Traps for Bots Block the Blind

Posted on May 8, 2003

One of the issues I am very involved with is Web accessibility for the handicapped. That’s why I found this discussion so interesting. It’s about something I’ve wondered about for a long time — many sites now prevent people from writing programs to create fake user accounts by putting a graphic with some random text on the screen, and requiring the would-be user to type in the displayed text before their account is activated. This works because there’s no way for a script to read the text in the graphic, while human eyes can pick it out easily. This does, however, beg the question of what you do in these situations if your eyes don’t work. Are you completely shut out, or are there alternate methods of trapping scripts that are more friendly to the blind? It’s an interesting question, and one that no one has yet come up with a 100% satisfactory answer for. Read the article, and if you come up with one, let me know! 🙂