[NFBCS] need suggestions in response to accessibility issue refusing audio captcha solution

Wed Jul 21 00:37:08 UTC 2021

Greetings and salutations:

In my experience, every time we run up against an organization that is unwilling to fix the CAPTCHA problem in a timely fashion, the fix is something that is not achievable within what we would regard as a reasonable amount of time. In an ideal world, all CAPTCHAs would be nonvisually accessible, and whenever they were used, would be deployed on every website we needed to use. Ah, but alas, we do not live in an ideal world. What then are we to do?

In the short term, I see no practical solution other than one which puts political or public pressure on the institution. And while this is happening, people who really need to utilize the service would have to use alternative techniques involving (dare I say it) sighted assistance. In the longer term, we might consider a legal challenge, but that, too, would take years to come to fruition, and there is no guarantee that we would win.

All of this depends on how much effort folks are willing to invest to address what I believe to be a very real problem. We know that accessible CAPTCHA solutions exist. The problem is persuading the institution to use them, and even under the best of circumstances, an implementation to convert to the accessible solution will probably take months to achieve.

I apologize if I sound pessimistic, but I do not see a quick fix to this vexing situation.

Regards,

Curtis Chong

-----Original Message-----
From: NFBCS <nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Amelia Pellicciotti via NFBCS
Sent: Tuesday, July 20, 2021 5:01 PM
To: NFB in Computer Science Mailing List <nfbcs at nfbnet.org>
Cc: Amelia Pellicciotti <ameliapelli95 at gmail.com>; Jim Barbour <jbar at barcore.com>
Subject: Re: [NFBCS] need suggestions in response to accessibility issue refusing audio captcha solution

Hello everyone,
I am the Chapter member in our local affiliate who discovered this issue.
The problem remains the same, even if there was a phone number to
call. Customer service is not allowed to change my account password,
for instance, they can only send me a link to do so on my own. Same
goes for the form, their offices are closed to appointments from the
public due to the pandemic, and the forms with this capcha are for
income assistance programs that require a social security number or my
photo ID. Giving out my information verbally in an office, is
inconvenient and poses an undo burden upon the screenreader user. When
I first applied for a program of there's back in 2018, the forms were
not a fillable hTML- they were a PDF without form fields. So, that is
the good news. I read into Veronica's response that they sound open to
suggestions, we just have to be proactive about it, and educate. I am
concerned that if we suggest recapcha V3, they will come back with
"But it's too expensive." this is a publicly  owned utility- meaning
that all of the taxpayers in my community own a portion, or something
to that effect.
 Thank you everyone, these are all very good suggestions.
Unfortunately I don't consider doing nothing to be an acceptable
alternative, because if someone from AIRA assists me, they now have
access to my social security number, and the public utility would be
liable for a stolen identity, in my opinion. We are willing to
compromise with them on any acceptable alternative that provides
REASONABLE  accommodation for blind users to fill out these forms,
privately and independently. It sounds like RECAPCHA from google is
the most ideal  solution, but what would be a good counterargument, do
you think, for any budgetary concerns? Firstly I would say that as a
publicly traded power company, they are especially answerable to all
of their customers needs.

On 7/20/21, Jim Barbour via NFBCS <nfbcs at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> I don’t know about not having an audio option, but I have seen the checkbox
> fail to recognize that I am not a robot. So, I don’t think this is a
> reliable solution.
>
> Further, I agree with the power company that audio captures are not anywhere
> near as secure as visual ones. If it were me, I would ask the company for an
> alternate way to accomplish these online tasks, such as a number to call.
>
> I recognize that there are plenty of people who we want to push for an
> online solution that does not use regular captcha, and yet is secure. I
> personally don’t know of any such option,  and so am uncomfortable
> advocating for that.
>
> Hope this helps,
>
> Jim
>
> Written while on the move,,
>
>> On Jul 20, 2021, at 11:06 AM, Jim Denham via NFBCS <nfbcs at nfbnet.org>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Wendy:
>>
>> What an unfortunate situation. You may want to suggest that instead of
>> developing there own captcha solution, this company consider implementing
>> an off-the-shelf solution to prevent spam. Many organizations are using
>> Google's reCAPTCHA. This is an industry proven tool and used on a wide
>> variety of websites. The accessibility advantage of implementing a product
>> like this is that you may not even need to use an audio CAPTCHA as the
>> software uses browsing history and other data in order to distinguish
>> between humans and spam bots.
>> You can find info about Google's reCAPTCHA at:
>> https://www.google.com/recaptcha/about/
>> Hope this is helpful.
>> Jim
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: NFBCS <nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Wendy Walker via NFBCS
>> Sent: Tuesday, July 20, 2021 12:55 PM
>> To: nfbcs at nfbnet.org
>> Cc: Wendy Walker <wenintex at gmail.com>
>> Subject: [NFBCS] need suggestions in response to accessibility issue
>> refusing audio captcha solution
>>
>> I will paste the body of the email below but I thought I could get
>> some suggestions from this list on a proper response. The local
>> electric company has inaccessible form submission on their website due
>> to captcha requirements for submission with no audio captcha option
>> (ironically this problem occurs also on their complaint submission
>> form). The following text I just receive last night in one of several
>> emails back and forth with no resolution:
>>
>> Thank you again for bringing to our attention the lack of
>> accessibility on the complaint form on CPS Energy's website. We are
>> sorry that your experience with this online form did not lead to a
>> satisfactory outcome.
>>
>> In your email, you provided a recommendation to use audio captcha as a
>> way to resolve this accessibility issue with the form. While this is a
>> solution used by some service providers, the broader industry
>> consensus, which our internal experts agree with, is that audio
>> captcha could lead to a security issues that captchas are primarily
>> designed to prevent - namely the Denial of Service Attack risk.
>>
>> We are currently evaluating options that would support improving the
>> accessibility issues caused by Captcha, while ensuring that our
>> website is not subject to malicious malware that can cause disruption
>> in our service to all of our customers.
>>
>> As we have additional developments, we would gladly keep you informed.
>> Should you have any additional feedback or suggestions, please don't
>> hesitate to let us know.
>>
>>
>> Veronica Wycoff
>> ADA Coordinator
>> CPS Energy
>>
>> Again, any useful suggestions would be appreciated on how to respond,
>> Wendy Walker
>>
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