Hello, on 02/17/2006 01:19 PM tedd said the following: >> I am not sure what you mean. Are you saying that nobody should use audio >> CAPTCHA because one user was not able to configure his browser to play >> the audio CAPTCHA? I am sure that it is something easier to achieve than >> screen reader software that many blind users use to access read Web >> pages loud. >> >> Manuel Lemos > > Manuel: > > As a friend of mine, who is very knowledgeable/experienced in these > matters, said: > > " The audio variants are still barriers because there are too may > reasons why they might fail to work. As I said before, there are many > other simple methods that robots don't do well. Use those instead. > CPATCHAs are dead and should be buried. Anyone still using them is > either too cheap to learn how to use an alternative well, or simply > doesn't care about accessibility. It's time to move on." > > Now, perhaps you don't agree with his assessment, but I think that > finding other methods to accomplish what you want has merit. > > You know, even with "audio CPATCHA's" visually impaired and other > disabled groups are still against it -- what does that say?
I think there are some misunderstandings . First, CAPTCHA means "completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart". Any automated method on which robots don't do well, is a CAPTCHA. Therefore, to be accurate the person that wrote your quote is in contradiction. There may be better solutions, than the image or audio based, but those solutions are still CAPTCHAs because the goal is to halt robots. Another, point, blind people or people with other disabilities need all the sympathy they can get to make their lives better. Calling everybody that use image or audio CAPTCHAs "too cheap" does not seem to get them much more sympathy. These complaints seem to be too selfish. If somebody employs a CAPTCHA in a site is because he needs to solve a problem of abuse. It seems that somebody that complains against CAPTCHA does not care about the losses that the abuses may cause to site maintainers if the CAPTCHAs are removed or replaced by other easier to defeat CAPTCHAs. Nobody knows everything, starting by me. If there are better CAPTCHAs than the image or audio based, I would like to know about them. It would certainly be more constructive than calling "too cheap" to everybody using common CAPTCHA. I understand that the life of blind people is already very painful and slow. So I imagine the frustration of not getting enough attention to their cause because their are often a neglected minority. OTOH, that minority must also try to understand that CAPTCHA are necessary and must be effective. A CAPTCHA attempt that still permits abuses is not effective and sites may be still victims of extensive abuse. Consider this site that has a text based CAPTCHA at the bottom. It is very easy for a robot to read the numbers, make the calculations an enter the result without human intervention. Basically, it becomes very easy to abuse this CAPTCHA. In this aspect, this CAPTCHA is worse than image or audio based. http://pooteeweet.org/blog/329 A good CAPTCHA must be fuzzy. If you know other fuzzy CAPTCHA besides these, it may help to sharing that knowledge. -- Regards, Manuel Lemos Metastorage - Data object relational mapping layer generator http://www.metastorage.net/ PHP Classes - Free ready to use OOP components written in PHP http://www.phpclasses.org/ -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
