Comments on: Spam vs. Accessibility

By: TYLER

TYLER — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 13:59:40 +0000

“CAPTCHA is a pain, as someone with good (but not perfect) eyesight I find them really irritating”…

http://corlive.com does a good job – it only asks about “2+2″ – and somehow it works well (stops bots)

By: Michelle

Michelle — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 17:46:59 +0000

I just read on web accessibility and I found it very interesting. I really love the ideas because it is very useful and helpful. Keep it up Joe.

By: Jamie

Jamie — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 17:26:56 +0000

This post goes right along with your article I just read on web accessability. Great article. Great ideas I had never thought about such as making a web page read for people who are color blind.
An idea though, is that now that Firefox has a new version, you may also want to test your websites using that browser as well.

By: iheni

iheni — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 07:48:54 +0000

Hi Folks, something that may be of interest and has been discussed quite a bit on various blogs over the last couple of weeks is WebVisum, http://webvisum.com/.

It is a plug in for FireFox that allows a screen reader user to add useful data to a page making tagging links, form fields images and so on. What’s really interesting is that there is a means to crack CAPTCHA in it. There’s an interview with Marc Dohnal, the initiator of WebVisum on Scripting Enabled by Christian Heilmann http://scriptingenabled.org/2008/07/interview-with-webvisumcom-crowdsourced-accessibility/.

Be interested to hearwhat people think.

By: Joe Dolson

Joe Dolson — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:06:27 +0000

That would be great — looking forward to seeing that addition in the future!

By: Michael Hampton

Michael Hampton — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 18:58:15 +0000

That’s actually a great idea. I’ll see if I can provide alternate contact methods defined by the administrator in a near-future version.

By: Richard Morton

Richard Morton — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 12:35:31 +0000

It amuses me every time I look at the GAWDS (Guild of Accessible Web Designers) site. In their comments forms they ask “Are you human or robot?” with an instruction to answer in one word. My answer would be “yes” but I haven’t tried that yet (who knows it might even work). Seriously though a question like that or one of the many others around could present a real difficulty to someone with a form of dyslexia or an autistic spectrum disorder and probably other learning disabilities.

Captcha is a pain, as someone with good (but not perfect) eyesight I find them really irritating but they are probably a necessary evil. Audio can help some people (but not all), a phone number or email address still ends up discriminating against disabled users because who wants to wait even one minute to be able to post a form.

By: Joe Dolson

Joe Dolson — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 15:30:43 +0000

Really? Well, I'll admit that it's been a long time since I've actually seen a Bad Behavior error message. I don't remember that being present, but I'll certainly bow to your superior knowledge on the subject! What I'd prefer, however, is actually being able to easily customize the contact information provided. I don't want my email address exposed --- I'd rather provide some other information which will help the user get in touch with me. Even if I did provide an email address, I wouldn't want it to be my administrative address, since that's an important address for me: I'd rather be able to set up an ad hoc address.

By: Michael Hampton

Michael Hampton — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 01:15:43 +0000

Strange. By default the error message provides the site administrator’s email address (as defined in Settings, General in WordPress). Are you saying that’s not sufficient?

As for the technically confusing nature of the text itself, I’ve heard that complaint before, and it’s not specific to accessibility. Technical stuff is very hard to convey clearly to a non-technical audience, especially when it’s just interrupted something they were doing. I’ll certainly accept suggestions for rewrites.

By: Joe Dolson

Joe Dolson — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 00:37:51 +0000

The problem I’ve encountered with Bad Behavior (although I absolutely agree that it’s a great package) is that while the text presented is easily rendered, it’s not always useful. It would be nice if it was more easily user-configurable (through a configuration document or, in the case of the WordPress plugin, through the administrative interface.)

The error messages describe the reason for the error, which is great, but don’t actually provide any alternative means to contact the site author. Unless you know an alternate route to the site or know the person personally, it can be very difficult to get the problem dealt with or retrieve the information you need.

If there was an addendum to the error response where the author could provide alternative contact information, this would be a helpful workaround. Of course, it couldn’t be an email address or contact form!

Thanks for stopping by, Michael!