Comments on: Bill Maher makes fun of Captcha’s poor usability

By: Jason Luttrell

Jason Luttrell — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 15:57:55 +0000

As a Web developer who specializes in accessibility, I find it interesting how people just assume that the “conventional wisdom” about CAPTCHAs are true. I’ve actually implemented simple prompts to re-type a word that are just as effective at blocking out 99.5% of all spam. These mythical “robots” that people frequently refer to are not all that sophisticated. You don’t need lines, cursive fonts, and 3d effects. If a normal sighted person, such as myself, can’t decipher some of these CAPTCHAs, then what about people with common vision impairments, such as color blindness? I guess old people just don’t fit in anyone’s business models these days. Seriously, there are no circumstances or occassions when I would recommend CAPTCHAs–they should be completely banished from the Web as a “Bad practice” akin to putting “under construction” on your site; they’re just unprofessional.

By: i n f o d o n » September 16th

i n f o d o n » September 16th — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 22:48:59 +0000

[...] Shared Pleasure and Pain » Bill Maher makes fun of Captcha’s poor usability. [...]

By: Hélène Le Tutour

Hélène Le Tutour — Thu, 20 May 2010 11:19:16 +0000

I hate CAPTCHAs too. They sometimes make me feel like I'm an idiot.

I recently saw a nice alternative on a Web agency's website.
They included 2 radio buttons with funny statements, something like:
"I am made of bones and flesh"
or
"I am made of steel and iron"
It made me laugh and definitely reinforced the cool image of the agency I already started having.
Great user experience!

By: Fay Afshar

Fay Afshar — Fri, 14 May 2010 02:29:56 +0000

I personally hate CAPTCHAs, as a general user and ux professional.
They are not only hideous and slow down your flow when filling in a form, they are often impossible to read as well.
Some sites use such badly distorted fonts, it makes me wonder how accessible these captcha images are to people who dont have great eye sight (not visually impaired, thats another accessibility issue altogether)

By: M. Mudassir Azeemi

M. Mudassir Azeemi — Wed, 12 May 2010 22:42:56 +0000

Hello!

I prefer the "Honeypot Captcha'

http://haacked.com/archive/2007/09/11/honeypot-...

Loved the idea, currently implementing it on our NaanMap.com and hopefully we will stop annoying the Users!

Honeypot Captcha got a good logic under the hood, it is actually have a trap for the spammers which is invisible to the "Human User" and then once they fall off in to the trap, they are squashed with the power bits & bytes.

Ciao,

Mudassir Azeemi
Silicon Valley, CA

By: WDYWFT

WDYWFT — Wed, 12 May 2010 18:33:04 +0000

http://www.managementhelp.org/email/form-to-add... uses a drop-down box. The box has to be set to 'confirm validation' before you submit. It definitely does not interrupt your train of thought (cause you are already in the process of marking and selecting stuff in boxes).

By: Guest

Guest — Wed, 12 May 2010 18:13:20 +0000

I do find it annoying, but I also appreciate the thinking behind reCaptcha - where one word is to verify your humanity and the other word is polling users to identify words in digital books that the OCR couldn't figure out. http://recaptcha.net/

By: jacquelyn kittredge

jacquelyn kittredge — Wed, 12 May 2010 18:08:50 +0000

My favorite one displays 4 picture icons and says “If you are a human, click on the flower.”