Ever learnt something and then immediately start seeing it everywhere? Sometimes it’s the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.
But when it’s the new Accessibility criteria (or tropes like the colour grading of Michael Bay movies) — it’s more like the… Badder Mine-EYES phenomenon.
This lunchtime, I attended a lunch and learn about the new inclusions in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.2).
3 hours later, I spotted my first 2.2 failure in the wild.
I got an email notification and tried to log into ProtonMail.
Blocking my path was a CAPTCHA — my nemesis.
Now, if you’ve followed me for a while, or had more than a passing conversation with me, you’d likely know I have a grudge against CAPTCHAs.
They are mostly inaccessible, a terrible user experience and really — just shouldn’t exist. I’ve written about this many times before. (1)
This grudge was formed over years. I encounter CAPTCHAs daily — likely because my web browsing style is similar to a bot. (2)
Because of these frequent encounters, I have developed a fascination with the bizarre phenomenon that is CAPTCHAs, and collect them in a folder ( Gotta CAPTCHA them all) which I call my CAPTCHA Zoo. I’m not weird at all.
For reasons unknown, Proton have developed their own bespoke CAPTCHAs, despite there being multitudes of variations already in existence. Sometimes you just have to re-invent the wheel, and make it a slightly worse wheel, I guess?
I don’t often check this email account, so these CAPTCHAs are a new encounter for me and another specimen for my Zoo.
The first CAPTCHA I encountered is a puzzle where you must drag a puzzle piece across to a puzzle piece shaped hole. A very common CAPTCHA trope.
Drag and drop (as I learned this morning) is a new inclusion of success criterion in WCAG 2.2 AA, called 2.5.7: Dragging movements.
It reads:
“All functionality that uses a dragging movement for operation can be achieved by a single pointer without dragging…”
This Proton CAPTCHA (below) relies solely on dragging. Uh oh. We have encountered our first accessibility issue #1 (3)
I enabled the Accessibility function menu on my Android phone and tried various controls, which didn’t move the puzzle piece.
Annoying. Inaccessible.
I hit ‘Next’ as there was no other option listed for an alternative version beyond just giving up, trying again or ‘reporting a problem’. Issue #2 (4)
I ‘failed’ (see image below) and chose the “Try a different challenge” option.
Next up, I was shown an options screen. Two CAPTCHA options were shown — the one I had just failed, and a new one called “Align Beams”.
I chose the beams option.
This CAPTCHA involved another dragging interaction, but this one claimed to work with up and down keys — yay!
I turned to my Android’s Accessibility functionality and tried various inbuilt functions like the up and down soft key, keyboard and volume key functions. They didn’t work.
I ‘failed’, again. Issue #2, encounter #2. (4)
Starting to get pretty frustrated, I then chose the “Visually impaired? Solve a different challenge” link.
A link that, ironically, also failed AA minimum accessible colour contrast — which is a criterion literally designed to help people with visual impairments. SIGH. Issue #3 (5)
The “Visually impaired” link was broken, and redirected me to a 2-step verification instead.
I opened my authenticator, copied the code and pasted that in.
I was returned to the login screen, only to find out I had mis-typed my password and had to start the process all over again.
(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
Above — the ye olde table flip emoticon
These two CAPTCHAS also fail the new WCAG criterion Accessible Authentication (Minimum) (Level AA) and Accessible Authentication (Enhanced) (Level AAA)
The CAPTCHA is a cognitive function test, and there is no alternative to using it and no (working) assistive mechanism to support users.
Now, AAA criteria are (sadly) not used by many as it’s seen as ‘too hard’ to comply with. Which is a partial truth. But, even if you’ve committed to level AA, that doesn’t mean just you can’t try to comply with some AAA.
Particularly if it’s things like CAPTCHAs, which really shouldn’t exist if you are designing a usable interface and value your users enough to not want to p*** them off.
My story ended here.
I did not get to log in and gave up. What a fabulous use of my time.
Now, just to remind you — I went through this whole process to simply CHECK MY EMAIL. A mundane and routine task should not make the user want to smash their mobile device in frustration.
This is a great example of undignified access in digital.
The Australian Network on Disability defines Dignified Access as:
Providing dignified access means designing your physical [or any] environment for people with disability, to make your workplace [or anywheere] a navigable and welcoming environment for everyone.
Un dignified access is simply the reverse:
Providing undignified access means not designing your physical [or any] environment for people with disability, to not make your workplace [or anywhere] a navigable and welcoming environment for everyone
For example — having a building’s wheelchair access via a dank service entrance versus the lovely foyer that all non-wheelchair users get.
Online, undignified access is making people with disability jump through hoops to access information that other people can access easily. For example, throwing a bunch of inaccessible captchas that infuriates them and means they have to contact support. To simply check their email.
To keep on the meme theme — let’s sum this up in the internet’s haiku, greentext (8):
>Am person with disability
>Try to check emails
>Must prove am human first
>Cannot drag puzzle piece
>Humanity check not accessible
>Fail humanity check
>Am now not human
>Do not have human rights as am not human
>Human right of access to information does not apply because am not human
>Right to check email denied
>Would feel bad but since am robot have no emotion
>At least I don’t have to read emails ever now