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Why Captchas?

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From: Emma Duke-Williams
Date: May 21, 2007 1:40PM

I've got a friend who uses a screen reader & she's getting very
frustrated by sites that have captchas - and aren't good at the
"Click this link & we'll get back to you if you can't see..." -
(Yahoo! being the particular culprit at present!)

I'm not visually impaired, but I find quite a few of the captchas hard
to use (blogspot's is one of the few that I can "get" first time,
YouTube's is about the worst - I need several goes)

WHat I can't quite understand is why so many sites use them in
preference to the option that I much prefer - of the site sending you
an email, with a clickable link to complete your registration.

Is that inherently easier to spam with a robot?

Have studies shown that the average surfer would rather interpret a
captcha than click on a link in an email?

Or, am I (and my friend) just choosing to register with far more sites
that use captchas over those that use emails??

Emma

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Blog: http://www.tech.port.ac.uk/staffweb/duke-wie/blog/