Conflicts with CAPTCHA's

CAPTCHA is an acronym for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. The system is a verification feature that is becoming more widely used on a greater amount of web sites to deter Web robots that produce spam. CAPTCHA's aren't a guarantee against possible adverse effects because spammers can pay technically savvy operators to enter the information that, in turn, defeats the system. These verification systems are common on ticket purchasing sites, personal finance sites, web-based email, poll sites, and message board sites.

The most popular type of system is one in which a user is presented an image of distorted numbers and letters and is prompted to enter them to proceed with their navigation. Some sites offer users an alternate choice of verification in the form of audio and speech recognition. Although there is a logical reason wanting to implement a system that serves to block spam, the social cost of doing so weighs heavily. The problem of limited accessibility is presented to those Internet users who are blind, have learning disabilities, or have other visionary problems. This sector of people accounts for 10 million people in the United Sates alone. Visually impaired users have their privacy taken away when trying to retrieve information from sites that use verification in the form of CAPTCHA because another person must be with them to get them past the roadblock.

As spammers continue to figure out how to bypass and defeat the systems the images become even less legible to recognize which makes accessibility continue to decrease and affect even more people. If people with good vision are beginning to struggle with severely distorted images, CAPTCHA-using is not any closer to heading in a user-friendly direction. Even though some sites using CATPTCHA are offering verification in alternate forms, the problem is not solved for those users who are both deaf and blind.