WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

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RE: Intepretation on section 508 and use of logic tests

for

From: Austin, Darrel
Date: Jun 9, 2006 8:30AM

> My question is this - are these logic tests 508 compliant? I
> realize that anyone who has a visual or hearing impairment
> might not have a problem with this

>From a general opinion standpoint, ANY captcha is a potential
accessibility issue (and/or usability issue as well).

Even for perfectly abled, full-sighted, intelligent, english-reading,
adult people, a captcha can be very annoying/hard to decipher.

IMHO, the better solution (from an accessibility standpoint) to prevent
bot-posting is to use email confirmation systems on the back end. Have
people post, tell them an email has sent that they must reply to, and in
that email just have a link back to the site passing a variable that
will 'confirm' that the person is human.

In the case of this site, they're just using this to prevent spam. If
they are getting Spam through their contact form, then they have a
really poorly written contact form. The whole point of a contact form is
to avoid getting spam.

On the other hand, they MAY be getting hit with malicious mass emails
being sent through the form, which, again, can likely be better handled
server side rather than client side.

As for what accessibility/508 should cover, in my opinion (and this is
one that several people on this list will disagree with me on)
accessibility isn't about any specific disability at all. It's about
making a web site more accessible to more people and more devices. The
term 'universal access' is perhaps more appropriate. Once specific
disabilities are brought up, it seems to pigeonhole people's thinking
and, inevitably, other disabilies are then forgotten.

-Darrel