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Re: Making A Better CAPTCHA For the Visually Impaired And Making Captions More Available To The Hearing Impaired

for

From: Elle
Date: Apr 18, 2013 5:36PM

Samir:

I agree that security can be weak with many CAPTCHA solutions. I'd even go
so far as to say that all CAPTCHAs fail in their overall objective. My
coworker and friend, Karl Groves, created a good list of resources about
all the ways you can break or hack CAPTCHA:
http://www.karlgroves.com/2013/02/09/list-of-resources-breaking-captcha/.
CAPTCHA is neither secure nor usable in most forms, and when it is secure,
it's completely unusable. When it's user-friendly, it's much less secure.
In short, there are better ways to protect your system.

Personally, I think the concept of CAPTCHA was designed with such limited
and reductive definitions of "human" and machine" that it won't hold up for
much longer. The rapidly approaching singularity and merger of what we will
soon define as "human" with adaptive, wearable, and assistive technology
really renders this distinction between human and machine kind of
meaningless at some point. It becomes more of a philosophical discussion
than a clear cut line to use as a gateway online to secure systems.

So, I don't really believe that you will solve all of the accessibility
issues inherent in a technology that is actually designed to confuse.
However, I love the creativity in your overall idea, and that's what I
wholeheartedly support and want to encourage most of all. I have a feeling
that your project work will inspire new ways to consider cross-disability
solutions that can help users.


All the best,
Elle