If Michael Taboada (the author) were inclined to do so, he could contact the owners of websites based in USA that use hCaptcha. He could reach out to their legal team and let them know that since he, as a blind person, was banned from using their website, that he was in a position to sue them under the ADA. He could stress that he didn’t INTEND to sue them, but that he was reaching out as a favor to let them know about their liability.
Many companies would react very strongly to this. And hCaptcha might respond differently to their customers than they do to an individual who they seem to assume is trying to hack their system.
Not even too smart, just technically savvy. It’s not like the browser console is some big secret or anything, and since they’ve been built with web tech all along I’d assume they’re relatively accessible.
The very angry email that I (perhaps unwisely) just dashed off to [email protected]:
So I’ve been trying to sign in repeatedly to set the accessibility
cookie since last night. Every time I click the submit button, I get
the useless error message “an error has occurred, please try again”.
My friend, who shares my roof and my static IP, got banned from
hcaptcha’s accessibility service last year for being too smart to be
blind. And I suspect you all have banned our IP and not just his
account.
For the record, my static IP address is (redacted).
Please let your bosses know that I plan to pursue legal action against
hCaptcha and/or amplify the truth to destroy its reputation in the
public square. I will also be reaching out to websites who utilize
hCaptcha, letting them know that the captcha provider they employ is
refusing to provide reasonable accomodations to blind people.
Whether it be with the force of law or the force of satyagraha, your
bosses are going to get a message and we will win.
And their lovely, unhelpful, content-free response:
Hi there, sorry to hear you’re having difficulties!
I hate cheerful support bots. If I yell at the counter about being nearly killed by peanuts in my burger (I’m not actually allergic myself, but you get the idea), I don’t expect to be met with an uncanny-valley employee shooting their best smile and tell me that if I don’t like the flavour they have this other one (possibly also with peanuts).
Luckily, when I was doing customer support, we didn’t kid around and try to give them the verbal equivalent of a finger-fucking. Once in a while, the customer was even gasp wrong. We were respectful, sure. But we treated people more like colleagues than anything else. One thing we never would have done is send a canned reply after not reading the ticket.
This is one of the big problems with the “rent everything” mindset. By moving everything to centralised services you effectively place all control over your stuff into their hands. I like @mcherm’s idea here to scare the companies involved, but they’ll probably not do much except put up some sort of disclaimer.
But thinking bigger picture, it’ll take a while (if it ever happens) before things get better.
So, how are people supposed to prove, over the Internet, that they’re blind, and not pretending to be blind for fraudulent purposes? And/or: How can the other side accurately determine blindness across the Internet?
If neither of those things can be done at any reasonable rate of success, what is to do be done? It seems like a hard problem to solve.
how are people supposed to prove, over the Internet, that they’re blind, and not pretending to be blind for fraudulent purposes?
They should not be expected to prove that. Instead, websites should offer accessibility to the blind where possible (through things like screen readers) for any user who wants it, not just for blind users.
Maybe I just had eye surgery and I’m not supposed to view screens for the next 2 weeks. Maybe I just feel like lying in bed with my eyes closed and browsing your website. Why should you care?
I’ve been saying it for a long time that accessibility is for everyone, not only for people who can’t use the UI without it at all. Screen magnification and high-contrast themes are essential for people with serious vision impairments, but they are still great if one’s eyes are merely tired.
I have a friend who uses magnification in the browser and the terminal emulator as an alternative to wearing glasses all the time. Would anyone dare to say that one needs to prove that they are legally blind and already wear the strongest optically feasible glasses before they can also use screen magnification?
People shouldn’t have to prove that they’re disabled or be subjected to any form of test from the other side in order to be provided accessible access, for any product, ever. This is especially true before the person asking for access has done anything that could be construed as actual fraud (ie prematurely defensive design is offensive by design).
I don’t think that’s what they should be proving at all. We ask users who aren’t blind to do a thing that we believe demonstrates that they’re human as opposed to a computer program attempting to simulate a human’s attention.
We should still be trying to demonstrate the same thing for people whose physical differences make it impossible for them to complete our automated tests. It might be more labor intensive for the site operator to vet them in a less automated way, but the operator should be looking to establish that the user is a real human, not to establish the user’s blindness or lack thereof.
Sure it’s more manual and more costly for that kind of demonstration, but businesses are required to provide that sort of accommodation, and it’s part of the cost of preventing bots, if you’ve decided your business needs to prevent bots.
Exactly, and my point is that it’s not right for hCaptcha to make it blind people’s problems that they find it difficult to prove that someone is blind.
Xe deeply wish that more people in power would concede to the Curb-Cut Effect. Xe often need closed captions to understand recorded speech just because the audio balancing is so shit that xir audio processing issues render it nigh-unintelligible.
If Michael Taboada (the author) were inclined to do so, he could contact the owners of websites based in USA that use hCaptcha. He could reach out to their legal team and let them know that since he, as a blind person, was banned from using their website, that he was in a position to sue them under the ADA. He could stress that he didn’t INTEND to sue them, but that he was reaching out as a favor to let them know about their liability.
Many companies would react very strongly to this. And hCaptcha might respond differently to their customers than they do to an individual who they seem to assume is trying to hack their system.
Thank you for the suggestion, I’ll let him know.
The author is on Lobsters, as lilmike. Essentially, hCaptcha banned him for being too smart to be blind.
Not even too smart, just technically savvy. It’s not like the browser console is some big secret or anything, and since they’ve been built with web tech all along I’d assume they’re relatively accessible.
[Comment removed by author]
The very angry email that I (perhaps unwisely) just dashed off to [email protected]:
And their lovely, unhelpful, content-free response:
I hate cheerful support bots. If I yell at the counter about being nearly killed by peanuts in my burger (I’m not actually allergic myself, but you get the idea), I don’t expect to be met with an uncanny-valley employee shooting their best smile and tell me that if I don’t like the flavour they have this other one (possibly also with peanuts).
Luckily, when I was doing customer support, we didn’t kid around and try to give them the verbal equivalent of a finger-fucking. Once in a while, the customer was even gasp wrong. We were respectful, sure. But we treated people more like colleagues than anything else. One thing we never would have done is send a canned reply after not reading the ticket.
This is one of the big problems with the “rent everything” mindset. By moving everything to centralised services you effectively place all control over your stuff into their hands. I like @mcherm’s idea here to scare the companies involved, but they’ll probably not do much except put up some sort of disclaimer.
But thinking bigger picture, it’ll take a while (if it ever happens) before things get better.
Talk to the Ada and get someone famous to complain about it! See how quick it changes.
Talk to the “Americans with Disabilities Act”? How does one talk to an Act?
No need for snarky comment. From ada.gov:
A monologue?
Simple one simply says: hello American disabilities act, I would like to talk to you. Or one simply writes a letter to one’s congressperson.
So, how are people supposed to prove, over the Internet, that they’re blind, and not pretending to be blind for fraudulent purposes? And/or: How can the other side accurately determine blindness across the Internet?
If neither of those things can be done at any reasonable rate of success, what is to do be done? It seems like a hard problem to solve.
They should not be expected to prove that. Instead, websites should offer accessibility to the blind where possible (through things like screen readers) for any user who wants it, not just for blind users.
Maybe I just had eye surgery and I’m not supposed to view screens for the next 2 weeks. Maybe I just feel like lying in bed with my eyes closed and browsing your website. Why should you care?
I’ve been saying it for a long time that accessibility is for everyone, not only for people who can’t use the UI without it at all. Screen magnification and high-contrast themes are essential for people with serious vision impairments, but they are still great if one’s eyes are merely tired.
I have a friend who uses magnification in the browser and the terminal emulator as an alternative to wearing glasses all the time. Would anyone dare to say that one needs to prove that they are legally blind and already wear the strongest optically feasible glasses before they can also use screen magnification?
People shouldn’t have to prove that they’re disabled or be subjected to any form of test from the other side in order to be provided accessible access, for any product, ever. This is especially true before the person asking for access has done anything that could be construed as actual fraud (ie prematurely defensive design is offensive by design).
I don’t think that’s what they should be proving at all. We ask users who aren’t blind to do a thing that we believe demonstrates that they’re human as opposed to a computer program attempting to simulate a human’s attention.
We should still be trying to demonstrate the same thing for people whose physical differences make it impossible for them to complete our automated tests. It might be more labor intensive for the site operator to vet them in a less automated way, but the operator should be looking to establish that the user is a real human, not to establish the user’s blindness or lack thereof.
Sure it’s more manual and more costly for that kind of demonstration, but businesses are required to provide that sort of accommodation, and it’s part of the cost of preventing bots, if you’ve decided your business needs to prevent bots.
That sounds like a whole lot of not blind people’s problem?
The author of the original blog post is in fact blind. hCaptcha’s ban was groundless.
Exactly, and my point is that it’s not right for hCaptcha to make it blind people’s problems that they find it difficult to prove that someone is blind.
Ah. Xe had interpreted your original post as “Why are all the sighted people here and in the blog post complaining so much?”
Xe deeply wish that more people in power would concede to the Curb-Cut Effect. Xe often need closed captions to understand recorded speech just because the audio balancing is so shit that xir audio processing issues render it nigh-unintelligible.