Posted by Jody Lynn on March 11, 2007 at 7:01pm
6 followers
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| Project: | CAPTCHA |
| Version: | 6.x-2.x-dev |
| Component: | User interface |
| Category: | feature request |
| Priority: | normal |
| Assigned: | Unassigned |
| Status: | active |
Issue Summary
For blind accessiblity with captcha I'm interested in working towards adding an audio component. Does anyone have any thoughts as to how best to go about this or has anyone started working on this or have any interest?
A captcha with audio: http://www.nswardh.com/shout/ (wondering whether integration with an existing captcha like this into Drupal could be a possibility...)
Thanks.
Comments
#1
I'd just like to second this request. Bots are getting through our math captcha using brute force, we'd like to switch to textimage but can't due to accessibility concerns. Audio would be a great asset.
Thanks for the awesome project!
#2
Check out the CAPTCHA Pack module. It is meant to provide lightweight, yet effective alternatives for the traditional image captcha challenge, which is undesirable in certain situation (e.g. bandwidth restrictions, cpu restrictions, accessibility constraints, etc).
BTW. I think audio captcha challenges have their accessibility issues too: e.g for deaf people, people without speakers, people without enough knowledge about the spoken language, ...
#3
reCAPTCHA has an option where you can click on a speaker icon and it will use audio to speak the numbers, which you have to type in. Try it out.
#4
If you make a Captcha module with "Shout It Out", feel free to contribute it as a new module or part of the Captcha Pack. For now, I think reCAPTCHA may suite your needs. Great find, I might have a look at it.
#5
#6
I am looking for audio to sit along side the image. PHP could generate text to speech for the play button but it would require external software and would not be usable by everyone. We could generate the billions of audio files to match the images. A simpler approach would be to generate one audio file for each number and letter then concatenate the required files when someone hits the audio play link. A PHP script could join the files and send them out to the browser. I found a Perl script to join WAV files. The Perl script could be translated to PHP.
http://www.planet-source-code.com/vb/scripts/ShowCode.asp?txtCodeId=71&l...
#7
Hi peterx.
I think it's better development-wise to implement this audio CAPTCHA as a separate module, like there is a separate CAPTCHA pack module. It seems such an audio CAPTCHA is non trivial and putting it inside the CAPTCHA module would only make development harder and slower. Not to mention that the tar ball would increase considerably in size because of all the audio files.
I don't have the time nor interest to implement an audio CAPTCHA module, any takers?
Also, if you're just interested in using an audio CAPTCHA, check out the Mollom module, which provides an audio CAPTCHA alongside the image CAPTCHA.
#8
It's a little sad to see that such crucial accessibility issues are put aside that easily. I can understand reasons to make a new module for this, but the way this is discussed looks very simplifying to me ("write a new module, I won't"). Accessibility is too much ignored in the Drupal community, I think.
#9
It is as simple as that. At the moment, I am the only maintainer of the CAPTCHA module and can only do maintenance/development in my nearly non-existing free time as hobbyist (Drupal is not related to my day job). It will already be hard enough for me to get the port for Drupal 7 ready in a timely fashion, let alone I could allocate time to implement new features. On the module's info page, you'll see I am calling for co-maintainers (for several months now) and had some responses, but so far none of the candidates is up to speed yet.
I prefer to say "write a new module yourself, because I won't" over promising something but not delivering in the end. It's not that I think it would be a stupid module, it's just about practical constraints and being honest.
peace
#10
Hi saxofaan, I didn't mean to offend you.
My point is just the way we treat things like accessibility which in my opinion is very important. I'm not saying that you have write that module and I totally understand the limits of time you can spent on Drupal development. It's more the way we address things like this.
Imagine "that's really an important issue, but I don't have the time to do it. We should definitely include it in the future" (or something like that) against "write a new module yourself, because I won't".
#11
Hi yan,
Don't worry, I wasn't offended. I'm just trying to be pragmatic/clear.
I understand the importance of accessibility, that's why I wrote the CAPTCHA Pack module which has some options with better accessibility than the classic image CAPTCHA.
I also understand the need for an audio CAPTCHA, but as the Mollom module already provides this functionality, I don't think this is high priority feature request. And as CAPTCHA maintenance/development is underpowered currently, I don't see it happening soon. I'm also afraid that there are considerable more technical hurdles (both on server and client side) to implement an audio CAPTCHA than there were with the image CAPTCHA. Even if I would have time to work on it, I think the balance between development investment and added value would not be very encouraging for me.
Side note: if accessibility and usability are really important, I think one should just avoid using a CAPTCHA system all together and try alternatives (e.g. first spam filtering/reputation checking like in Mollom).
Anyway, I'm afraid this discussion slips away in semantics.
Long story short: patches welcome :)