leave the bots cold
I really despise CAPTCHA, the little tests some sites use to determine if a user is a real person or spambot. It’s frustrating to leave a comment on a blog and then have to decipher warped letters and enter them in a text box. Regardless of my annoyance, these tests really fly in the face of accessibility. Blind people and others that use screenreaders are unable to pass these tests, since they deliberately use images that cannot by read by software. When Austin Indymedia considered implementing a CAPTCHA system in response to a heavy spam problem, I protested vociferously, arguing that a project like Indymedia that works to be as inclusive as possible shouldn’t use a technology that excludes persons with disabilities.
An Ars Technica article reports a developer has developed an anti-spam system that doesn’t address CAPTCHA’s accessibility problems but makes the process of proving your humanity more tolerable. KittenAuth presents users with a three-by-three grid of images and asks them to pick out three kittens. It’s CuteOverload meets matching! Hopefully Samantha will ditch her CAPTCHA system for KittenAuth anon.
