Spam-Bot Tests Flunk the Blind
From: CNet - July 2, 2003
By: Paul Festa

Yahoo!, Microsoft, VeriSign, and other major ISPs are using a technique
designed to block software bots' attempts to sign up for online email
accounts that spammers can employ to distribute bulk commercial email, as
well as harvest the Internet addresses of potential spam recipients from
databases. The method involves a visual ID verification test that users must
pass, but advocates for the visually challenged complain that their
constituency cannot take advantage of such tools. "It seems that they have
jumped on a technological idea without thinking through the consequences for
the whole population," notes Janina Sajka of the American Foundation for the
Blind, who adds that the visual test can also frustrate people with
relatively minor visual impairments, such as color blindness and contrast
difficulty. Some ISPs offer alternatives: Microsoft's Hotmail has an audio
option in which the letters users must enter to confirm their identity are
spoken rather than displayed graphically, but all of the CNET News.com
reporters who tested it could only hear gibberish. Yahoo! allows visually
handicapped users to fill out a Web form that is supposedly processed within
24 hours, but not all Yahoo! sign-up services have this option, although the
ISP reports that engineers are working to correct this oversight. Meanwhile,
a pair of working groups in the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Accessibility
Initiative (WAI) are developing outlines that Web developers can use to
design bot-thwarting measures accessible to the blind. Additionally, Sajka
and legal experts such as Kaye Scholer's Kerry Scanlon imply that companies
that deploy such visual tests could face discrimination lawsuits under the
Americans with Disabilities Act, although Web sites are currently excluded
from the ADA's purview under a 2002 federal court ruling. 

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