When posting on g.d.o the other day I was asked to solve a CAPTCHA. As a completely blind screen-reader user I was quite frustrated. My frustration lessened when I realized that there was an audio CAPTCHA accompanying the visual image. However, the audio challenge was not sufficiently clear for me to solve on the first attempt.

I can hardley imagine the frustration that would be faced by a contributor who is both visually and hearing impaired. By this I don't mean completely blind and deaf, but an individual whose impairments make them unable to clearly solve the audio or visual challenges presented by the CAPTCHA.

Recommendation
1. Get rid of the CAPTCHA all together.

2. Provide a question answer style of CAPTCHA with questions that take into consideration the cognitive abilities of all audiences.

Comments

greggles’s picture

greggles
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Location Denver, Colorado, USA
CreditAttribution: greggles commented

Thanks for bringing this up, Everett. It's something that I've been interested in for a while now - http://getsatisfaction.com/mollom/topics/accessible_mollom - but never really followed through.

I'll take your suggestions in reverse order:

2. We used to use that style of CAPTCHA but got a lot more spam. In terms of annoyance to end users and consistency of blocking spam Mollom is a vast improvement (based on my experience as one of the major spam-blockers and admins on the site). So, I don't see that as a solution.

1. Many people on the groups site are set to receive notifications via e-mail. A spam post or comment may get e-mailed to thousands of people. So, whatever spam solution we have needs to be "preventive" rather than "detective." That is, we must stop spam before it is posted to the site and e-mailed out. A content filtering or CAPTCHA based system is about all we can do.

We can and should push on Mollom to improve their tool. That should help.

Another idea that has been floated is that we allow people to "earn" a role and in that role they would not have spam checking. I'm interested in a solution to do this, but it would need to be really lightweight to ensure that we could use/support it as we upgrade g.d.o from 5 to 6, and 6 to 7.

Everett Zufelt’s picture

Everett Zufelt CreditAttribution: Everett Zufelt commented

Excellent thought to try to improve the situation upstream.

Also an interesting idea about earning your way out of requiring the CAPTCHA, understandable this solution needs to be portable.

To go along with the earning concept, would it be possible for users with enough reputation to invite others into the site so that they could avoid the CAPTCHA. My thought is this. As a blind Drupal developer I am understanding of other blind developers being turned off from participating in g.d.o and therefore not contributing (path of least resistance). If a user gains enough reputation perhaps they could invite one or two others to the site, perhaps with the understanding that you are bringing a friend to a party, and are responsible for their actions as if they were your own?

apaderno’s picture

apaderno
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CreditAttribution: apaderno commented
Project: Drupal.org site moderators » Groups.drupal.org
Component: Groups.drupal.org » User interface
greggles’s picture

greggles
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Location Denver, Colorado, USA
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Status: Active » Postponed

I can't believe I hadn't linked this to #744264: Allow to play audio CAPTCHA via keyboard (or other means) only.

Everett Zufelt’s picture

Everett Zufelt CreditAttribution: Everett Zufelt commented
Status: Postponed » Active

Was looking at http://groups.drupal.org/about

We use a form of spam protection called Mollom - you should be aware of their Terms of service. If you are visually impaired please contact the site maintainers and we will change your account so you don't have to interact with Mollom.

1. I am wondering if this message can be moved to an easier to find location? Perhaps an "Accessibility" page? This page could also link to http://drupal.org/about/accessibility

2. Possible rewording of the message to be considered:

We use a form of spam protection called Mollom - you should be aware of their Terms of service. Mollom will sometimes present users with a visual or audio challenge (CAPTCHA), which must be solved to post to our site. If you are unable to solve these challenges please contact the site maintainers and we will change your account so you don't have to interact with Mollom.

greggles’s picture

greggles
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Location Denver, Colorado, USA
CreditAttribution: greggles commented
Status: Active » Postponed

Thanks for the ideas, Everett.

I updated the text with some slight changes.

We use a form of spam protection called Mollom - you should be aware of their terms of service. Mollom will sometimes present users with a visual or audio challenge (CAPTCHA) which must be solved to post to our site. If you are unable to solve these challenges please contact the site maintainers and we will investigate the problem with the team at Mollom and perhaps change your account so you don't have to interact with Mollom.

How does that seem?

Are there other things we would include on an accessibility page? Is it a standard to create those? Would we just link the accessibility page from the about page?

Everett Zufelt’s picture

Everett Zufelt CreditAttribution: Everett Zufelt commented

The text is looking better now.

I'm not sure that an Accessibility page is standard, but they aren't uncommon. Usually an accessibility page gives useless information about how the site is using headings or alt text for images. However, they are one of the first places that I look when I am having an issue with a site.

I'm not sure that there is anything else that I can think of adding to an Accessibility page at this time. I was thinking that it could go just after the About link on http://groups.drupal.org

Everett Zufelt’s picture

Everett Zufelt CreditAttribution: Everett Zufelt commented

After giving it some thought you might want to add more to the Accessibility page. I am not a copywriter :)

Something like: Drupal ... inclusive community ... web standards ... strive to make the site easy to use for all members of our community ... please let us know if you face any challenges using our site.

Thanks

Liam Morland’s picture

Liam Morland
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CreditAttribution: Liam Morland commented
Version: » 6.x-1.x-dev
mgifford’s picture

mgifford
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Could we add some invisible text on GDO with instructions to the d.o issue queue where folks should request access without a captcha? Just trying to figure out if we can make this more apparent to people using AT.

greggles’s picture

greggles
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@mgifford - given specific text suggestions and an appropriate patch, seems totally possible.

mgifford’s picture

mgifford
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CreditAttribution: mgifford commented

I should probably know this, but what's the plan for a D7 upgrade of GDO?

Also, where's the git repo for the site? I could pull it down and have a look at some point (but realistically not for at a month or two).

Hopefully someone else can run with it though.

In the interim, I'll riff a bit on @Everett's code:
<p class="element-invisible">We use a form of spam protection called Mollom. Mollom will sometimes present users with a visual or audio challenge (CAPTCHA), which must be solved to post to our site. If you are unable to solve these challenges please <a href="https://drupal.org/node/add/project-issue/groupsdrupalorg">add an issue for the site maintainers</a> and we will change your account so you don't have to interact with Mollom. Note that you will need an account on Drupal.org before you will be able to do this.</p>

sreynen’s picture

sreynen CreditAttribution: sreynen commented

The D7 upgrade plan is here:

http://drupal.org/node/1529948

I don't believe we have a specific spam fighting plan yet.

Just to confirm, class="element-invisible" is still accessible in non-visual user agents?

sreynen’s picture

sreynen CreditAttribution: sreynen commented

The Git repo is here:

http://drupal.org/project/groupsdrupalorg

greggles’s picture

greggles
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CreditAttribution: greggles commented

Git repo for the site-specific code is in https://drupal.org/project/groupsdrupalorg/git-instructions (that was somewhat subtly linked in comment #11).

D7 upgrade is "soon" but we'll likely still use mollom so this code would still be useful.

mgifford’s picture

mgifford
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CreditAttribution: mgifford commented

@sreynen - element-invisible is still good. Still some changes suggested for D8 to make it better, but it's still good. As it says in the code for .element-invisible "Hide elements visually, but keep them available for screen-readers."

Good to ask though.

@greggles - Thanks for those. Hopefully someone can get to it before I do.

mpp’s picture

mpp CreditAttribution: mpp at AmeXio for District09 commented
Issue summary: View changes
Status: Postponed » Closed (outdated)
Related issues: +#2104697: Use honeypot / drupalorg_honeypot on g.d.o

Please reopen if still relevant but critical for 6 years doesn't seem right, also Mollom is now deprecated.

There is some discussion on https://www.drupal.org/project/groupsdrupalorg/issues/2104697 to implement a replacement like Honeypot.