A Rain of Frogs

For those who don’t remember (and my last two dozen or so posts have made it easy to forget) I am involved in the web development industry, and have been for more than ten years. I don’t often write about it here, first because it became hip to blog about web standards for a while, and then because I had nothing to say about it.

A couple of years ago I had a major wake-up call involving the way web sites are built. I was given the opportunity to watch several blind people navigate a web site I had built. I left feeling awful. I felt like I had been torturing these people. It took them hours to fill in a single form to request information. They all admitted to me that they would probably just call a sighted friend and have them enter the information instead of grinding through a form that was worse than dental surgery to them.

It opened my eyes, and frankly, it turned me into what my colleagues call an “accessibility nazi.” I began researching, and eventually implementing accessible web sites. I’ve learned a lot between then and now, but like web standards, accessibility became cool to write about, and I rarely follow the crowd.

That’s changing for today. I came up with an idea yesterday that hopefully solves one of the major accessibility nightmares on the Internet. You’ve all seen them. An image block containing a string of warped, obfuscated letters and numerals, and a box for you to type what you see. This is called a Captcha. It apparently stands for something (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart). If that wasn’t made up after the fact, I don’t know what is.

Captchas seem to be a great solution for keeping spam-bots out of sites and letting people in. Except that people accessing the web with a screen reader, say blind people, cannot use them. The wonderful completely automated test cannot, in fact, tell computers and humans apart if the humans can’t see. Besides, clever spam-bot creators have brute-forced captchas and can get past them anyway.

None of this, despite legislation, depsite lawsuits, has stopped their proliferation on the ‘net. They’re everywhere. Gmail uses them, yahoo uses them, every forum in the universe uses them. And all these systems exclude blind people. Oh sure, some provide a phone number to call to circumvent the captcha (most usually having a sighted person on the other end of the line fill in the form for them) but that doesn’t make it right.

So I have been mulling this over for a long time, and I’ve come up with an idea. A solution, maybe. Unfortunately, it is only a partial solution, as it causes difficulty with users that might have cognitive disabilities, but they’re also having trouble with standard captchas, so maybe we’re one step closer to a perfect solution. Maybe my idea will inspire someone to come up with something better.

It is with this hope that I publish the idea, get it out into the world where it can be refined and debated, instead of keeping it close to me in an ego-driven effort to toot my own horn. If someone makes a go of it, they can name it after me or something. They can call it a RAIN test (Random question to defeat Artificial Intelligence agents and keep them out of the Network) or something. Stranger things have happened.

It goes like this. Instead of your standard, run of the mill captcha, a simple question is asked. Several answers are provided, but only one makes logical sense. These are not multiple choice. You still have to type these into a box, just like with a captcha. The big difference is that a screen reader can read all the answers to you. With care and thought given to the question and answers, it should be be an easy matter to lock out the spam-bots without locking out the blind. Add several dozen questions to a site (large volume sites would have to update them regularly), and have them randomly chosen at the time of page load, and we should accomplish what we set out to do without punishing those using screen readers simply because they can’t see the letters and numerals in a picture.

The idea is rough, most definitely, and I need time to build a test implementation, but it HAS to be better than the garbage we’re shoveling at screen readers right now.

And it doesn’t require a sighted friend.

1991 – The American-supported leader of Iraq invades neighboring Kuwait, triggering the first Gulf war. Despite denials by President Bush of the United States of America, Iraq’s government claims that America was not only informed of the military action, they approved it. Until World War I, the borders of the middle east had Kuwait squarely within Mesopotamia – part of what is now known as Iraq. Claiming the moral high ground, a coalition of nations led by the United states invade Iraq, liberate Kuwait, and impose heavy military and economic sanctions on Iraq. CNN, an American news outlet, televises the war, and for the first time, the term “ethnic cleansing” is brought into the public consciousness when Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s president, is accused of attempting to eradicate insurgents in Northern Iraq during the 1970s and 80s. America isn’t liberating Kuwait, its protecting the world from “madmen” like Hussein.

1994 – Between 800,000 and 1,000,000 Rwandans are killed in the Rwandan Genocide. Despite repeated requests for military assistance from the Canadian-led peacekeeping force in Rwanda, no assistance is provided, and the killing goes on unabated until there’s nobody left to kill.

1999 – American-led NATO forces bomb military and civilian targets in Serbia, accusing Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević of the genocide of ethnic Albanians whom had crossed the border into the Serbian province of Kosovo. The genocide included repeated deportation of ethnic albanians that had illegally entered the country. One report cites 100,000 homeless albanians transported across the border.

2001 – An Islamic group carries out attacks on American soil, destroying the World Trade Center in New York City and damaging the Pentagon. Approximately 2,800 people – many firefighters and police officers attempting to rescue civilians – die in the attacks. In retailiation, America invades Afghanistan, which is accused of harboring the terrorists that organized the attacks. The Islamic government of Afghanistan – installed by Pakistan after the Soviet withdrawal – is overthrown. Accusations of intentional attacks on civilians and atrocities by Americans are dismissed by US President Bush, the son of former President Bush.

2003 – America leads a “Coalition of the Willing” into an invasion of Iraq, citing “Weapons of Mass Destruction” as a reason to invade and occupy the country. Saddam Hussein is captured, and put on trial in Iraq (not the International court) for war crimes and genocide. Reports, and eventually photographs of American atrocities at an Iraqi prison in Abu Ghraib result in the dishonorable discharge of several low-ranking officers.

2003 – Two groups in Darfur region, Sudan declare open war on each other. A peace deal fails when another group attempts a coup to overthrow the corrupt Sudanese government. Subsequent militia attacks and a scorched-earth government offensive has led to massive displacement, indiscriminate killings, looting and mass rapes.

2005 – Twenty-four civilians in Haditha, including a blind man and several children, are executed by angry American marines following the death of an American marine in a roadside bombing. United States soldiers are ordered to undergo “core warrior values training, highlighting the importance of adhering to legal, moral and ethical standards on the battlefield.” President Bush says “if it happened, its bad.”

2005 – United States pulls out of International nuclear non-proliferation agreement.

2006 – Killings, ethnic cleansings, rapes and torture continue unabated in Darfur, where the civilian death toll is now between 420,00 and 650,000. United States government threatens military action against Iran if the country doesn’t stop using nuclear power for domestic power generation, citing the possibility of Iran using the technology to create nuclear weapons.

* (These facts are believed to be more or less accurate, in sprit at least. I’ve not done in-depth research. Most information from Wikipedia.)

Every night, about half way through my 10 km walk, I round a particular corner on to College Ave. And every night I am stunned by the poignancy of the graffiti that greets me just as I round the corner:

Save Darfur.

And there it is. Every night, in unassuming black spraypaint. An obvious piece of stencil work, even though I’ve never seen it anywhere else. But what’s so gripping about it is its diminutive nature. The two words fit in less than a half of a square foot of concrete, and are only lit by the neon glow of the strip-mall across the roadway.

Save Darfur. And every night I am struck by this message, and I voice one word in my head – please.

Like the outcry from developed nations, this plea is dwarfed by the empty ocean of neon-lit concrete and progress that surround it.

Save Darfur.

This weekend was much better than last. Instead of a freshwater hurricane over the great lakes, we had a massive high bringing blisteringly hot (and lovely) temperatures, along with light and variable winds. Instead of pounding my lovely new Alberg 29 through house-sized waves over the Niagara Bar, the lake was dead smooth, requiring some motoring to get the boat back to her slip.

I had read somewhere, the Cape Dory board I think, about how badly some of Carl Alberg’s designs handled under power in reverse. Not having an Alberg-designed boat, I didn’t pay much attention. Apparently sailboats with cutaway forefoot keeps and single propellors are a bit dicey when backing up.

I didn’t really believe it in fact, instead dismissing it as perhaps operator error. Boy was I wrong. The new boat is interesting in reverse. She’ll go backward, just not the way you think. Like Kennedy’s brain, she goes back, and to the left, back and to the left. Except when she goes to the right. It’ll take some getting used to, especially after my Contessa, which tracked like a car in reverse.

Of course, the boat wasn’t bought to go backward. It sails like a dream. Critics of the design have said its a dog in slow air. I disagree. Two knots of wind, two knots of boat speed does not a dog make. she was fantastic – stiff, responsive, easily handled and graceful. Once I get the minor slippage out of the hydraulic steering system, its good as gold.

Anyway, the boat is home, its even more amazing that I had already believed, and I’d rather be there right now. They tell me I can get wireless at the marina. If only my employers would let me work from “home.”

I’m not the only one.

Read. Weep.