Hi. I have more than a hundred messages to catch up on. Glad I started with this one though.
On another list, Blind Like Me, someone posted a link for a CAPTCHA accessability survey. Here's the link in case anyone wants to participate. http://webinsight.cs.washington.edu/webeval/captchas Janet ---------------------------------------- > Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2008 14:05:58 -0400 > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: Please Join Me In Making Craigslist Accessible Again > > Exactly. Just like their visual counterparts, audio captchas are > obfuscated to resist cracking by voice recognition. I know one of the > guys who did one of the voices for AOL's captcha and they had to make it > tougher to keep out the hackers. Hence a random mix of letters and > numbers with different voices and background noise. As I mentioned > before, it's an arms race. As the algorithms of the bad guys get better > the cognitive load required to understand the captcha will rise to the > point where regular folks won't be able to pass the test. Turing would > be impressed. > > While we could switch to some other tests they would have to be > sufficiently complex to fool an algorithm while simple enough that a > real human being can solve them and not necessarily require English as a > first language. I haven't seen another better solution yet. There are > some visual ones with random photos and letters where you have to > identify which one is a cat or whatever, but that's not really accessible. > > CB > > Jayson Smith wrote: >> Some more observations... >> >> On my Windows machine, I acted like I was trying to sign up for a >> new account, and it gave me the old-style audio captcha. I went to >> post, but don't actually have anything real to post, so didn't go >> through with it, so don't know what I'd have gotten. >> >> As for the old audio captcha, assuming it's gone, I'd be surprised >> if they go back to it. As I pointed out earlier, the phonetic words >> they used are very well known world-wide. I'm sure these very words >> were specifically designed so that any one of them can be >> distinguished from any other word in that set, E.G. during a radio >> transmission in less than optimal signal conditions. Probably pretty >> easy for a voice recognition system to crack that. >> Jayson >> >> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tiffany D" >> To: >> Sent: Wednesday, June 18, 2008 6:48 PM >> Subject: Please Join Me In Making Craigslist Accessible Again >> >> >>> *Please pass this onto any groups or individuals you think could help. >>> This is serious. >>> * >>> >>> Hello to all, >>> >>> As most of you know by now, many sites use capcha for making posts >>> etc. Craigslist was always one of the best in this regard. Their >>> audio was clear and clean, even employing words for letters (a, as in >>> alpha) to make understanding the codes easier. However, I just logged >>> in today and when I tried to make a post, I noticed that it didn't >>> work at all on my Macbook. When I tried posting with my Windows XP >>> computer, I discovered that their formatting has changed. Not only is >>> their an extra step to post, but the audio capcha is now similar to >>> AOL, with many voices speaking at once and it's very difficult to hear >>> the actual letters in the capcha. I propose creating a petition, to >>> be signed by all blind and visually-impaired people, as well as other >>> concerned parties, asking Craigslist to return the capcha to it's >>> former state and to once again make it Mac and VoiceOver accessible. >>> While I was posting an add for my personal use, my job also relies >>> heavily on Craigslist to generate ads and I'm clearly not the only >>> blind individual using it for this purpose. Please join me in this >>> effort. The changes are extremely recent and we may be able to stop >>> this before it becomes permanent. >>> >>> Thank you, >>> Tiffany Dunn >>> >> >> > _________________________________________________________________ The other season of giving begins 6/24/08. Check out the i’m Talkathon. http://www.imtalkathon.com?source=TXT_EML_WLH_SeasonOfGiving
