Need help with captcha/text in the box

Posted by nikkirae on 2/7/2012 at 3:29 PM

Hello, I've recently started a website and want it to be accessable for blind and low vision people. One of the main issues I am having is the captcha or text in the box. I like the idea of it because it prevents spam but it's not very accessable. I want it to be like on this site for instance. I like that it the person is told what word to right or given a task like "write the word saw backwerds". Does any one know how to achieve this? Any help would be very much appreciated.
Sincerely,
Nikki
http://playingtheblindcard.blogspot.com
nikkirae83@gmail.com

There are currently 8 replies

Re:Need help with captcha/text in the box

Hi. I'm afraid I won't be of much help as far as actual HTML coding for alternative captchas but could you have something which would ask a random question which would be easy to answer, such as "what is the answer to 2 plus 2" and have a series of radio buttons, one of which would contain the correct response. The question could change with each visit, thus not allowing spammers to write a script to create bogus accounts. Personally, I use the Firefox extension Webvisum at www.webvisum.com which handles visual captchas by decoding them although I'm not sure how often this extension is being maintained.

Re:Need help with captcha/text in the box

I know I wish all sites had a captcha like this one. My advice would be to email Joe S.

Re:Need help with captcha/text in the box

Hello, Nikki.

I've actually been to your site and read quite a bit! Good material!

As far as this site goes, I don't think that it uses any CAPTCHA technologies at all. I am partially blind, and I am still able to use screen magnification. The area where it says "Enter the world into the text box." is actually selectable text. It is actually not a CAPTCHA technology at all, and so someone could (if they wanted to) probably easily post spam here.

One idea which I was thinking of, although I do not know how easy or difficult it would be, as I am not a professional Web developer) is this:

Say you had a number of images which took up part of a single line on a Web page. The images would all have a line which reads, "Enter into the box." Let's say that one fo the images says, "Type the word ELEPHANT" into the text area." The image could then be named elephant.jpg.
of
A JavaScript function (we'll just call it random_image) could be called to pick out a random image; the filename of the random image could be checked by another JavaScript function and then an ALT tag (which is a tag which can be used to describe a picture to screen readers) could be placed in the page code so that the screen reader could accurately read the picture text.

Here is some pseudocode so that maybe this can be better explained. (NOTE: I only know basic JavaScript):

random_image()
{
pick a random image
image "elephant.jpg" randomly chosen
check the filename
add the ALT tag when placing the image within the document.
}

I'm sorry...I guess I am a lot better at writing code than explaining it. I hope that I have made some sense of this.

I made a basic HTML page and put up a picture of my son with the ALT tag reading, "Enter CHOCOLATE here", and it worked.

I think that this JavaScript idea could be a feasible alternative to CAPTCHA, but I don't know. I'm still trying to learn, so I will try to mess around with this. CAPTCHA usually have an option to listen to the text, but sometimes even that is too difficult to comprehend.

I hope that something in my long rambling has helped.

Take care.

Re:Need help with captcha/text in the box

Hi RKCole729,
Would love to discuss some website development ideas with you off- list. If you are interested, contact me at kathyfirak@ameritech.net
Kathy

Re:Need help with captcha/text in the box

Hello, Kathy.

I e-mailed you earlier today. Depending on how your e-mail provider processes and filters messages, my e-mail cound have gone to your Spam folder as this happens with messages from GMail (my e-mail service provider) at times.

I would post my e-mail address directly here, but anything published here is public, available to anyone on the Internet. I am not really paranoid, but rather just trying to prevent Spam pile-up.

Re:Need help with captcha/text in the box

thank you very much. I am new to coding but I think that makes sense lol. I will give it a try.
Sincerely,
Nikki
http://www.playingtheblindcard.blogspot.com
http://www.nicoleraesworld.wordpress.com

Re:Need help with captcha/text in the box

Hello, Nikki.

I am somewhat new to coding as well. I have taken programming classes for various programming languages (C++, Visual Basic, Python, SQL, and Asembly), and I have some experience with HTML. I am not sure if you are reading any certain materials in order to learn any of these Web development languages, but if you are looking for a good place to get started in learning, check out W3Schools:

http://www.w3schools.com/

They have a lot of great and failry comprehensive tutorials for HTML, JavaScript, PHP, SQL, and so forth, and the site is quite accessible to blind users.

I hope that this will be of some help to you.

Take care.

Re: Need help with captcha/text in the box

Hello. My name is Christopher.
If you have the FireFox web browser, there is a free ad-on you can install. It's called Webvisum. You can get it from www.webvisum.com
You can make an account with them. I can give you an invitation code. All I need is your email address. It has automated captcha solving features.