Is CAPTCHA accessible?

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Is CAPTCHA Accessible
How does CAPTCHA Work?
Can CAPTCHA be made Accessible?
Vially Can Help

How Does CAPTCHA Work?

The most common types of CAPTCHA are image-based. A random combination of numbers and letters that are twisted out of shape appear on screen, then the user is asked to decipher what these numbers and letters are. Another test is Google’s reCAPTCHA, which asks users to select pictures within a grid that contain a certain object. Audio CAPTCHAs are less common and more difficult; users must listen to a distorted voice and identify the words or numbers being said.

People with disabilities will run into obvious problems with these tests. Those with sight loss or dyslexia won’t be able to complete an image-based CAPTCHA and people with hearing loss won’t be able to complete an audio CAPTCHA. Some users might be both deaf and blind, and so cannot pass either test. Additionally, most CAPTCHAs are presented only in English, which poses problems for anyone who doesn’t understand the language.

Can CAPTCHA be made Accessible?

It’s clear that CAPTCHA tests were not originally designed with accessibility in mind. Their most common formats break several criteria outlined in theWeb Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

Text alternatives are not provided for image or audio-based CAPTCHAs because it defeats their purpose. Some website owners try to solve this issue by implementing more than one type of test, allowing users to choose whether they want to complete an image or audio CAPTCHA. While this offers freedom of choice to individuals with sight or hearing loss, it still causes problems for people with cognitive or learning disabilities, non-English speakers, and people with more than one disability.

Other website owners have implemented different tests entirely, such as maths or word questions, trivia, and logic puzzles. But again, this poses issues for those with learning or cognitive disabilities, who may find these questions challenging.

The latest version of Google’s reCAPTCHA, widely regarded as the “most accessible” CAPTCHA solution on the web, uses a checkbox labelled ‘I’m not a robot’. Ticking the box allows users to continue through the site. While reCAPTCHA has worked with a variety of assistive technologies, it has one major flaw that can block people with disabilities: its fallback is the traditional, inaccessible CAPTCHA. Any number of factors can trigger the fallback, including incognito mode, rejecting or clearing cookies, even the use of keyboard navigation.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C, the organisation behind the WCAG) has suggested different solutions, the easiest to implement being honeypot traps. Honeypot traps are visible to bots but not humans – by leaving an input field labelled ‘This field is for robots only’ empty, a human user is easily able to pass the test.

Vially Can Help

If you are ready to make your company more accessible, are unsure if your company complies with required laws, or just have questions you’d like answered, Vially is here to help

Email hello@Vially.io and we’ll be happy to lend a hand.

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