By Bernard Maldonado and a special thanks to Serrebi and Michael McCarty from Freds Head.
Sometimes I use Alexa in order to find a site to cover in an article. The subject of this article is about a site that comes in at number 65 (as of 5/18/09) on the Alexa.com United States Top Sites Category. It is called EzineArticles.com . Let’s face it, any site in the top 100 list has got to be a pretty big force to contend with.
EzineArticles employs a Captcha on their Submit an Article Page as well as their Contact Us page, and this article will address the employment of their Captcha.
First, let me say that this is a really frustrating article. Why? Because Ezine has such a good Captcha, and such a bad Captcha at the same time. Allow me to explain. The Ezine Captcha has an audio alternative button. I decided to evaluate the quality and turns out that it is fantastic. The audio alternative reads the exact same thing as the visual Captcha and it is very clear and concise. I had no problem understanding the spoken words. This is a big break from tools like ReCaptcha and Google that use distorted audio. NOTE: this page requires the WMP Active X plugin on IE, which was done and confirmed on my machine, as well as for the 2 people who helped me test this site.
In my testing with Jaws, I had many problems locating the audio alternative button on the Ezine page. This should be no surprise since I am a real novice with Jaws. So I called my friend Serrebi up north. He is a wizard with Jaws and site navigation. We spent 20 minutes back and forth trying to figure out how to access the audio alternative. No luck. He pulled every trick possible, and he has alot at his disposal! Later, I called my friend Michael McCarty. I told him the situation and solicited his help to determine if he could access the audio alternative. No go. Jaws got stuck. Jaws could not find the link. On and on. Michael, like Serrebi, is a master with Jaws key strokes and commands. He’s been doing this for a long time! It was so frustrating!
People, here is a good example of a Captcha that could be so good, yet is so bad. What good does it do for a site to have an audio alternative if two Jaws experts can’t even use it? Imagine a non-advanced screen reader user. The really sad point is that Ezine probably doesn’t even realize that this problem exists on their Captcha tool. Which leads me to my next point.
There are dozens of Captcha tools. Free, not free, whatever. How many actually include a visually impaired person for testing purposes? How many actually do field testing to make sure the tool works with the popular screen readers such as Jaws and Windows Eyes? How many include verbiage in their documentation about accessibility testing at the site level. It just makes me sick! It’s like ordering a Domino’s Pizza for dinner, and the guy shows up with a raw and uncooked pizza at your door….with a smile on his face!
Site owners, administrators, and Captcha tool developers need to embrace the concept of accessibility testing. Make an effort to contact a blind organization for testing before releasing something. People who use screen readers are a great resource for making sure that the tool will work with the software titles, and I’m sure would be happy to lend a few moments of time for accessibility testing.
Solona can solve this Captcha just fine. But that’s not the point here. The point is that if a site owner implements an audio alternative, it should work reliably. Make some kind of effort. I don’t think that is too much to ask for.
Bernard Maldonado
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Hmmm.. Thanks for letting us know. I’ll have our developers look into this. We did have a visually impaired member who helped us originally, but she never said anything was wrong and actually loved it.
Follow up: I would like to thank the Ezine Articles Team for repairing their Captcha in order to make it more accessible. Thank you again for responding so quickly. Bernard – Solona Captcha Service
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