[nfbmi-talk] captcha issue hits australia

[joe harcz Comcast]

Google challenged to drop CAPTCHAs

 

BEN GRUBB

 

 

An Australian consumer advocacy group has accused Google of not meeting its mission to make information "

universally accessible"

by continuing to use CAPTCHA – the often illegible, distorted security puzzles used by websites to tell computers and humans apart.

 

The Australian Communications Consumer Action Network last year called on Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, eBay, Twitter, Yelp and Facebook

to rid their websites of the challenging puzzles.

 

Its "kill CAPTCHA" petition gathered more than

3600 signatures on Change.org

from consumers wanting to never again see the tests, which are supposed to be easy for humans to read, but difficult for spamming computers, or

spambots,

to automate.

 

Yet thousands of Australians who are blind or vision impaired are blocked from accessing CAPTCHA because they – or their screen reader software – cannot

read them.

 

So far the largest Australian organisation known to have heeded the call is Telstra, which announced in its sixth

Disability Action Plan

[pdf] in December that it would remove them by September 30.

 

Telstra told Fairfax Media on Wednesday that it was on track to remove the feature from its sites and remained committed to increasing the accessibility

of company information for customers with a disability.

 

"The decision to remove CAPTCHA from our sites has been really well received by disability and consumer advocacy groups and we are confident it will make

a difference to our customers," a Telstra spokesman said.

 

"It is up to individual companies to determine their use of the service but we made the decision because it was the right thing for our customers."

 

Many other websites, such as those of federal Assistant Minister for Social Services (with responsibility for disabilities and ageing)

Mitch Fifield

and federal Minister for Education

Christopher Pyne,

continue to use the test.

 

In a

letter [pdf]

sent to Google's Australia and New Zealand managing director Maile Carnegie on Monday, ACCAN urged Google, as an industry leader, to follow in Telstra's

footsteps.

 

Source:

 

http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/30014607/google-challenged-to-drop-captchas