Shoutbox

It is rather unfortunate that a number of inaccurate statements have been made on this thread concerning the supposed extreme cost and time involved in making web sites accessible, without any serious research to back them up. While the time required to code audio CAPTCHAs has been brought up several times as a reason to exclude us from participation, there are, in fact, a number of totally free options for providing an audio CAPTCHA! These are already written!  One example is ReCAPTCHA.net, which I mentioned in my original letter. Another is something called FormShield for .Net platforms. There are a few others. Please, either use the ones already created, or code your own if you don't like them, but, at this stage of the game, there's absolutely no excuse for there not being an audio playback for every CAPTCHA on the planet.

I think the CAPTCHA should be removed, or an audio version added. I'm sure Patchou can do something about this.

My thoughts:

Note that the captcha is not made by Patchou, it is part of the uninstaller made by Circle Development Ltd. So, Patchou can't do anything about this except for repeating the suggestion to his sponsor.


Second: making programs, websites or anything else for that matter, accessable for challenged people DOES cost more time and money and thus often put aside, liking it or not.

That is logic itself actually, already explained by aNILEator. When you make something and it needs to qualify, let's say, 5 rules it would take X amount of hours. When you make the same thing but it must qualify 10 rules, it usually means you need to take more time for it, not only to physically make it, but also to test it against to extra rules, etc...

More specific, making a captcha also with audio requires you to add something more to your product, no matter if there are already existing engines or not; you still need to add the engine and test it with your software. It does cost more time...


Third: the reason that the sponsor is optional and one should read the installer options and thick the option you want, shouldn't be an argument for not providing an accessable uninstaller.


Fourth: Audio captcha can be provided by storing the individual letters and numbers on the net. It shouldn't be stored in the uninstaller, that would be too much. If the online storage option isn't possible, another system should be used (or indeed removed all together).

I'll contact CircleDev and ask them about doing something about that. I'm all for accessibility and I always put a lot of time an effort in my programs to make sure everybody can use them up to some extent.

Thank you for your report, I'll try to push it for the next update of the sponsor program (which I'm not in charge of unfortunately, one thing I may do is add an accessibility-only clue in the setup saying that you will need to see the screen for uninstallation so that people who cant see it don't install the sponsor).