Yet another worthy initiative is under way by our friends at the w3c. This time they’re looking at the inaccessibility of captcha, those funny images of twisted letters one is often asked to enter when signing up for web services.
Captchas are what is known as a Turing test, used in this instance to prevent automated systems creating accounts and abusing the system. My guess is they work quite well for their original purpose. The problem is that if you’re blind, can’t see that well or have another cognitive problem like dislexia, you can’t prove that you’re not a computer.
The initiative will be looking at accessible ways for humans to prove their dna.