Out of the corner of my eye

I spent quite some time implementing an audio version of our CAPTCHA. It took longer than the visual version, and I ended up modifying Nick Swardh’s code to get it done in the end. It isn’t too hard once you figure out how to join mp3s together so let’s look at what’s out there already, because I have a few things to say about them…

Google Accounts and Microsoft Live both feature an audio CAPTCHA. The initial presentation leads you to believe this could be something that genuinely improves accessibility — that is, until you actually try to listen to them. Microsoft’s pops up windows all over the place for a start (can’t be much fun in a screen reader, can it?). Then both of them play an audio stream that, quite frankly, is harder to decipher due to the excessive background noise than the worst visual CAPTCHAs I’ve seen.

This could be justified by that argument that “well, blind people’s hearing is better than sighted people”, but to be honest I think it’s just another case of “CAPTCHA overkill”. This leads to lots of false positives and a reduction in site visitors.

What’s the point of locking out people from using your site just to stop spam? Is it really worth it?