Posts filed under 'Doing business'

Let’s stop inaccessible CAPTCHAs

You have probably seen more and more CAPTCHAs in use on blog comments forms. The trend might grow now has made them widely available with a feature called . Widespread use of CAPTCHAs must be stopped.

What’s a CAPTCHA, I hear you ask? It is a tool to verify that a web form is being completed by a human being, as opposed to completed automatically by a spamming program. It works like this: a picture of a word or multi digit number is generated randomly and placed on the web form. The person filling in the form must read the word or number, then type it into a form field before submission. If the person’s answer matches the word or number in the picture, then the form is accepted. In theory at least, spamming machines cannot read pictures and therefore can’t beat the test.

So what’s the problem? CAPTCHAs discriminate heavily against anyone with a impaired vision . An odd font, which cannot be resized or read by a screen reader, on a busy background? The chances of a blind, partially sighted, or colour blind user getting past a CAPTCHA are slim. Even those of us with good vision have problems. Also, many CAPTCHA implementations can be cracked by machines . That may not be happening right now, but if enough people use CAPTCHAs, the spammers will adapt. So Blogger has just deployed a “solution” which might continue to let in spam, but which locks out a large minority of human beings.

Here’s what you can do:

  1. For Blogger and BlogSpot users: CAPTCHAs (word verification for comments) are switched off by default. Leave them switched off.

  2. If you are using a CAPTCHA already: stop. You are not a bad person - you probably didn’t consider all the implications. That’s OK. You know now. Please considering removing your CAPTCHA. Apart from the obvious reputation problems if your business is uncovered as a discriminator, you could be at legal risk under the Rehabilitation Act in the US or the Disability Discrimination Act in the UK.

  3. If you come across a CAPTCHA: complain. I have avoided doing this to date, because I don’t want to look arrogant to other bloggers, but when one of the largest blog software providers starts to provide something so discriminatory as standard, we all have to speak up. Fill in the form, leave your comment or what have you, then add something like this:

    Please be aware: the image CAPTCHA device that you use to prevent spam on this form discriminates against blind, partially sighted and colour blind users. You may also be exposing yourself or your organisation to legal risk under anti-discrimination laws.

  4. If you have a blog: please write a short post to explain the discriminatory nature of CAPTCHAs and ask that your readers do the same. Yes, I am proposing an anti-CAPTCHA meme.

When you post or complain in a comment, here are some good links to mention:

W3C: Inaccessibility of Visually-Oriented Anti-Robot Tests
D Keith Robinson’s: I hate CAPTCHA
David Naylor: CAPTCHA - is it good or evil
Eric Meyer: WP Gatekeeper (a rather technical post, but an interesting accessible alternative to using CAPTCHA)

If you can suggest other links for this list, then by all means leave them in the comments.

PS I have classified this under “Doing business” because so long as CAPTCHA usage, in particular, and accessibility, in general, are perceived as design or development issues, they won’t get the attention they deserve.

PPS Two rants in two posts? What the hell have they put in water round here?

18 comments August 22nd, 2005

If you are getting email from trenholmdesign…

If you are getting mail purporting to be from my trenholmdesign email address, with the subject line “interesting microsoft news article…” please ignore it. My email address has been “spoofed.” Spoofing is when a hacker sends an email with a false sender / reply address, typically to obfuscate the origin of spam.

There’s up to date anti-virus software on my email server and on this computer here, so it is more likely that someone with a less secure machine has fallen victim to a virus, which has captured that person’s address book, containing my address, for spoofing purposes. Unfortunately, as it says on this :

Mail address spoofing is easy to do, difficult to trace and impossible to prevent. Make sure that you keep your anti-virus software up to date.

August 18th, 2005

More anti-portfolio

AdPulp picked up my previous post about Bessemer Venture Partner’s anti-portfolio , via Johnnie Moore .

It’s hard to imagine someone in advertising being this real. Can you imagine an ad agency showcasing their anti-portfolio? “Hey, look at all the truly stupid ads we’ve made!”

In the comments, I suggested a few anti-portfolio approaches for ad agencies.

  1. “Pitches we didn’t win.” Showcase the ideas which clients didn’t like, so potential clients can compare the “failed” ad agency with the one that was appointed.

  2. “Back to the drawing board.” Take a successful campaign, then show the truly awful ideas which were rejected in favour of the winner. Educates potential clients about the creative process.

  3. “Ads which won awards but which didn’t shift any products.” Do them as case studies - educate the potential client that awards don’t always mean sales. Highlight what the agency and client learned from the failed campaign and how both do things differently - and better - now.

  4. “2nd time lucky.” Cases studies of failed campaigns which the agency then tweaked or did over. Shows flexibility and responsiveness.

Meanwhile Johnnie sheds some light on how those truly stupid and often boring ads may have been created (Clairol’s Ever had a multiple organic experience? springs to mind here):

It’s my hunch that boring marketing is the result of boring meetings. I think strangulated internal conversations can only give rise to strangulated conversations with the marketplace. As time passes, I am less interested in discussing marketing strategies with people, and more concerned with what is happening to conversations in the moment. Let the strategy, such as it is, emerge from the engaging conversations… and let’s not expect it to work the other way around.

Take a look at what we’re being sold in most TV ads, with all the slippery argument by analogy. It’s very hard to believe a group of people got really pumped up by the idea of foisting this stuff on an unsuspecting world. And these days, if you dodge the lively conversation inside the business, someone on the outside is going to start it for you…

Conversely, I think it had to be a joyful, laughter-filled conversation which gave rise to Bessemer’s anti-portfolio . And that’s exactly the kind of conversation we “outsiders” are having at 173 Drury Lane .

Add comment August 17th, 2005

The anti-portfolio

Do you ever wonder about the firms that venture capitalist turn down? Not the firms that fail (the VC was right), but the ones that do spectacularly well? I can’t say I thought much about it until I saw Bessemer Venture Partner’s anti-portfolio , a list of some of the most spectacular missed opportunities since Decca turned down The Beatles . Hell, they turned down Google!

A college friend [of Bessemer’s David Cowan] rented her garage to Sergey and Larry for their first year. In 1999 and 2000 she tried to introduce Cowan to “these two really smart Stanford students writing a search engine.” Students? A new search engine? In the most important moment ever for Bessemer’s anti-portfolio, Cowan asked her, “How can I get out of this house without going anywhere near your garage?”

Pointing out one’s own flaws would probably cause a traditional marketer’s head to explode, but for me this is the most powerful piece of B2B marketing I have seen in ages. Setting aside the buzz words like “transparency” and “authenticity,” what is so great about the anti-portfolio?

  1. It’s a compelling read, it taps into the traffic accident watcher in all of us, but it works for Bessemer not against them, because

  2. You can’t help but click through to Bessemer’s real portfolio . If these guys can turn down Google, who will they back? It turns out they made the right decision about Gartner , Staples , Skype ; the list goes on. Not so shabby, right?

  3. Self-deprecating humour - I get the sense that the guys at Bessemer would be fun to work with; confident, but not arrogant

  4. It forces you to look at the VC business in a new light. I will never think about VC again without wondering “who did they turn down?”

  5. I trust these guys. I won’t think “what are Bessemer hiding?” But I probably will wonder now about all their competitors (see 4.)

We all make mistakes. It’s what you do with your mistakes that counts.

Via Jeff Clavier and PhotoMatt

2 comments August 14th, 2005

Make things better: aphorism or action item?

Marshall Goldsmith , via Lisa Haneberg , extols all leaders to “Make things better”:

Real leaders are not people who can point out what is wrong. Almost anyone can do that. Real leaders are people who can make things better.

Lisa says:

I know that I have poo-poed to-do lists in the past, but I also know you all still have them. So put this item on your to-do list every day.

Make things better.

In a thoughtful comment on Lisa’s post, Bob Ashley suggests that “Make things better” is simply an aphorism not an action item, a triumph of form over content.

All three of them have something - let’s fit it all together:

  1. Leaders do make things better
  2. Make things better is too generic to go on any to-do list (sorry, Lisa), but
  3. Make things better is a great standard by which to benchmark your to-do list

Thus, at your next planning session, review the projects and actions on your lists and think: does this project or action make things better? If it does, great; keep that item on your list and get busy. If it does not, can you reframe the action item so that it does make things better? If you can’t reframe it, purge it from your list, then focus on those actions which do make the leadership grade.

I wonder what Phil Gerbyshak from the Make it Great blog makes of all this?

4 comments August 14th, 2005

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