Re: progress report on reCAPTCHA & request for assistance & advice

audio alone is not sufficient to provide robustness of accessibility without 
image processing.  Javascript should be scrapped and the interface be made a 
simple question and answer interface with a submit button.  the question can 
have several forms with a combo box if you will but should be as simple as 
possible and should be capale of running on text only browsers.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gregory J. Rosmaita" <oedipus@hicom.net>
To: <wai-xtech@w3.org>
Cc: <support@recaptcha.net>
Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2007 11:48 AM
Subject: progress report on reCAPTCHA & request for assistance & advice



aloha, all! -- ben from the reCAPTCHA project has agreed to conduct the
conversation about ensuring the accessibility of reCAPTCHA on the
wai-xtech@w3.org emailing list...

here is ben's summation of the state of progress referenced in:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/wai-xtech/2007May/0048.html

--- begin ben's status report on reCAPTCHA ---

1. Accomplished:

* We fixed up the alt tags, that was an oversight on our part.

* I had lunch with T.V. Raman, the author of Emacs Speak, he showed me a
screen reader with reCAPTCHA, however it seemed to have issues with
Javascript (T.V. said that he didn't use the windows screen reader
much and that it was probably out of date -- I was looking at the browser
visually as he used it, the javascript executed, but the screen reader
didn't recognize it, it just bypassed the content that was added by
reCAPTCHA).

* We've looked into buying some screen reader software to do testing,
though the software is expensive.  I'm not at the university over the
summer, so I won't have access to this until August.

* We now require only 7 of the 8 numbers in the audio CAPTCHA to be
correct in order to increase the accuracy rate.

2. Here's what we're still working on:

* We're not sure what to do about the tabindex for the
refresh/audio/help buttons. One of our goals is to make CAPTCHAs as easy
to use with keyboard navigation for sighted users as well as non-sighted
users.  As I mentioned in my previous email, many forms have a layout
such
as

* Name
* Blog Comment
* reCAPTCHA
* Contains image/audio, text box, and multiple buttons

* Submit (a button)

For a user who doesn't need to press the audio, refresh, or help
buttons, giving a tabindex=-1 to the three buttons makes life easiest
for them.  What's the best way to do this, but make the feature still
accessible to users who need to use the keyboard?

* We're also pretty stumped as to what to do to actually play the
audio.  Initially, we copied what Google did with their audio CAPTCHA
(with the addition of the "can't hear the sound" link because our testing
on Linux showed that some browsers weren't fully compatible with
embedding). We need help in finding something that works better here.

--- end of ben's state of reCAPTCHA report and request for assistance ---

since these issues cover the entire spectrum of WAI activity, i am
posting
this to the wai-xtech list, so that ben and the reCAPTCHA project can
receive the most accurate, on-point input from all the members of WAI,
so please be sure to reply to the XTech list if you have any suggestions
for ben (to whom i am CCing this status update)

thank you all for contributing to this very important work,
gregory.
----------------------------------------------------------
ACCOUNTABILITY, n. The mother of caution.
                 -- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
----------------------------------------------------------
         Gregory J. Rosmaita, oedipus@hicom.net
      Camera Obscura: http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/
   Read 'Em & Speak: http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/books/
UBATS-United Advocates for Talking Signs: http://ubats.org
----------------------------------------------------------

Received on Wednesday, 11 July 2007 17:13:22 UTC