Comment about CAPTCHA article

Hello,

I just wanted to voice a comment about the article in https://www.w3.org/TR/turingtest.


The short summary is that I think it incorrect paints a picture that a vast majority of CAPTCHAS are inaccessible to people who don’t speak English; however, Google reCAPTCHA v2 and beyond I know for certain can be displayed in a multitude of languages.

Full comment:

The only real negative that I found in this article was how it described how CAPTCHAS work for people whose native language isn't English. And I would like to contest those descriptions because it was misleading to me, someone who had never worked in depth with CAPTCHAS before. The article makes it sound like onus falls on the site to make CAPTCHA's accessible to people whose native language isn't English because CAPTCHA's aren't multilingual. I have evidence that refutes that sentiment. It was these two sentences and this particular paragraph that drew my attention.



Sentence:

"We are aware of only one multilingual CAPTCHA solution provider with support for a significant number of the world's languages."

Note: The link in the sentence points to sometime called BotDetect.

Personal Comments:

                —Google reCAPCHTA v2 (which is the one my site is using) has the ability to be multilingual based on browser settings. If you change your browser language, (which is also configured based on what language your computer is in) it will change the reCAPTCHA language. Therefore, the one of the primary CAPTCHA's that is described in the article is multilingual, however the site makes it seem as though there is only one true alternative (though I acknowledge that they stated that they were 'aware' of only one.) This bothered me because the article had been updated August 23, 2019. So it’s not as though it’s a dead piece of literature.



                —In playing around with the Google ReCAPTCHA v2, I found that the audio played and text displayed in the reCAPTCHA were all changed to match the language that I picked in the chrome browser (ie Korean)



                —I do not know if the language settings can be changed as easily in other browsers and if it would have similar results. I would image that it is the same though.



Sentence:

" Clearly, some approaches such as Google's reCAPTCHA, two-step or multi-device verification can be easily and affordably deployed. Yet problems persist even in these systems, especially for non English speakers."



-same as above



Paragraph:

"While some sites have begun providing CAPTCHAs utilizing languages other than English, an assumption that all web users can understand and reproduce English predominates. Clearly, this is not the case. Research has demonstrated how CAPTCHAs based on written English impose a significant barrier to many on the web; see Effects of Text Rotation, String Length, and Letter Format on Text-based CAPTCHA Robustness [captcha-robustness]. This problem is likely to increase when using Latin-script characters beyond the ASCII range, with accents and diacritics, or shapes not included in the set used for English. For example, speakers of Arabic or Thai may not have enough knowledge to identify a distorted version of such characters. Furthermore, users may not have the necessary keys available on their local keyboard. "



This paragraph had me very concerned because we just made our site internationalized. Especially the statement that "an assumption that all web users can understand and reproduce English predominates". This paragraph essentially mislead me to think that CAPTCHA's don't currently possess the ability to change languages and they pose a significant barrier for people whose language isn't English. And like the sentence above, I find that sentiment untrue based on brief testing on ReCAPTCHA that I've done.



Overall, the article was very helpful. This was the only aspect that I found distracting.



Thanks!

Kim Dunagan

Kim Dunagan, Developer
Development
Phone: 216-573-6886 ext. 1571
Fax: 216.573.6888
kdunagan@rakuten.overdrive.com<mailto:kdunagan@rakuten.overdrive.com>

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