Hilarious new audio captchas

[kestrell]

I just wasted about twenty minutes of my life attempting to fill out one of the new-style audio captchas.

In case you have not experienced these lately, this is the accessible version of visual captchas which are supposed to be accessible for visually impaired people. Now, remember, many of us, like me, also have hearing impairments.

This is the procedure.

First, you get to confirm that you are not a robot, and then you have to hit the play button, skip to the edit field, send a prayer that the audio snippet will be something actually audible, listen to the audio captcha and decipher it, and type in your answer, then skip to the "verify" button and hit enter.

To make it extra fun, the developers have now added a time limit. It's something relatively brief, like a minute.

And if you don't get it all done in under the time limit, you have to begin all over, including checking the "I am not a robot" checkbox again.

And, of course, I got an audio snippet that was about three seconds long and not even audible to someone who didn't have a hearing impairment.

The best part?

I was trying to register for a webinar on accessible apps presented by the American Printing House for the Blind.

I don't even have words.

Comments

[dewline]

I have a few words for this, none of them likely to be polite.

[kestrell]

Actually, lately, my words are often, "I am so tired." Seriously: audio captchas are already so annoying, do internet security people really think hackers are subjecting themselves to listening to the crap audio files that we have to listen to? And now we get a time limit that is actually *easy* for a sighted hacker but an accessibility barrier for a visually impaired person? Wtf?

[dewline]

Snoopy screams for both of us.

[kestrell]

*lol*

[oracne]

OMFG that is like some sort of absurdist comedy routine, except not funny.

[kestrell]

I know, right? I don't even know why the first snippet was rejected, because it was perfectly audible and straightforward: "these amazing shoes" but the AI didn't like the way I typed it in, so the second snippet it gave me was literally about three seconds long, which wasn't long enough to sound like a word at all. I swear this particular AI had it in for me.

Mostly, I keep imagining the room of information secruity people who think that putting a one minute time limit on an audio captcha sounds perfectly reasonable as they test it by running through it with their eyes open: "Yep, I can do that, no problem."

AAAAAgh!

When people ask me what I do as a disability and technology advocate, writing these snarky posts is usually one of the things I feel I cannot tell them about.

[oracne]

Though sometimes snark gets through where straightforward explanation might not.