CAPTCHA

There are a number of blind and visually impaired people who have written to me privately and to various e-mail discussion groups concerning the current accessibility challenges with the popular MySpace blogging and social networking web site. The most critical and immediate issue is a CAPTCHA (visual verification) appearing as part of the signup process. This CAPTCHA does not feature audio or any other method of gaining access if you are not able to see the characters you must enter into the edit box in order to register. Many blind and visually impaired people, including myself, have contacted MySpace over the past year. All such attempts at contact have been completely ignored.

It is clear that the staff of MySpace do not see fit to show even an ounce of professional courtesy toward blind and visually impaired people by responding to media queries and other attempts at contact. We must all put MySpace on notice that CAPTCHA (visual verification) without audio or some other alternative way for blind people to complete the signup process locks out the blind and visually impaired in a manner similar to the “no blacks allowed” signs during the era of segregation. While it may be clearly understood that this visual only CAPTCHA was initially put in place out of ignorance of the accessibility issue, continued disregard of our needs despite our goodfaith attempts at contact represents clear and deliberate discrimination against us.

It is certainly not too late for the MySpace people to make the conscious decision to simply do the right thing in this case. Implement an audio playback of the CAPTCHA and supply an e-mail address or other contact information where people with disabilities may receive human assistance when it does not work as expected, the user happens to be deaf-blind, etc. I urge all of you whom have not already done so to contact MySpace to register your accessibility concerns and ask the company to do the right thing.

I am working with Kurt, one of the software engineers over at Digg.com, on the implementation of their audio CAPTCHA. Unfortunately, there appear to be some scenarios where the audio is never played when the link is clicked. Please visit Digg’s registration page, click the link to listen to the CAPTCHA and send me an e-mail with your results. Please let me know whether or not you heard the audio, give some constructive feedback on the quality and provide the following technical information:

• Browser and version number
• Operating system
• Screen reader

Digg’s audio CAPTCHA is almost complete. There are some minor problems right now, but I am now confident that they care about the issue and will work with us constructively to get the technical challenges ironed out, making the registration process work not only for the sighted, but also for those of us whom happen to be blind or visually impaired. We thank the folks at Digg for taking care of this serious access issue.

We are very happy to report that FeedBurner now provides an audio CAPTCHA alternative to their visual verification requirement for the Email Subscription service. This now means that blind and visually impaired people are allowed to subscribe to RSS feeds using their e-mail addresses. In the article A New Hack on the Burning Questions blog, the FeedBurner people tell the world this accomodation was implemented within one day’s time.

Check out this excerpt from the article:

At 9:00 a.m. on Thursday, January 18, we put “normal” development on hold, gathered together in our new and improved conference room (now with white-boards and a projector!) and figured out our one-day projects. That’s the rule for Hackathon: enter the day with an idea, exit the day with a fully-implemented new feature for FeedBurner. “That’s impossible! Even for a computer,” you say. Well, this ragged band of rebels was up to the task…

This tells us that bringing down the “no blind people allowed” sign of inaccessible visual verification is mostly a matter of simply getting the decision makers and developers to decide to do the right thing. We just need to keep on the advocacy and the pressure, when necessary, to insist on equal access.