DRAFT
W3C Working Draft
Accessibility is a major concern for us, and for most of our users. This is why we want and need that some authority establish a standard on this particular subject.
Not surprisingly, we are looking forward the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative.
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About : identity and humanity
My Our opinion on those two notion is that they are orthogonal.
| robot | human |
Identified | using my a mail client to pop my mail account every 5 minutes | me with my CB buying something on line with a Credit Card Number |
Anonymous | using my a feed reader to pull news every 5 minutes | consulting the NY state unified court system |
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Note : some identity systems also provide humanity certification, especially the biometric identity system.
About : possible solutions
As we already mentioned, identity systems cannot be proposed as solutions, because they do not concern humanity.
- As a result, we discarded the folowing solutions
- 7 : Federated Identity Systems
- 3: Credit-card validation
We distinguish two types of solutions :
- Automated solutions,
like CAPTCHA or non public automated turing tests, also known as reverse Turing tests
It includes solutions 1 : logic puzzles,
- 2 : sound output
This may be the best of bad options :- It allows access to blind people, and can easily be generated by a machine.
But : - This type of test is not accessible for deaf people!
- Speech recognition research is very advanced, and human has poor speech recognition faculties compared to image recognition.
- It allows access to blind people, and can easily be generated by a machine.
- 2 : sound output
- 6 : heuristic checks
This solution is a curative solution : it may find out that a user is not human only after this user as caused damage.
This is not a preventive solution.
- 6 : heuristic checks
- Manual solutions , it includes also known as Turing tests.
it includes solutions
- 1 : logic puzzles
We completly agree with Matt May on this point. We also consider that designing logic puzzle that are not cultural or language
dependant is only possible throught mathematical puzzles. But on this particular field, calculation, robots have already proved their superiority...
This is why we classified this solution here.
- 1 : logic puzzles
- 5: Limited-use accounts
This is the manual version of the heuristic checks.
- 5: Limited-use accounts
- 4 : live operator, by phone or chat
This is the best option : Turing test.
- 4 : live operator, by phone or chat
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- The only limiting factor is economic : providing operator for all requests without delay is surely a very expensive solution.
So what ?
- About security
- a system security level is less or equal the lower security level of its sub components, so implementing a solution system (visual and sound captcha) would be as vulnarable as the worse solution.
- Being able to easily change the tests is crucial
- Automatic :
Coupling sensorial tests (speech or image recognition) with trivial logic puzzle
- Central humanity system?
- The blade runner game