[i18n-activity] [CAPTCHA] character-based section editorial nits (#705)

aphillips has just created a new issue for https://github.com/w3c/i18n-activity:

== [CAPTCHA] character-based section editorial nits ==
2.1.1 Traditional Character-Based CAPTCHA
https://w3c.github.io/apa/captcha/#traditional-character-based-captcha

> While some sites have begun providing CAPTCHAs utilizing languages other than English, an assumption that all web users can understand and reproduce English predominates. Clearly, this is not the case. Arabic or Thai speakers, for example, should not be assumed to possess a proficiency with the ISO 8859-1 character set [iso-8859-1], let alone have a keyboard that can easily produce those characters in the CAPTCHA's form field. Research has demonstrated how CAPTCHAs based on written English impose a significant barrier to many on the web; see Effects of Text Rotation, String Length, and Letter Format on Text-based CAPTCHA Robustness [captcha-robustness].

The above text has several potential issues:

1. ISO8859-1 ("Latin-1") is possibly not the best reference here, since probably is what is meant are ASCII letters and digits.
2. Virtually all computing systems have a means of inputting ASCII, so saying that users might not have a "keyboard that can easily produce those characters" is probably false.
3. The reverse is not true. Producing CAPTCHA images containing non-ASCII text may prove difficult to use if the user does not have the appropriate keyboard available.
4. It should probably be pointed out that languages which require input methods (1 characters != 1 keypress) may be difficult to implement successfully as a CAPTCHA image.
5. Many characters or writing systems are difficult to discern when distorted. This includes accented Latin-script letters, cursive scripts such as Arabic, and of course Han ideographs.

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Please view or discuss this issue at https://github.com/w3c/i18n-activity/issues/705 using your GitHub account

Received on Wednesday, 29 May 2019 12:38:15 UTC