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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?
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?
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
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)
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.
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.