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i'm curious to know: if you have a disability, what's the hardest thing about browsing the web? First thing that comes to mind: CAPTCHA. Not all of them have a

by Kenji 9y ago

i'm curious to know: if you have a disability, what's the hardest thing about browsing the web? First thing that comes to mind: CAPTCHA. Not all of them have an audio option. If you're blind, you're out of luck. Not to mention, CAPTCHAs these days are so difficult that I feel like robots will soon surpass us at recognizing these oddly distorted characters and words. Interestingly, the article only mentions CAPTCHAs at the bottom. I wish there was more innovation and theory about CAPTCHAs, I'm personally very fascinated by them, but it's a very difficult topic that is rarely treated rigorously. How do you quantify "hard to recognize for robots" etc.

Klathmon 9y ago
I think ultimately we need to move away from CAPTCHAs and toward something like a "proof of work" which still makes spamming/botting infeasible, but doesn't require a lot (or any) thought from a human. There are still very important aspects of this to solve (I don't want every website draining my mobile battery doing constant proof-of-work calculations every pageload), but with ML getting better and better and the ultimate goal of passing a touring test being in the interest of multiple unrelated groups, it's only a matter of time before CAPTCHAs are mostly worthless.
- mjevans 9y ago
  Or an outright payment if you don't want to / can't perform that 'work'. As a bonus this might allow for the micro-transaction fee that will kill ads (yeah right, that is going to die a slow death).
- lightbyte 9y ago
  That's already a thing. Quite a lot of CAPTCHAs now are just "click the lone button" where it determines if you're real based on timings, mouse movements, and other things.
cbhl 9y ago
> CAPTCHAs these days are so difficult that I feel like robots will soon surpass us at recognizing They already do. That's why they introduced No Captcha[0] in 2014, and Invisible Captcha[1] earlier this year. [0] https://security.googleblog.com/2014/12/are-you-robot-introducing-no-captcha.html https://security.googleblog.com/2014/12/are-you-robot-introd... [1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/03/googles-recaptcha-announces-invisible-background-captchas/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/03/googles-recaptcha-an... Disclaimer: I work at Google, but not on reCaptcha.
- firebird84 9y ago
  Even "No Captcha" is rather annoying as I'm almost ALWAYS asked for additional input. The checkbox alone never does it for me. Why do I seem so bot-ish?
  - sliverstorm 9y ago
    You are a bot. You just haven't become self-aware yet.
    - still_grokking 9y ago
      Says someone who's only a part of a simulation...
- robin_reala 9y ago
  ReCAPTCHA is OK but it still falls through to the inaccessible traditional CAPTCHA enough that we banned it and other similar solutions on gov.uk properties: https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/technology/using-captchas https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/technology/using-captchas
  - arjie 9y ago
    Which gov.uk services offer commenting facilities? Would you be able to share how effective these methods have been to preventing spam while allowing legitimate comments?
    - robin_reala 9y ago
      Every non-service page has a feedback form, services need to provide feedback mechanisms[1] and the blogs have a commenting system. Basically, none of these publish immediately. Feedback goes into Zendesk typically, and everything on the blogs are premoderated. Spam happens but because it doesn’t immediately show up on a gov.uk property it’s minimal enough to deal with manually. Basically, better that than denying a section of the population the right to comment. [1] https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/design/feedback-pages https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/design/feedback-pages
BinaryIdiot 9y ago
CAPTCHA is even difficult for people without disabilities. The other day I was attempting to setup an account on a website that used reCAPTCHA and I had to go through 5 different attempts before it worked. The words were too blurred together and when trying the audio it played some noise behind when it was speaking the letters so I kept not being able to understand it. CAPTCHAs are absolutely dreadful.

by Kenji 9y ago

Klathmon 9y ago

I think ultimately we need to move away from CAPTCHAs and toward something like a "proof of work" which still makes spamming/botting infeasible, but doesn't require a lot (or any) thought from a human. There are still very important aspects of this to solve (I don't want every website draining my mobile battery doing constant proof-of-work calculations every pageload), but with ML getting better and better and the ultimate goal of passing a touring test being in the interest of multiple unrelated groups, it's only a matter of time before CAPTCHAs are mostly worthless.

mjevans 9y ago
Or an outright payment if you don't want to / can't perform that 'work'. As a bonus this might allow for the micro-transaction fee that will kill ads (yeah right, that is going to die a slow death).
lightbyte 9y ago
That's already a thing. Quite a lot of CAPTCHAs now are just "click the lone button" where it determines if you're real based on timings, mouse movements, and other things.

cbhl 9y ago

> CAPTCHAs these days are so difficult that I feel like robots will soon surpass us at recognizing They already do. That's why they introduced No Captcha[0] in 2014, and Invisible Captcha[1] earlier this year. [0] https://security.googleblog.com/2014/12/are-you-robot-introducing-no-captcha.html https://security.googleblog.com/2014/12/are-you-robot-introd... [1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/03/googles-recaptcha-announces-invisible-background-captchas/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/03/googles-recaptcha-an... Disclaimer: I work at Google, but not on reCaptcha.

firebird84 9y ago
Even "No Captcha" is rather annoying as I'm almost ALWAYS asked for additional input. The checkbox alone never does it for me. Why do I seem so bot-ish?
- sliverstorm 9y ago
  You are a bot. You just haven't become self-aware yet.
  - still_grokking 9y ago
    Says someone who's only a part of a simulation...
robin_reala 9y ago
ReCAPTCHA is OK but it still falls through to the inaccessible traditional CAPTCHA enough that we banned it and other similar solutions on gov.uk properties: https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/technology/using-captchas https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/technology/using-captchas
- arjie 9y ago
  Which gov.uk services offer commenting facilities? Would you be able to share how effective these methods have been to preventing spam while allowing legitimate comments?
  - robin_reala 9y ago
    Every non-service page has a feedback form, services need to provide feedback mechanisms[1] and the blogs have a commenting system. Basically, none of these publish immediately. Feedback goes into Zendesk typically, and everything on the blogs are premoderated. Spam happens but because it doesn’t immediately show up on a gov.uk property it’s minimal enough to deal with manually. Basically, better that than denying a section of the population the right to comment. [1] https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/design/feedback-pages https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/design/feedback-pages

BinaryIdiot 9y ago

CAPTCHA is even difficult for people without disabilities. The other day I was attempting to setup an account on a website that used reCAPTCHA and I had to go through 5 different attempts before it worked. The words were too blurred together and when trying the audio it played some noise behind when it was speaking the letters so I kept not being able to understand it. CAPTCHAs are absolutely dreadful.