Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I was banned from the hCaptcha accessibility account for not being blind (2023)

michaels.world

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 277 posts

Re: I was banned from the hCaptcha accessibility account for not being blind (2023)

#221

Post by RobMurray »

sundarurfriend wrote: post #209
Rastonbury wrote: post #14

Some captchas are getting pretty discriminatory, not everyone lives in the West and can identify the objects they are asking you to. Another recent one sticks out where they asked me to pick a shape as the same number of conoids on screen. If you ask people on a street what a conoids I bet a significant amount will give you blank looks Also at least now I know some people call those markings crosswalks

Avoiding this is what made hCaptcha popular among a lot of users in the first place. reCaptcha has always been guilty of this, and it doesn't seem like they're taking any steps to improve this US-centred definition of humanity. hCaptcha gave much more general and neutral puzzles that made a lot of people (including me) give a sigh of relief when they encountered a CAPTCHA and it was h and not re.

recaptcha audio challenge is just a few words (in English) that you have to enter. Might be easier in some circumstances? You can press CTRL to repeat the audio.

Re: I was banned from the hCaptcha accessibility account for not being blind (2023)

#222

Post by Saris »

xelamonster wrote: post #220
Saris wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd never heard of them before getting them while using Brave search sometimes, I'm not sure I entirely understand how they work and differentiate between a bot and human.

They don't differentiate. They just make it too expensive to be worth paying for the resources required to carry out a spam attack at any meaningful scale.

Oh that makes sense, neat way of doing it. Basically adds a delay while also costing CPU resources.

Re: I was banned from the hCaptcha accessibility account for not being blind (2023)

#223

Post by layer8 »

sml156 wrote: post #149
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To this day I don't know how much of the object I should be selecting? Also what is a traffic light? Is the pole part of it or not? Motorcycles seem to be hard too. I have always assumed this was purposefully ambiguous. The right answer is whatever a majority of humans will answer when presented with the same picture.

I don't think the majority of people on earth would base all their captchas on things only found in America

The majority of people will still cluster around the same best guesses, and that’s all that matters to the algorithm.

Yes, it’s annoying, but that doesn’t matter to the algorithm.

Re: I was banned from the hCaptcha accessibility account for not being blind (2023)

#224

Post by layer8 »

jrockway wrote: post #204
dizhn wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I routinely have problems with closeup images. To this day I don't know how much of the object I should be selecting? Also what is a traffic light? Is the pole part of it or not? Motorcycles seem to be hard too. Once it showed me a picture of steps nothing but steps. I think I marked like 15 boxes.

I'm never that consistent and usually get through. I think they are looking at things like mouse acceleration, smoothness, etc. rather than the actual answer to the questions.

They don’t let you pass if you don’t answer roughly correctly.

Re: I was banned from the hCaptcha accessibility account for not being blind (2023)

#225

Post by neilv »

> I emailed back a day or so later, requesting an unban because, y'know, I actually* am blind, but they gave a pretty canned response of no, your account is remaining banned.*

Do I understand correctly that hCaptcha has created an accessibility problem that's denying this blind person access to all sorts of Web sites?

Is there an ADA angle here, for many customers of hCaptcha?

Re: I was banned from the hCaptcha accessibility account for not being blind (2023)

#226

Post by andrewflnr »

gsk22 wrote: post #216
seanhunter wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup - I recognize this problem. I am a motorcyclist and I frequently have to grit my teeth and misidentify scooters as motorcycles if I want to get past captcha. For non-bikers, a scooter has an automated gearbox and small wheels etc. Think vespa. In the UK at least they are generally a different category of license, although that's because of the size of a standard scooter engine.

Except scooters are literally motorcycles? From Wikipedia: > A scooter (motor scooter) is a motorcycle with an underbone or step-through frame, .... Scooters are often legally motorcycles as well. For example, I had to get a motorcycle endorsement on my license for a scooter I owned, because the engine displacement was too large for the extremely restrictive "moped" category in my state.

They're not really considered as such by motorcycle people, for decent reasons too. Scooters generally have rather different ergonomics and controls, notably CVTs rather than manual transmissions for "proper" motorcycles. Overall a pretty different experience to ride. There's not really a good umbrella term, either, though.

Re: I was banned from the hCaptcha accessibility account for not being blind (2023)

#227

Post by pbhjpbhj »

ta1243 wrote: post #22
Rastonbury wrote: post #14

Some captchas are getting pretty discriminatory, not everyone lives in the West and can identify the objects they are asking you to. Another recent one sticks out where they asked me to pick a shape as the same number of conoids on screen. If you ask people on a street what a conoids I bet a significant amount will give you blank looks Also at least now I know some people call those markings crosswalks

Sorry I live in the west, what's a "crosswalk" Did you mean to say > not everyone lives in the USA Other things I don't have a clue about - a fire hydrant, yellow taxis, yellow buses (Obviously I do, because of American cultural imperialism through things like Captchas which mean the world has to understand American cultural touchstones)

Is a coach a bus? Honestly, I'm not sure what makes them different, if you pressed me I think I'd say a coach has luggage compartments underneath. A UK coach is not a bus... although Megabus run mostly coaches, and Stagecoach run mostly buses.

Is a scooter a motorcycle, what about a pedal-and-pop, an ebike? Is the backbox (rear carrier) part of the motorcycle?

Is a single light at a junction, ahem intersection, a traffic light? Is the outer-container part of the "light"? What about the lights for pedestrians, are they part of the traffic light?

Are house steps, that don't carry you to a different storey, still stairs? Is a single step also stairs?

Are fire hydrants always red?

So, yeah, usually I just leave the website and come back to HN.

Re: I was banned from the hCaptcha accessibility account for not being blind (2023)

#228

Post by pbhjpbhj »

wccrawford wrote: post #142
itishappy wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does DHL delivery via yellow busses?

Does anyone deliver anything except people via "busses"?

Don't they have postbuses in some countries that do all types of delivery including people and mail, alpenhorns and cheese and that kinda thing??

Re: I was banned from the hCaptcha accessibility account for not being blind (2023)

#229

Post by mindslight »

jchw wrote: post #112
mindslight wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

meh, continuing the pearl clutching and asserting there has to be some general "solution" is itself part of the problem. The sheer majority of captchas I come across are while browsing essentially static content. If simple source IP based rate limiting can't keep the server load at something manageable, then the real problem is with how the site is built. And adding even more bloat to address another managerial bulle…

Two things: - I don't believe there is a general solution to this problem, but that won't stop people with lots of money and influence from trying to find a general solution. Especially one that is cheap. I still hope for the least user- and ecosystem-hostile approach among the flawed approaches to win. (I guess of the ones I listed, the one that bothers me the least is having more policing of the service providers.)…

There are indeed many powerful motives supporting the march of technological authoritarianism. But validating the narratives about why ever-more control is needed is a form of support, which we should avoid doing.

Rather we need to recognize that they're merely instances of the same old authoritarian fallacy of more control promising better outcomes, because what increased control ends up ruining cannot be enumerated. In actuality, reducing independent autonomy stifles invention and suffocates society.

"Anti-scraping" is a dubious problem in the context of web sites aimed at publishing information. The best "anti-scraping" solution is a published API that includes bulk downloads. I'll admit there's a tiny sliver of sites for which controlling consumption might make sense, but it's certainly not ones that allow browsing without even logging in.

Re: I was banned from the hCaptcha accessibility account for not being blind (2023)

#230

Post by pbhjpbhj »

Symbiote wrote: post #56
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

In many countries fire hydrants are underground, under an iron or concrete cover. There's very little to see on the street. There might or might not be a sign marking the location. Sweden: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Fire_hydrants_in... UK: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Fire_hydrants_in... It's also not necessarily relevant to worry about blocking one when parking a car.

Most UK hydrants are at junctions where its already illegal to park... come to think of it, I think USA ones are maybe mostly at junctions (in the media I've seen)? Are you allowed to park at junctions in USA?
Post reply on HN