blooblog

The W3C released a working draft yesterday concerning the Inaccessibility of Visually-Oriented Anti-Robot Tests. These tests are employed in a variety of situations, presenting a distorted image of a word in an effort to stop automated form registration used by spammers and service abusers. The problem is that these images make it impossible for people with poor vision to access the service. While Microsoft's Hotmail provides an audio alternative, it is still problematic for people without soundcards, the deaf-blind, and even hearing people.

There is currently no good solution at the registration stage. Calling the verifications "Turing" tests is a complete misnomer when they fail to verify real humans. I'd like to see everyone to be able to access a service, and abusers caught by behavioral heuristics. Preventative measures are nice, but in this case too many people are getting caught on the wrong side of the fence.