CAPTCHA, any user entering a correct solution is presumed to be human.

These tests, which are supposed to be passable by humans but not machines, are used to prevent spam or ensure that a real person is logging in to a site. The problem is that they don't work for all humans. Specifically, they exclude humans with vision handicaps, and possibly humans with hearing problems as well.

A couple of BlogHers who are working with NaBloPoMo have come up against CAPTCHA issues this month. NaBloPoMo is National Blog Posting Month and November is the month in question.

Skye, at All Access Blogging, called the issue to my attention with her post "NaBloPoMo and CAPTCHA."

As I mentioned in my last post, November is National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo). I am participating on my personal blog. I noticed during signup on the NaBloPoMo website that a visual CAPTCHA is required, with no instructions for people who cannot see or read the CAPTCHA.

Did I mention it in my post here? No. Bad blogger, no biscuit. I did mention it on my personal blog, and in a comment I left on the NaBloPoMo site, but I didn't highlight it here and I didn't contact the company that hosts the NaBloPoMo site to ask that they stop discriminating against people with visual and learning disabilities.

That, my friends, is a great example of privilege. Because the CAPTCHA didn't keep me from participating, even though I am interested enough in accessibility to start a blog about it, I didn't take action. I didn't have to.

Skye pointed the way to Ginny, who explained her problems with NaBloPoMo in her blog Ginny's Thoughts and Things.

Assalamu alaikum, I went to the site to sign up, that was linked to by Umm Zaid, and lo and behold! There was the dreaded captcha, *without* an audio or other accessible alternative!

Now sure I could get my husband or some other sighted person to help me sign up, but I’ve decided not to do that! There isn’t always someone around to help me, and as one other blind blogger put it, putting up a captcha that screen readers can’t read is effectively saying “no blind people allowed” and as a blind person, making me feel as though I’m not welcome.

Ginny did take some action before she decided against participating in NoBloPoMo. She contacted BlogHer Eden Kennedy from Fussy who is also the brains behind NaBloPoMo. Ginny also contacted Ning.com, which is the social network tool that Eden used to set up NaBloPoMo.

Ning pointed to some empty promises about adding the needed audio component to the CAPTCHA implementation on the site. It hasn't happened.

What about you? You're a blogger: what can you do? If you decide you must use CAPTCHA on your blog there is help out there. Before you decide that you must use it, however, look around for less exclusionary options, such as Akismet on Wordpress, or blog plug ins that eliminate much of the spam that comes your way.

The offical captcha.net site has a script called reCAPTCHA that provides the needed audio. They say,

In general, making your own CAPTCHA script (e.g., using PHP, Perl or .Net) is a bad idea, as there are many failure modes. We recommend that you use a well-tested implementation such as reCAPTCHA.

The site at captcha.net also provides some pros and cons, alternatives, and other suggestions about CAPTCHA that will help you.

Another potential source of help and information is Proposal for an Accessible Captcha--Standards Schmandards which suggests options beyond merely adding audio and provides a link to a Captcha Generator Application.