On 16/11/05, Philippa Cowderoy
On Wed, 16 Nov 2005, Arthur van Leeuwen wrote:
A nicer solution might be to have the server generate a distorted image of a key (as is done with user registration to combat automated user generation) that should be typed in for an edit to be accepted (if you are not logged in).
This comes with accessibility issues, much as any other text represented by images, only more so as the whole point is to fool OCR software.
Surely we wouldn't use captchas on edits by registered users, so there'd still be a way for those users with vision problems to make edits, they'd just have to log in. If people want to use captchas as part of the process in signing up for an account, then there should be an alternate mechanism for people with accessibility issues. I wonder how well an audio version of the captcha test would work -- one could probably rig up festival to generate sounds of words linked alongside the distorted picture which blind users could listen to and type into the field. It's unfortunate, but if you don't put a little bit of effort into defending your forms, they will eventually get quite a lot of spam. Cleaning up 600+ pages by hand takes quite a lot of effort, even with the ability to revert. Mass reverting would be another way to try to deal with it. Another way to raise the bar a bit perhaps would be to randomise the names of the form controls slightly, so that a spambot couldn't just use the same names for things every time, it would have to properly load the page and scrape the names out. - Cale