David Russell

As much as I love to proliferate positive commentary around this Internet, I have figured out that I’m not very skilled at the CAPTCHA tango. In fact, I find myself slightly repelled when I see CAPTCHA in place. Nothing against my peeps who use this system in an attempt to thwart our friends the spammers. (No, spammers aren’t really my friends.) I mean, I know comment spam is tough and I’ve heard many people say that CAPTCHA absolutely solved their spam issues. Okay. Cool. But am I the only one who can’t figure out what the darn things actually say?

Is that an i or a j. Wait. Is that capitalized? Erm. Okay. I’ll try this.

Denied.

Sometimes I’m even warned that I only have x number of attempts left. Oh great. If I don’t get this right, I bet the Internet will implode. Or maybe the tubes will get clogged.

<end sarcasm />

It is important to note that CAPTCHAs are not accessible. That’s probably the most important reason to avoid this system if you are a site administrator. Use a good spam filter like Akismet or Spam Karma. If you are using a good content management system, there should be something available for you that won’t ostracize folks who can’t access content embedded in an image.

In fact, in an ironic twist of fate, spammers (the email kind more so than the blog kind) have taken to this technology to obfuscate their own messages to prevent automated anti-spam software from reading their text and blocking its content. Wow. Anyone who has received a piece of spam in the last few months has probably seen this type of email, where a text-embedded image appears to deliver the latest Wall Street tip. It’s uncanny that the same technology invented to prevent spam is now inadvertently aiding spam.

With all that said, there is no agenda here. CAPTCHAs will still be used to validate form data. And I’ll still gaze at them, perplexed. In the end, I’m not sure why I have such a problem reading distorted, distressed, dissolved text in a swirly, hatchy, tie-dyed box. I just hope my optometrist doesn’t start using them on the exam.

CAPTCHA on Wikipedia
A good example of a bad CAPTCHA from Sean

[tags]captcha, read, spam, usability, interaction, accessibility[/tags]