National Federation Of The Blind Attacks CAPTCHA

The BBC brought to our attention recently that there was a petition created on the WhiteHouse.Gov website for the government to “Side with the blind over obstructionist companies to secure a Treaty for the Blind that makes books accessible globally.” which is more about books not being available to the blind. As well as the National Federation of the Blind attacking CAPTCHA.  Being visually impaired doesn’t mean that you are 100 percent blind, and to be legally blind does not mean that you can’t see. It could just be that you cannot see without glasses, or even with glasses things are extremely blurry to the point where you can only really see shapes. Making reading words extremely difficult.

People who are blind are still people, they just aren’t able to see things clearly, making them rely more on other senses. Though you are not always able to rely on your senses when CAPTCHA doesn’t function properly. Websites want to prevent programs from easily gaining access to their websites and spamming them with junk, with many of us we can figure out what a CAPTCHA says, but someone with a disability, it might not be so easy, being able to view a blurry word or words, can be extremely difficult for some. And then if you can’t understand what it says you can click to hear, which doesn’t necessarily sounds like the letters or words presented in the CAPTCHA.

Image courtesy of Captcha.tv