Visual Verification Boxes; The Obnoxious Obstacles

We've all encountered them. You're trying to register for a site or service, or trying to make a purchase, and it hits you; "Please enter the text you see in the box". I understand site owners claim to use these to prevent automated sign-ups to their sites, but as a blind computer user, I have to say that they're a huge disservice to the blind and visually impaired community. The problem isn't so much the graphical text boxes themselves, which our screenreaders will not read, but the lack of assistance provided by some sites.

Some sites genuinely do offer assistance to blind and visually impaired individuals in signing up for their sites. Some examples of these include:

Yahoo.com: They provide a link so that, if you can't see the text, you can hear it through your computer's speaker system, and then type what you hear.

Opieanthony.net: You can email the site administrator and he will assist you in the sign-up.

Wahm.com: They don't officially offer an alternative, but I e-mailed the administrator, and she took care of my sign-up.

Garageband.com: They require you to enter the text from the box each time you review a song. I contacted them and explained that I am blind, and they were able to turn this feature off permanently for me.

Thos are some of the good sites. Now, however, I will focus on some of the not-so-good sites. I'm not trying to imply that these sites are intentionally trying to make it difficult for the blind; they simply may not know they're doing so. Some of them, however, seem unteachable.

The site I have the biggest beef with in this regard is Earthlink.net. In my day job, part of my job is to handle the incoming email to our library's general account. Earthlink has a set-up which allows users to only receive email from senders they approve. The approval process is pretty straightforward. I reply to the message, and Earthlink sends a message back to me, telling me to click a link and fill in the form with my name, email address, and if I want, my reason for emailing the person. They provide a text box with some letters and/or numbers, and you have to enter those in the edit box. They offer a link for the visually impaired to click on for assistance, but the assistance you get is nonexistent. The link takes you to a live chat session with Earthlink tech support. In the two times I chatted with someone, instead of receiving help, I was told by the reps that I should just call the person instead of emailing, to let the person know I was replying to their email. This is bad advice for two reasons. First, I didn't have phone numbers for either person. Second, even if I did, Earthlink should not offer the link for assistance if they do not plan to provide such assistance. In these cases, I've had to call a sighted coworker over to read me the text. Earthlink gets an F- in my book.

Next is Ticketmaster. In my ticket buying experiences, their site requires this same visual verification of entering the text from the box. Their advice for assisting the blind? Buy your tickets at a Ticketmaster outlet or by phone. This is great for general ticket-buying, but is not feasible for buying through internet presales offered by some of our local radio stations. In those cases, again, I have to ask a sighted friend or family member to assist by reading the box. Since Ticketmaster offers a solution that is workable in most situations, I give them a D; slightly better than Earthlink, but not much.

The final site I'll mention here is Myspace. They have one of these visual verifications during the sign-up process, and no link for the visually impaired or anyone else who can't see the text. I've contacted Myspace about this a couple of times, and have never received a response. Again, I call a sighted person over to help me. Once signed up, however, Myspace is mostly accessible, though in my follow-up article on the internet and the blind, I plan to discuss an accessibility issue at Myspace. Though the sign-up process is inaccessible in that particular step, the rest of the site works pretty well with a screenreader. I give them a C+.

I could go on and on for pages with sites who use these visual text boxes, but I think you, the intelligent reader, get the picture. This is a problem which can be solved, as I've mentioned above; site owners simply have to want to assist in this process. We may be a minority in the population, but blind and visually impaired people in general tend to be very tech savvy people, and use the internet as much as our sighted counterparts, and our issues need to be taken seriously by site owners/administrators. If anyone from any of the sites I mentioned above, or any other website administrator who uses these visual verification systems, read this article, I would implore you to consider your blind visitors when setting up your sites.