Does Google’s new CAPTCHA experiment fails at Accessibility testing?
Recently Google released two new experiments from there newly structured Google labs. One of these new experiments is aimed at improving CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart) effectiveness and user experience.
What is CAPTCHA?
CAPTCHA tell Computers and Humans apart and is employed to prevent automated computer systems from signing up at sites or posting comments. Most of us have used CAPTCHA at some point and time while surfing internet. Its that image that you need to recognize and write the letters into an input box to validate yourself as an human filling the information.
The report released by Google, called “What’s Up CAPTCHA?” (PDF) outlines a new version, which uses image orientation, forcing a user to adjust randomly rotated images to their upright orientation.
The major benefits of our CAPTCHA technique over the traditional text recognition techniques are that it is language independent, does not require text-entry (e.g. for a mobile device), and employs another domain for CAPTCHA generation beyond character recognition. This CAPTCHA lends itself to rapid implementation and has an almost limitless supply of images.
And as per Google - “We ensure that our CAPTCHA can not be defeated by state-of-the-art orientation detection systems by using those systems to filter images that can be automatically recognized and oriented“.
Does this technique meets Web Accessibility standards?
Well, I think this fails miserably when it comes to Accessibility. Normally for a regular CAPTCHA control using distorted text we see some associated audio files for physically challenged. So you play that file, enter the text and you are good to go.
But using this new technique - How will someone with bad eyesight or no eyesight at all (or some sight related disability) be able to select the right image? Google engineers might have to put some though into this. Unless this issue is being taken care of I dont see a majority of web sites start using this technology.
I would also like to mention here that Web Accessibility is a legal requirement in some states and can not be bypassed without some serious legal consequences.
Do you have suggestions for Google? or if you want to express your own views regarding this articles then you are more then welcome to leave your comments at the end of this article.
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