As I mentioned in my last post, November is National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo). I am participating on my personal blog. I noticed during signup on the NaBloPoMo website that a visual CAPTCHA is required, with no instructions for people who cannot see or read the CAPTCHA.
Did I mention it in my post here? No. Bad blogger, no biscuit. I did mention it on my personal blog, and in a comment I left on the NaBloPoMo site, but I didn't highlight it here and I didn't contact the company that hosts the NaBloPoMo site to ask that they stop discriminating against people with visual and learning disabilities.
That, my friends, is a great example of privilege. Because the CAPTCHA didn't keep me from participating, even though I am interested enough in accessibility to start a blog about it, I didn't take action. I didn't have to.
Blogger Ginny at Ginny's Thoughts and Things was not so lucky. She is not signed up for NaBloPoMo on the site, because she can't access the CAPTCHA by herself. Blogger Sunni Sister, a friend of Ginny's, took it upon herself to find out more about why there is no alternative for the CAPTCHA. She reported in her post No Mo’ Blo Po Mo? that she emailed Eden Kennedy, the founder of NaBloPoMo, and also searched the site of Ning.com, the company that hosts the site. Apparently there is a blog post on Ning.com from back in July saying that they were interested in adding an audio CAPTCHA but since it would take some time to set up, in the meantime anyone who needed help could email them.
So the signup process for people who can't use the CAPTCHA, unless they want to get someone else to help them, is currently as follows:
- Try to sign up.
- Search help section on Ning.com, find nothing.
- Search the rest of the site, find a blog post from several months ago with instructions.
- Send an email to Ning and wait for a response.
Unfortunately, it gets worse. Ning.com Community Advocate Mackenzie left a comment at Sunni Sister's blog restating that they are glad to help people sign up, but the email address listed in the July blog post is no longer valid and now the request should be submitted through the help center. I can't find anything on the Ning.com site itself that would tell people this. The blog post from July doesn't even come up when I use the site's search and enter CAPTCHA. Also, while I'm glad they're so happy to help - it beats a response of "go jump off a cliff" - emailing to sign up is a pain in the neck.
(Did I mention that Feedburner got an audio CAPTCHA installed for the signups on their email service during their 7-hour Hack-a-thon this past January?)
I didn't think this was news, but let me restate it: people with disabilities are barred from participating on the same terms as everyone else if you use a visual CAPTCHA. Is comment and form spam a big problem? Absolutely yes. Are visual-only CAPTCHAs the solution? Absolutely not. Is NaBloPoMo a life or death situation? No. Does that make it acceptable to discriminate? Absolutely not. Waiting to add accessibility to your site is a way of saying "We just don't think people with disabilities are that important."
Here's hoping that Ning.com can get on the accessibility train! And that I am not so tardy with my actions next time. After I saw Ginny's post, I sent a link to the Ning.com folks, and I'm going to take a few other steps today to call some attention to this issue. Hopefully by next year's NaBloPoMo this will no longer be an issue.
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