November means it's time for National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo). I'm blogging daily on my personal blog, Flooded Lizard Kingdom, but not without some reservations.
Last year, as I recounted in NaBloPoMo and CAPTCHA (and covered on BlogHer by Virginia DeBolt) I came across a blog post by a blind blogger named Ginny who wanted to participate in National Blog Posting Month, also known as NaBloPoMo.
Ginny had tried to create an account on the NaBloPoMo site at social network site Ning.com. However, she was unable to get past those dreaded squiggly letters Ning.com uses to verify that you're a human and not a computer - otherwise known as a visual CAPTCHA. Blogger Umm Zaid, a friend of Ginny's, searched Ning.com's website looking for more information. She found a blog post from July of 2007 saying that Ning.com was interested in adding an audio alternative to their CAPTCHA, and in the meantime they provided an email address to use if anyone needed help setting up an account.
Once Umm Zaid posted about it, a Ning.com staff person left a comment on her blog restating that they were glad to help people sign up, but noted that the email address listed in the July blog post was no longer valid and now the request should be submitted through the help center.
So basically, anyone who couldn't create an account on Ning.com due to the CAPTCHA and wanted concrete and current information about what to do for help if you can't see the darn thing... had to basically search the web and find Umm Zaid's blog post. Neither Umm Zaid nor I could find a lick of info on the topic in the Ning.com help center. And even if they managed to find Umm Zaid's post and the instructions in a comment to that post, anyone with visual or other disabilities that prevent them from getting past the CAPTCHA are stuck waiting on someone else to do for them what the rest of us can do for ourselves in a matter of minutes.
So where are we a year later?
Ning.com still uses the CAPTCHA, and there isn't an audio alternative or even a button to reload it if you can see it but you get one that you can't read. There is a link that says "Problems Signing Up?" The information on that page covers forgotten passwords and system requirements, but not the CAPTCHA. There is also a link to the Help Center. Searching the Help Center for CAPTCHA, though, returns no results. Searching for "create account" returns 26 pages of results, and there isn't anything immediately apparent on the first page of results that would explain what to do.
So I would say that Ning.com not only continues to have an accessibility problem, they also have a bit of an attitude problem. It's nice that Ning.com staff offer to individually assist people who need help to create an account. It's not nice that they can't get rid of an artificial barrier to people doing things for themselves. Have you ever had to wait on someone to fix your computer, at home or at work? Can't do anything until they call you back or get to your desk to figure out why your email is no longer downloading or your document is frozen? It's annoying to wait on someone else, isn't it?
The CAPTCHA issue was brought to their attention more than a year ago. They got email from at least two people. They told me, at least, that it was something they were working on. I realize that they are vulnerable to spam submissions, just like Blogger, LiveJournal, Wordpress.com, and other blogging platforms that don't require payment. Spam is a huge issue. However, alternatives to visual CAPTCHA do exist, and it's time for Ning.com to start checking around. At the very least, they could manage to add a link to the login help page that gives instructions for what to do if you can't read the CAPTCHA!
