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How Would You Design a Captcha for the Deaf-Blind?
kesuki asks: "Right now, the state of the art captcha only works for the visually-abled. Some people are trying to start a grass roots opposition to catcha using existing anti-discrimination laws. However, without any captcha at all, spammers would have a field day. Audio captcha would work for the blind, of course, but they still leave out the deaf-blind using brail interpreters to use their computers and navigate the web. What system of captcha can you dream up that would work for the deaf-blind?"
I'm sorry to say this, but this sounds like a extremely narrow question.
For instance: What website with content for deaf-blind (_only_ text) would require registration to retrieve such information?
Yeah, I know (from TFA) some blogs have captcha registration, but do they require registration?
Anywho, my answer. Hire an assistant/interpreter. That would probably be much cheaper, and much easier.
Either that, or I would send the authors of the web-site a e-mail, and if it's not a heavy traffic one, they could probably help you out, even though you can't read the captcha.
Scully: Should we arrest David Copperfield?
Mulder: Yes we should, but not for this.
Okay, this is a shameless plug, but I started work sometime ago on http://aomis.net/ (I won't href it). Anyways, the idea was instead of CAPTCHA, which I don't really like, I thought why not let users identify different types of media. Now, I hadn't considered folks who were blind and deaf, but I did build the system to handle multiple types of media, like pictures and audio, which would help folks that are blind or deaf, but not both.
Now, the sites not quite ready, I'm still playing with a few things, like getting more media into it, but I'll have to watch this Ask Slashdot for good ideas on how to handle those who are blind and deaf.
All in words, no numerals:
Challenge (example): "seven times three"
Response "twenty one"
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
a personal assistant? I hate to sound harsh, but I don't understand how these people can function in a world that at a bare minimum seems to require one or the other sense (sight vs. hearing), and the absense of both means perhaps these people are going to be left behind. How much could it possibly cost to have someone help them, I imagine they need help when they leave the house, would an internet nurse be so far fetched?
If one is trying to make one that can be read through brail, I would say, that it couldn't be done. Captcha designed for it probably would be nothing like captcha at all.
However, not being deaf/blind myself my view is limited. The real people to ask are the deaf and blind since they would probably have far more creative solution for checking user validity using the input/output devices that they are accustomed to using.
From a practical standpoint, the number of deaf and blind people (people of both conditions) is very small, the traffic from spam is probably far greater than that of legitimate users blocked. I can expect that most systems to allow using vision or sound for CAPCHAS.
I'd hate to simply block people off, but I understand why people that use it.
I would expect thtat the anti-discriminatory laws probably won't do jack for individual site administrators.
disclosure: I am partially deaf but see 20/20 with correction.
There have been ideas to have email "stamps" where the sender "pays" by working out something that is easy to check, but difficult to compute, like factorising something. Wouldn't that work just as well for this? The downside is that it needs the browser to know about it to be completely transparent to the end-user.
On the other hand, CAPTCHAs are already broken, so this is only suitable for deterring the most stupid spammers in the first place.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
http://www.google.com/search?q=seven+times+three
Search first, ask questions later.
There have already been captchas designed which show a semi-randomly created arrangement, and ask the user to solve something based on the image. (I dont remember the example, but someone untrusted in my head is saying "where is the person in relation to the bowl?"). Couldnt be too hard to construct a sentence the way you construct an image. Note that the image doesnt need to make sense, it just needs to have its basic components be recognizeable by a person.
But then someone will complain "By using sentences, you're blocking out all the blind deaf non-native-english-speakers, who can't determine the subtleties of meaning any better than a computer!"
Eventually there has to be a cut-off point.
Yes, I am talking about trying to get a computer to randomly generate riddles.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Have a simple form for the deaf-blind. Add a field asking to explain your condition in your own words. The form gets read by real people who may send a follow-up e-mail asking for a reply. You can easily detect if you're talking to a computer. You can make the form only visible to text-based browsers. As this will not work for spamming, few will fill in the form.
Make even shorter URLs - 8LN.org
If there were someone running an OpenID site that had an accessible but spammer-unfriendly login mechanism, that site could serve as an alternative login for visually-impaired users. That admittedly just punts the issue, but the nice thing about that solution is that if there was a trusted site that most blind people would feel comfortable registering with, that site could vet the visually impaired. The OpenID solution wouldn't have to be limited to the blind, but that seems the easiest bootstrapping mechanism, as the blind are probably more motivated to promote/use something like OpenID than people who are perfectly happy with Captcha.
Rob
"If you cannot view this Captcha, please email foo@bar.com [spam assasin'd, of course], or call 0800-1234-567"
My UID is prime. Is yours?
It wouldn't be that hard to write a program that wrote little reading comprehension tests that would be very hard for a spammer to solve.
Pretty simple really. For the incredibly small percentage of the population that is both deaf and blind you supply a phone number to a braille tele-type service (whatever the standard is for deaf-blind communications). You hire one person to handle all the calls, and give him something else to do while he's waiting for the teletype to ring.
Perhaps do this as a service for ALL interested web sites to share.
Sometimes we geeks forget that everthing doesn't have to be solved by high-tech wizardry.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
"If you can not see/hear this, please email an admin for assistance".
Then when you get a request, manually assist them assuming they send a nice enough email. Get 500 email requests? mass delete.
Don't forget captchas are to prevent repetitive automated signups, not just a single signup.
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
The answer is you can't. You can either do a visual one which excludes people with vision problems or make an auditory one which excludes people with hearing problems. You could have the option of either I guess. Don't have a CAPTCHA if it is that much of a problem for you to decide. A semi workable solution would be to have a form that you can send in if you can't do any of the methods and then the person would either do it themselves or get a helper/wife/husband/friend to do it for them.
What about these?
Choose the correct answer:
Cats have _____ (a) fur (b) hair (c-d) other bogus choices
Ice is made of ________ (a) water (b) purple (c) grass (d) trees
Just use things that are common knowledge to humans but that'd be tough for computers to figure out. Of course, CAPTCHA systems are always vulnerable (the attacker can just pass through the challenge to the victim), but they provide more than zero security.
qslack.com
They're broken, anyway. Try something else, like a two-phase signup process.
Ni bhionn an rath achx mar a mbionn an smacht (There is no Luck without Discipline)
just pipe it to google and your captcha is defeated
t hree&btnG=Google+Search
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=seven+times+
seven times three = twenty-one
blogs.sun.com uses quite simple "Answer this simple math question: X + Y = [...]" textboxes and it seems to date to be quite effective. If spammers evolve, just add more language entropy to the questions (ie phrase the question in woolier language, "What is X added to Y?" "The addition of X to Y is?" "If you have X and Y apples, how many do you have altogether?", etc). You can use other types of questions too obviously.
Works perfectly with screen-readers.
--paulj
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
So, if I understand this right, you need a computer to be able to randomly generate a question and corresponding answer from scratch (pulling it out of a database would presumably just lead to the spammers cataloguing all of the question componenets), but on the other hand, you need a computer to not be able to work out the answer when given just the question.
My best idea is to get it to generate long-winded English sentences along the lines of this:
It would probably be a lot easier to just have a human being read each post and make sure it's not spam before displaying it publicly though, as is the case with moderated newsgroups.
At the rate we're headed, it seems like pretty soon Google will be able to whip up a robot that can beat the Turing test or Voight-Kampff empathy test.
well, it would require more organization and centralization but if the world's major deafblind organizations got together and issues digital certificates to their members site owners could accept the certificate as an alternate registration and alternate login to bypass the captcha.
sort of like handicapped parking rather than making all parking spaces accessable to handicapped people we set aside alternative places to park which require a basic form of authentication (tags and stickers) the internet lends itself very well to advanced authenication.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
the deaf-blind want to fill in a captcha for a porn site?
And so on...
Of course, this discriminates against users not knowing english, and users of very low intelligence...
One word: teledildonics!!!
The only way we can all be truly equal is for all of us to be only as capable as the least capable among us. Let's get on this.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Is it secure? Well I suppose both speech and sight can be regonized by software. Just make the sound with background noise that humans have no trouble with but machines do. Same as the visual ones.
Really the question seems immensly stupid to me. Gee, we got blind people who can't see a piece of text. Oh my god how could we possibly solve this. Gee if only we had some tech that could you know get info to a blind person.
SOUND YOU TARD.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I have built a system that avoids current captcha methods. I need a solicator/legal advice etc to help me protect my IP as I belive this is my cash cow.
What I can say is that my system is a server side package that uses no javascript etc nor images and runs totally transparent to the end user.
I have tested my system throughly and Ive had close friends test my system as well.
With all these site including google gmail registration, hotmail etc using image captcha devices I would think that getting legal help etc for a percentage of royalties would be easy but its proving otherwise.
I have set up an e-mail account if any one would like to help needinglegaladvice(no)@(spam)gmail.com.
Anyone else notice that they were mis-using CAPTCHA throughout the article. CAPTCHA stands for a turing test (completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart). They can be discriminatory but not all of them are.
I thought that someone once made special mice with a finger tip vibrating pin-pad that would enable someone to feel the screen by moving the mouse around? (I don't imagine that it would be at all easy to read the Captcha text that way, but it might be a start.) Was this a goofy tech that never worked out, or did I imagine it and should I rush to the patent office with my new idea? (Strictly defensive patent, of course... But imagine the new pr0n possibilities for the deaf-blind!)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
How do you even design a browser for the deaf-blind?
Seriously, I have no idea. Quick google shows nothing.
When I was an undergrad I did my student teaching in the Deaf-Blind unit at Perkins School for the blind, and the normal interface is a multi-line Braille "display" made of small "pins" that would pop up to form the Braille characters. Of those students that would use these devices, they read quite well and normal English would not be a difficulty for them.
We normally communicated with the students using "tactile" sign language, which is essentially American Sign Language with the "listener's" hands resting lightly on the "speaker's" hands. With one partially sighted individual we used "small space" signing, which is basically signing in a very confined space in order not to leave her visual field.
I must agree with several other posters who have suggested carefully worded questions such that they would increase the difficulty for automated systems but still be accessible to human beings. However, we must be careful to consider a few factors:
I hate categorising people, but when dealing with the deaf-blind there is one very important categorisation that plays a role here: when the person became deaf and blind. The important distinction is if the person became deaf and blind BEFORE acquiring language or after. Those who are born deaf and blind tend to have much more difficulty with more complex English language usage than those who became deaf and blind after.
For those who are born deaf and blind, there is a much steeper learning curve for acquiring the language skills needed to handle more complex English sentences. These individuals tend not to be able to function as independently as those who acquired other language skills before becoming deaf and blind. These individuals are more likely to have assistance with them most of the time.
Therefore, I suspect that the previous suggestions to use complex sentences that require responses (such as math problems all in words) would work for about 80% of the individuals in the target population. The other 20% are highly likely to have assistance anyway.
We cannot hope to reach 100% of these individuals. I am sorry, but there is only so much that can be done. Also, they are sure to know someone who can help. These individuals cannot do much in the outside world on their own if they are completely blind and deaf, so they are likely to have someone who is sighted and can hear available to help.
I had a similar experience myself... imagine trying to respond to a CAPTCHA in CHINESE. I had to do this to sign up for a QQ account (the Chinese IM service). I finally had one of my Chinese friends do that part for me because I simply could not figure out some of the characters in the CAPTCHA format.
Another poster put it very clearly, and I paraphrase: We do not always need to look for a high-tech solution. What we need is a solution that works.
You want to spam Slashdot? No problem. Set up a web site that requires answering a captcha for access. Make users answer a captcha swiped from Slashdot to post, read porn, download software, or whatever. Use their answers to answer the Slashdot captchas so you can spam.
That was a neat idea back when spammers used their own hardware.
Now, spammers use Windows boxes that have been taken over. They could do supercomputing.
I personally just present a simple math problem that's randomly generated, e.g. what is 4 + 8? If the client doesn't get it correctly, then they can't post, create an account, etc. I've yet to encounter a spammer that uses a bot smart enough to answer that sort of question. Of course, this approach leaves out those with really low IQs or who haven't completed first grade, but I think I can live without their comments on my blog.
How do you do ANYTHING for deaf-blind people? This seems to be a much larger, general problem. Signs? Prices? Car horns? Consumer product instructions? The list goes on. It seems simple math or word problems would suffice, but the problem is the IO. How do you get the challenge to and the answer back out of the handicapped person?
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Add a css style like to a special browser that interpretes to a hardware device for whatever specific disability you are circumventing. Like a or something.
"Secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy
I hear deaf dumb and blind kids play a mean pinball.
Seriously how many deaf and blind people are there?
on your registration do this:
please respond to the following captcha, or if you are unable to respond do to physical handicaps and/or do not have someone to assist you please click "this link."
this link would send an email requesting registration, the Administrator then checks over the info and either auths them or not.
Why is this so difficult?
face the world with eyes of fire.
I've got it! Lickable mice! "Mmm... tastes like chocolate!"
Seriously though I like the idea of questions and answers perhaps some math related "Which of the following is larger: dog, cow, building"
Of course just like any other system it would be busted a few weeks later so the spammers could continue.
Captchas work by creating something that is easier for a human to decipher than a machine. An analog on a Braille display might be to keep changing the keys in patterns where the end users can 'feel' the phrase stand out against the 'noise.' To the bot it will look like a random string or characters, but as the words repeat, a few letters here, a few letters there, eventually the blind-deaf user will realize the hidden content.
"Can there be a Klein bottle that is an efficient and effective beer pitcher?"
fuck-em?
Deaf AND blind? what kind of life is that? Just shoot em it'd be kinder.