Slashdot Mirror
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.
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?
The trick is to add enough variations to make automated parsing difficult. Plus, throw a few word based questions in there...
...and so on. Not so easy to write an automated parser if there's a few thousand variations to cope with.
What is 6 minus the sum of 2 and 2?
Is 2 higher than eighteen?
Which of the following is an animal? Brick, horse, factory, sky.
Type four letter Q's then the letter N.
How many P's in pineapple?
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
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.