CAPTCHA Tests Limit Web Access For The Disabled

We've all been annoyed by them. Some can be frustratingly difficult to get right. I'm talking about those little boxes with the squiggly words that you have to guess correctly in order to register for a website, like the examples in the "Pictures" section of this article. They're called CAPTCHAs, which is a geeky acronym for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart." Basically, these tests make sure that an actual person is performing a given action, and not an automated computer process.

The idea is that, even though the tests are "simple," they are tasks that are too complex for a computer to perform, so if the correct answer is given, the user must be a human. These test go a long way in deterring fraud on the internet, preventing identity theft, and keeping social networking sites like MySpace.com and Digg.com relatively free of spam (obviously, in the last example, the spammers have found ways around the CAPTCHA technology). But an unintended consequence of using CAPTCHAs is that these seemingly simple tests often prevent disabled people from using many popular websites.

Think about it. People with perfectly good vision often have a difficult time picking out all the letters in some CAPTCHAs. Now imagine you had cataracts or some other vision problem that reduced your visual acuity. It certainly doesn't make the process any easier, to say the least. Some CAPTCHA boxes rely on a user's ability to distinguish colors, which eliminates the color blind. Those who are completely blind have special computer equipment that converts text on the screen into spoken words or Braille. Unfortunately, these technologies cannot "read" CAPTCHA boxes.

Some sites have recently come out with alternative "audio CAPTCHAs," where a user clicks a link, hears a spoken word, and has to correctly transcribe the word that was said. One company who adopted this early on was popular GoDaddy.com. While this helps those with just visual impairments, it does nothing for the millions of individuals worldwide who have both vision and hearing difficulties. People with learning disabilities like dyslexia often have particular difficulty with CAPTCHAs as well.

So far, no one has figured out the perfect solution that will prevent automated web submissions while allowing web access to all humans, not just those without disabilities. In the meantime, progressive companies are making sure that they provide both visual and audio CAPTCHAs to provide access to the widest range of people. In addition, it is important for companies to have alternate registration procedures, such as allowing users to register over the phone, for those people who still have trouble with CAPTCHAs because of their disability. This will ensure that the web is truly accessible to everyone.