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Re: CAPTCHA Question

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From: Simius Puer
Date: Apr 2, 2010 1:33PM

Agreed, in many cases there is a far superior solution than CAPTCHA and it
is often mis-sold as a solution due to the lack of understanding about the
alternatives and the problems associated with it.

Accessibility aside for a moment, forms that use CAPTCHA are less likely to
be filled in & submitted as it is an extra chore for the user. Some people
*choose *not to complete the form, whilst others with no real disability
still *struggle *to do so. So there is a business case for not using them.

I wrote a non-teccie based article "Preventing spam in Web forms without
CAPTCHAs <http://www.simiusweb.ie/formspam>;" aimed at business decision
makers to help them understand the issue better last year: [
http://www.simiusweb.ie/formspam]

Finally to answer the original question, no a link to request access is not
> equivalent access and is therefore not accessible. It is also just bad
> business, equivalent to telling someone that they and anyone like them need
> to sit in the the back of the bus.
>

Not sure I would agree with this. Sure, it's shoddy practice and there are
alternatives, including getting rid of the CAPTCHA (yay), but there is a
section in the WCAG that mentions "if all else fails provide an accessible
alternative". I'm not sure how this would be not "equivalent access". I
guess some of that would depend on how it was implemented, but if it got the
same result, albeit via a different (and hopefully accessible) route, then
there isn't discrimination. Even the laws that enforce accessibility only
require "reasonable steps" to be taken....just playing Devil's advocate
here!

Personally though, I'm with you on ditching CAPTCHA where feasibly possible
as I'm not disabled and I struggle with them (and know plenty more people
who do) too.