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CAPTCHA is the method used on websites to prevent automated linkspam on wikis and blogs, automated generation of tons of logins for free email, etc. It's usually a wavy or otherwise distorted picture of some random letters that you are supposed to type in the box. This is bad because:
• It makes
these sites inaccessible to the blind or visually impaired (who use screen readers)
• It's inconvenient for those of us who can use it, because it's increasingly hard to see the letters exactly, and annoying when we have to try multiple times.
• It uses a relatively large amount of bandwidth and a relatively large amount of processing power to generate the image.
• It can be thwarted by recruiting people who just sit at computers all day typing them in.
My idea is to use simple English (or the local language) questions that are trivial to answer by a human, but not by a computer. Examples:
• Enter the sum of two and three: ____
• What is the opposite of "cold"? ____
• Click the second and fourth check boxes: [] [] [] []
Basically, questions that a native speaker over the age of 7 could answer, but a computer could not. With this system:
• Since it relies on text, contributing to such sites would be just as accessible as the sites themselves.
• It would use less server resources and take less time to download
• It would not be as easy to run through an overseas human factory for cracking, since it requires knowledge of the local language instead of just the ability to recognize distorted characters. Yes, this makes editing the page less accessible to people who don't understand the language, but again, it's just as accessible as the page itself.
Annotation:
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Someone came up with the idea of 'click the puppy' where, in a grid of 3x3 (or NxN) pictures of kittys, the user had to click on the one containing the puppy (change imagery to suit audience). This sounds like a textual version of that. [+] I wonder what type of questions would provide appropriate answers. The problem is soliciting a single response that can only be determined by fully comprehending the question. |
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For example, the opposite of hot, might be 'freezing', or 'not hot' or 'brassic' - I know it's not a great example, but you get the idea. I spent far too long typing in variations of "STAND ON THORIN'S SHOULDERS" to know that typing in the same pattern of text that a designer/programmer expected me to is not always as easy as it at first sounds. |
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//Which transformer was omegatron? What
did it change into/from?// |
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A play on Megatron? He turned from a bot
into a handgun/blaster. |
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Nice idea [omegatron] btw. |
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How did Ophelia die? How many pennies in a million dollars? What is the atomic number of helium? What is decimal ten in base eight? In how many countries did the Da Vinci Code take place? Bun. |
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Perhaps introduce the odd spelling error here or three, just to confuse computer programs even more. |
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[SledDog], I only know 3 of those 5 myself. Although, humans would have the advantage of search engines to aid them. |
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Oh come on, ask some hard ones! |
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Its not a hard problem to parse and answer some of these questions through machine logic, especially if everyone is using the same database of questions. T |
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he workload in generating thousands of these questions would require a human factory. Once answered you have the key to unlock the website. |
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The big advantage of captcha is that they can generate thousands of hard to read by OCR images very quickly and dispose of the old ones periodically. The question system is 10000000x the workload. |
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//Someone came up with the idea of 'click the puppy'// |
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The main point of this was to make it usable by the visually impaired. |
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//Which transformer was omegatron? What did it change into/from?// |
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It wasn't one. Megatron is similar. I got the name from a vacuum tube. |
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Damn. No way, dude. I only know three of those. Much simpler questions. |
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True. I was actually just thinking of using something like this for my own site, which would work quite well because it's one of a kind. It *would* take some work to make a universal one that can run on multiple sites, though. Less than 10 addition permutations would only give you 100 questions, for instance. Hmm... The "click in a certain pattern" idea might be more flexible. |
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//The main point of this was to make it usable by the visually impaired. // |
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How does reading a question in text get any easier for the visually impaired than telling the difference between a kitten or a puppy? |
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I accept that a text-only interface is easier though. |
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[zen_tom] Text can be LISTENED to. Pictures cannot. |
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Aha! Sorry, my reading-aid's been playing up. |
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Anyway, you could just make sure your pictures have the appropriate <alt> text; puppy.jpg, kitty.jpg etc ;) |
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//Why is everyone so worried about special web design for the blind?// |
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There were three other benefits I listed, too... |
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It's not just about designing so that pages are readable by the blind, either. It makes things accessible to people with monochrome, very small, or text-only displays, like PDAs and cell phones, for instance. |
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This is now baked. I've seen it on http://forum.linux-ntfs.org, for instance. |
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