Slashdot Mirror
Anti-Spam Webforms Leave Out The Blind
geekee writes "An article on CNET claims that a technique whereby a user enters a code word displayed in an image in order to register for a service such as an e-mail account discriminates against the blind. Advocacy groups for the blind are even hinting at lawsuits against companies using this practice. A proposed audio workaround for the blind still has problems since it has to be garbled to the point where most people can't understand it to prevent a computer from recognizing the letters. Brings up some interesting issues surrounding the Turing test."
No matter what you do to improve conditions for a large group of people, some much smaller group will still be inconvenienced or have their level of inconvenience slightly raised. In this case, we have a very important tool used to fight spammers in their quest to sign up for email accounts automatically. Billions of pieces of spam float around the 'net every day. How many blind people are there?
This reminds me of new 25-cent public bathrooms tested by New York City awhile back. You paid 25 cents to go use it, and it cleaned itself and smelled great and so on. Then people in wheelchairs complained they couldn't use them (because they were too small), and were being discriminated against. So, the company made a larger version. Except now, you had bums popping in a quarter, and having a free room for the night. More lawsuits ensued.
When will it stop?
Hotmail's one has a link "click here if you can't see the image" which then proceeds to read you the letters via an audio file which you can then type in.
Although or blind and deaf, you're still out of luck.
Wall....Wall....Intruder's leg....Intruders stomache....Intruder's head
*BANG*
It's probably worth pointing out that the /. account signup employs just such a technique.
And yes, I can see how this can be viewed as discriminatory, but the problem of devising an alternative is far from trivial.
Jurisprudence Fetishist Gets Off On A Technicality --theonion.com
And let me just say I'm profoundly sorry about the subject line of this post.
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So you are saying that blind people are not allowed to vote for the All Star Game (first site to came to mind when I read this). That doesn't seem very fair to me. Baseball is a great example of something that blind people can enjoy almost as much as a sighted person. Your analogy of a car is silly because you wouldn't expect a blind person to drive in the first place. You would expect them to surf the web, listen to baseball, and vote on the All Star game.
Now I understand that baseball is not life-threatening but it is just an example. I think you would feel differently if you or someone you loved was blind.
If we know the target language, then you could produce a challenge based on a sentence. Say something like
...] verb [location] [time]." ... as long as you've got a big enough dictionary that can fill in the blanks, generating these messages as a challenge should be a cinch. an encrypted string in the Subject (which is fairly dependably returned in the reply) could be used to identify the particular message, and the answer could be looked up
"Thirteen red small dogs went to the zoo."
What size were they? (to which the answer would be "small")
You could mix and match questions and adjectives to keep spammers on their toes. The only drawback is that this is only effective for as long as you have a bigger dictionary system than the spammers. Using a larger sentence or paragraph with more complexities should help.
"[count] [color] [size] [age] object [and [count] [color] [size] [age] [object]
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I was attempting to buy some concert tickets from a large, evil corporation recently. The letters were so contorted that I simply COULD NOT read it ... I got several friends' guesses on what the word was, and each opinion was different. If the problem is really so bad as to necessitate these word games, it might be time to try a different tactic.
For instance, couldn't you simply direct the user to perform a few simple tasks? (e.g. select the bubble with the picture of the fish next to it, then type the last name of the president of the united states in the second box from the left) I doubt AI would be able to cope with as system like this, especially if you had varying combinations of tests. If you had a variety of these tests, you could also make some that accomodated the disabled, too.
I sort of assumed there was such a thing all along. Something like those "pinpression" toys with all the parallel pins that you can push on and make an imprint of your hand, only driven by actuators. Why wouldn't this work?
(Hold on...after a little Googling, I found this instance of the exact thing I'm proposing. Go and buy it, blind people! And not just for anti-spam graphics; as with any new medium, just imagine the pr0n possibilities.)
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Anti-spam webforms not only leave out the blind, but anyone who uses a non-graphical browser (like Lynx.) Similar issues abound regarding alt tags and graphics.
There are other challenge response systems that can be used in place of graphics. I think the only reason that graphics are being used is because the designers haven't given any real thought to users who don't use graphics. This is the same kind of mental blind spot that has people using javascript and flash on major sites.
I guess the blind community finally had enough - a lot of major sites apparently are not following the recommended accessibility guidelines set down by the W3. This is their version of the stick, to convince companies (and lazy designers/programmers) that ignoring them is a bad idea.
This is not discriminatory. And speaking of that, why does every group, sect, division, race, gender, species, think that anything that isn't designed with them in mind is discriminatory? There are simply too many types of people, environments, ethics, laws, and other variables for every system to work equally, or even adequately for every person.
If I were to provide a service (even a paying one) of some sort (for example a dog wash) but then require that any customer that wants to use my service and pay me for it must hop once on their left legg as a way of verifying that they are in fact a biped and not a snake in a human disguise (just go with it). . . this would clearly be discriminatory against people missing their left legg. But that doesn't mean that I am some how liable financially or legally! I just have a clumsy authentication system and need to improve it. If I don't, then the left legged people of my town will go somewhere else to get their dog washed.
robi