[New-hampshire-students] Fw: [NFBAffiliatePresidents] American, Delta, United, Virgin America Discriminate Against Blind - Captcha In The Unfriendly Sky's With GoGoInFlight

Tue May 5 00:40:12 UTC 2009

just thought that those of you that fly frequently might be interested in 
Mika's email.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mika Pyyhkala" <Mika_Pyyhkala at nhp.org>
To: "NFB Affiliate Presidents List" <nfbaffiliatepresidents at nfbnet.org>
Cc: <ataylor at nfb.org>
Sent: Monday, May 04, 2009 6:45 PM
Subject: [NFBAffiliatePresidents] American, Delta, United, Virgin America 
Discriminate Against Blind - Captcha In The Unfriendly Sky's With 
GoGoInFlight

Greetings,

In March 2009 I traveled from Boston To Los Angeles on Virgin America in 
order to attend the CSUN technology conference.  I was especially excited to 
take this flight, because Virgin America offers a service through
http://gogoinflight.com
http://aircell.com
which provides in flight wifi or wireless internet service.  Essentially 
this GoGoInFlight service, being deployed on several major US airlines, 
allows passengers to access the internet through their laptops or other 
mobile devices.

However, on board the flight, I found that the GoGoInFlight service uses a 
"visual only captcha."  This means that the user must fill in the characters 
in a visual image in order to access the service.

Such visual only captcha inherently  discriminates against the blind, and 
also would preclude a blind person from using a mobile device that does not 
have a screen such as a PACMate, BrailleNote, Icon/BraillePlus, Braille 
Sense, etc.

I immediately contacted the company via its Twitter page:
http://twitter.com/GoGoInFlight
As you may know, Twitter is a social networking tool used by individuals and 
organizations including the NFB.  I requested that the company have an 
executive or technical subject matter expert contact me so that we could 
discuss alternatives to their visual only captcha.  Such alternatives abound 
with other web sites including Google, Paypal, Annual Credit Report, etc.

The parent company, Aircell, kept sending me vague messages which were not 
substantive.  For instance, they told me to call the customer care 
department, which obviously lacked the authority to make changes to the 
technical details of the service.  They told me my idea was a good one, but 
gave no indication on even an approximate time frame for implementation. 
They also did not provide any short term remediation plan to allow blind or 
print impaired people to access the internet while flying.  One such 
remediation plan may have, for example, been one where they disabled the 
captcha requirement on customer accounts  of blind users.

Then, this past weekend, I received a message from a director inside the 
Aircell organization.  Here is part of what he had to say:

"Each image, as you well know, can be associated with alternative text. 
This alternative text is then read by web page audio readers.  When a user 
places his mouse over the "submit" button on our CAPTCHA puzzle page, we 
will respond with the following alternative text:

"A note to visually impaired users: A security requirement, unique to our 
service, requires us to use a challenge image (CAPTCHA image).  We request 
you ask a flight attendant or neighboring passenger to tell you the 
alphanumeric code, which you should input in the dialogue box on this page."

One of the benefits of our CAPTCHA puzzle page is its simplicity.  It's the 
only page on our site that contains no additional or extraneous links, 
graphics, or content.  As a result, it should be as minimally-confusing as 
possible for visually impaired users."

He also stated:
"Due to a variety of law enforcement and government regulations, we must use 
CAPTCHA puzzles as a part of our network's security infrastructure.  As 
always, the safety of all passengers is our first priority, which is why 
this puzzle is in place."

Interestingly, a competitive wifi service provider called Row 44 , which 
provides limited  service on Southwest Airlines does not use a captcha:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Row_44

Perhaps they are not subject to the same " law enforcement and government 
regulations," as is GoGoInFlight?  Why do you suppose that is?  Rest 
assured, I called out GoGoInflight for using the 2 S words, safety and 
security, in an effort to justify their discriminatory practices against the 
blind!  I informed them that the S word has been used for decades if not 
longer in an attempt to justify unwarranted disparate  treatment of  the 
blind.

I also informed the gentlemen from GoGoInFlight that, regrettably, his 
proposed solution essentially put us at square one where we left off.  The 
solution does not add any value or mitigate the design flaw.

How You Can Help

1.  If you are on the Twitter service, send what is called an @reply to
GoGoInFlight
>From your Twitter account.  Ask them when they will make the service 
>accessible to people who are blind.  You can refer to their visual only 
>captcha, or put this in your own words.  If you have people in your 
>affiliate on Twitter, you can delegate this task to such people.  This will 
>intensify public relations type pressure towards the company since all of 
>your Twitter followers or friends will also see these messages.  I can 
>provide further instructions on how to do this if that would be helpful;
2.  Please use any contacts you may have particularly in the travel, 
blogging, internet, or old or new media.  Again such queries may help 
pressure the company to come up with a better solution than what they have 
proposed above;
3.  Stay tuned.  This is a fluid situation, and I am confident there will be 
further updates.  I have been or soon will be in contact with our people in 
Baltimore as well as the Department of Transportation.  One issue we have is 
that these next generation services, like in flight wifi, are not directly 
written in to laws and regulations like the Air Carrier Access Act and 14 
CFR Part 382.  This does not mean the law does not apply to the issues, but 
the technology came along after the laws were written; and
4.  Keep in mind who in your affiliate is a frequent flyer, or who would be 
most directly affected by an issue like this.

Thank you.

Regards,
Mika Pyyhkala
President
National Federation of the Blind of Massachusetts
Tel/SMS: (617) 202-3497
Twitter: http://twitter.com/pyyhkala
Affiliate Twitter: http://twitter.com/NFBMA

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