Captchas: The Bain of Everyone's Existence

As spammers and spam bots continue to get smarter, we will only have to work harder to prove that we are in fact human when we're filling out forms on the web. At this point, we prove our humanity by answering what are called "captchas", or what I like to call, " images that you have to have a super power to read and understand." For the sighted, these captchas are just an annoyance, but to the non-sighted, or reading disabled, inaccessible captchas are potentially a hinderance to us participating on the web. I bring this topic up not only because I continue to encounter inaccessible captchas, but also because I'm happy to say that there is a lot of effort to make sure that captchas are solvable by everyone. So where is the hope, and what can we do to continue to outsmart the spammers, without keeping out people with disabilities?

First I'll tell you about two different options for solving inaccessible captchas. The first is a plugin for the Firefox browser called Webvisum. This plugin will actually solve the captchas for you. I question the intelligence of such a program since it's possible that spammers may get a hole of it, but at least for now it is a way to solve captchas if you can't see or understand them. The second is a service called Solona. This is a website run by a web developer who volunteers his time to solve captchas for people who can't see them. In order to use the service, you take a screen shot of the form with the captcha, send it to Solona, and then a human volunteer will answer the captcha and send the form back to you. These services are good options, but they aren't a complete solution to the problem.

So the question is how do you make a captcha accessible, without making it solvable by spam bots? There are actually many options. The current audio captchas include, typing in a set of numbers that you hear, and typing words that you hear. The draw back to both of these is that they can be difficult to hear, or too challenging. I often have to listen at least 2 to 3 times and then I still worry that I'll get it wrong, but at least this option gives me the potential of being able to submit the form. Another option, and one of my favorites is to make the captcha a question that you have to solve, such as, "what is 2 plus four?" This is a simple math problem that most people should be able to solve, but it isn't something a computer can solve. Finally, there soon will be a new option thanks to the work of the NFB and Townson University. They're new system will use pictures of familiar objects and sounds that correspond to the pictures. If you are listening, the answer to the captcha is whatever the sound corresponds to. So for example the image may be of a lion, and the sound would be a lion roaring. The answer to the captcha is lion.

So as frustrating as captchas can be, it seems like there is efforts to make them more user friendly without being spam friendly, and with hope maybe someday people with disabilities won't need services such as Webvisum or Solona.