[Web4lib] Spam-resistant forms service

Broun, Kevin (NIH/NCI) [E] brounk at mail.nih.gov
Tue Jun 20 09:30:48 EDT 2006


W3C has a pretty good discussion <http://www.w3.org/TR/turingtest/> of
this accessibility problem, and, if you decide to use CAPTCHA, the
Wikipedia article <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captcha> is also
informative, especially the directory of CAPTCHA implementations, with a
variety of choices based on what programming environment is in use.

Kevin Broun
Senior Web Developer
Office of Communications
National Cancer Institute
kbroun at nih.gov

-----Original Message-----
From: Thomas Dowling [mailto:tdowling at ohiolink.edu] 
Sent: Tuesday, June 20, 2006 9:20 AM
Cc: web4lib at webjunction.org
Subject: Re: [Web4lib] Spam-resistant forms service


On 6/20/2006 8:57 AM, Thomas Bennett wrote:

> Prerequisites?
>  To use this technology, your web pages have to be generated
dynamically by 
> any programming language like PHP, JSP, Python, ASP, Perl. To encode
the 
> password the Message Digest Algorithm MD5 is required. It is part of
most of 
> the named languages or can easily be installed.


Of course, another prerequisite is a user with "normal" vision (for some
definition of normal).  Last time I checked, audio CAPTCHAs weren't
really ready for prime time, and the CAPTCHA sites I've seen basically
tell blind users to forego the form and send them e-mail.

I've often wondered why there aren't cognitive CAPTCHAs like "Select the
option that doesn't belong: beagle, collie, dachshund, eggplant" or "How
many fingers do most people have?"


-- 
Thomas Dowling
tdowling at ohiolink.edu
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