Yes, this marvel of human innovation (known as a "CAPTCHA" or "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart") virtually guarantees (--not really true--) that spammers and others with nefarious intent cannot write a computer program to automatically sign up for thousands of accounts. Unfortunately, it also becomes a frustrating roadblock for many humans (non-computer) who are legitimately trying to sign up for an email.
I am clearly not a computer. I know that, but the computer challenges me anyway. "Are you a human?" Of course I am! I feel indignant. And why can't I read what it wants me to type into this little box? Really, this is ridiculous. "Click on the little person-in-a-wheelchair icon," says my web-browsing instinct. "It will read the letters to you."
"This is stupid."
"Just do it."
<-- I click here, fully expecting to hear some computer-generated voice sing the letters of the the CAPTCHA.The Captcha Sound(<-- Click here to listen to what I heard.)
I started laughing so hard. If the word images weren't trippy enough, the sound I heard was definitely enough to make the hallucination experience complete.
So, I asked myself, What is this? The "accessibility" button (that was supposed to play a sound to help me type what was in the box) was completely incomprehensible. Did anyone at Google try this out before they implemented it?
Now, in all fairness to Google, I was able to hear numbers being spoken when I started listening for numbers. Prior to this, however, I was expecting letters to be spoken, not numbers. Maybe it also didn't help that my background in programming and speech recognition led me to believe that the numbers I was hearing were garbage noise to keep a speech recognizer from interpreting the letters. (In fact, I'm still not sure whether they were garbage or whether I was supposed to type the numbers into the box. I lost patience and just requested a new CAPTCHA, one that was slightly easier to read.) In any case, the point is that this "accessibility" feature was definitely not what I had expected to help me pass by the CAPTCHA sentinel standing guard between me and my new account.
While this was experience was certainly amusing to me, I don't have to try very hard to imagine how frustrating this situation would be for someone with a real disability that prevents them from reading the CAPTCHA. The fact that their only real help in this situation is something that sounds like a garbled communication from a Star Trek movie is not encouraging.
I know this is totally a stretch, but I think that it wouldn't be too far off base to ask if Google's challenge-response measures here aren't a borderline violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. (Not really trying to get Google in hot water here, but honestly--this experience was completely ridiculous for someone without disabilities.)
What do you think?
Actually, this probably isn't as much of a stretch as I originally thought. Some lawsuits have already arisen out of similar issues. Go find out more at Wikipedia.
ReplyDeleteCould not agree more--I had the exact same experience (including laughing out loud in a nearly silent library_ trying to create an email account for...something, can't remember, all I remember is the drowning cyborg reading me...something)
ReplyDeleteSerious cognitive dissonance for me on this one...I ended up mentally getting Google out of hot water (and preserving the sense so integral to our concept of the universe these days that Google knows all) by reasoning that blind people--presumably the population this accessibility feature was designed to serve--have a more highly-developed, more discriminating auditory sense than me and that eerie alien transmission sound made perfect sense to them. No idea if that's true...but it took care of the dissonance.
interesting thoughts
ReplyDeletethis was a hoot, Aaron.
ReplyDeleteI had never really thought about this before until you brought it up. I think it is a good example, though, of this principle: if the technology doesn't function within some user's acceptable threshold, they will not do it even if it's not totally complicated. What if you didn't know you could click and get another CAPTCHA? You would just never get an email account. I think I relate to this because I always do a bad job of reading other student's blog in a class. It is because I never sign up to get their RSS feeds or notified of their posts or whatever it is that one does to automatically get hooked into to a blog's progress. It is because I do not know how and have never asked. I think another important consideration in administering a distance ed course of any kind is to provide some way for students to get THAT kind of help...where is "space" built into the course for asking those kinds of dumb, embarrassing questions like "what does RSS stand for?"
ReplyDelete