Comments on: Blog Tech Stuf

By: Carl

Carl — Tue, 02 May 2006 14:37:06 +0000

This may sound callous but one look at my webstats and it will become readily apparent that I could post this blog in a language that only I know and very few people would suffer so I am not all that worried about the blind. My stats are only slightly better than if I wrote stuff on a typewriter and immediately threw the paper in the trash.

I have implemented Akismet and it handles my spam. At least the spammers (or their bots) visit my blog .

By: Mark H

Mark H — Tue, 02 May 2006 14:13:37 +0000

I don’t know what’s readily available for Wordpress, but many of the more recent CAPTCHA implementations that are primarily visual, e.g. Secure Image, also offer an alternative audio-CAPTCHA for the visually impaired, i.e. the letters that are usually hidden in the Secure Image of a visual-CAPTCHA are instead spoken in an audio-CAPTCHA and the user must type the letters they hear to pass the CAPTCHA test.

(Having said all this, my own blog uses only a visual-CAPTCHA similar to yours. I also daren’t turn mine off because of the amount of SPAM that still gets past the various filters that I have tried.)

By: Mark Jaquith

Mark Jaquith — Tue, 02 May 2006 13:33:28 +0000

There are many browsers for blind or visually-impaired people. Essentially, the computer speaks the text of the site to them. We’re talking about millions of people in the United States alone. That’s one of the reasons it is important to provide alt="" text for images.

By: Carl

Carl — Tue, 02 May 2006 13:15:54 +0000

Maybe I am being silly but how could a blind person read my blog?

I agree there were problems with the old system, that’s one of the reasons I replaced it. But blind people?

By: Mark Jaquith

Mark Jaquith — Tue, 02 May 2006 11:14:10 +0000

Blind users would be unable to comment if they were required to see an image before posting. And not just people who are all the way blind, but people with poor vision. I think the e-mails you got speak to the difficulty people were having.

By: carl

carl — Mon, 01 May 2006 15:50:08 +0000

Please forgive me for this question but did you say that blind users would be unable to use my site with secureimage? Am I missing something here?

I did have several problems with secureimage. Potential posters would send emails with their comments because they could not read the squiglly letters.

I lost the comment conversation in the switchover. Now if i could only figure out how to use this wordpress backup thingy. . . .

By: Mark Jaquith

Mark Jaquith — Mon, 01 May 2006 15:45:02 +0000

Nope, didn’t see it.

By: Carl

Carl — Mon, 01 May 2006 15:41:22 +0000

Before my host took a data dump I had a conversation with rich from blogrodent where he suggested the same thing. Did you have to use secureimage when you posted your comment?

I think I deactivated it and reinstalled Akismet.

Thanks for the comment.

By: Mark Jaquith

Mark Jaquith — Mon, 01 May 2006 15:34:46 +0000

That SecureImage plugin looks pretty old… I remember other people having problems with it, and it’ll make your site inaccessable to blind users. I’d recommend using Bad Behavior and one of either Akismet or Spam Karma 2. That’ll catch 99% of spam, and not render your site useless to the blind or people who have images turned off.