3 August 2007
Not many people recognise the word ‘CAPTCHA’, however many people probably know what it is without knowing what it is called.
CAPTCHA is a type of ‘challenge-response’ test used online to determine whether the user is human, users are asked to type in the text characters that they see as a distorted image.
Without an accessible alternative, CAPTCHAs are a nightmare for screen reading programs, they see the distorted text as just another graphic on the web page. Screen reader users rely on being able to read the text; therefore whilst it is seen as an image, the screen reader is unable to determine any text characters from the image. Providing an alternative text that mirrors that of the text within image is not an option as this defeats the object and spambots will fill out the form using this information. So what is the solution?
Recently Google used this inaccessible means of testing for human verification, which resulted in one man starting his own online petition to bring to the attention of Google just how inaccessible this tool is. Following this petition, Google now offers an audio option for those using screen reading technology wherever the CAPTCHA Google now employs an audio option for its web pages when they employ CAPTCHA.
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