You’re trying to post a comment on a blog or sign-up for an online service and you have to respond to a captcha (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) to authenticate that you are indeed a real person. You look at it and you start pondering if it’s a one or an l, a zero or an o, a t or an f, an i or a j… Uggh!
I can only imagine how difficult it must be for the visually impaired… hell, I’ve got 20-20 vision and only have a 70% first try success rate with captchas. Don’t even get me started on the fact that the blind using screen readers are completely shutout from sites that use captcha and don’t offer an alternative… very uncool!
Related reading: CAPTCHA is bad for accessibility, Blind Access Journal petitions Google, Google Shutting out the Blind?, Captchas and Accessibility