Two things to consider about reCAPTCHA.

One, its accessibility has often been a mixed bag, which is common for most Google widgets. Despite being widely used, Google tends to deprioritize fixing accessibility complaints on them. Also, Google appears to only focus on screen reader access, which means that other assistive tools, even keyboard navigation, may cause issues. In general, captchas are viewed as one of the biggest barriers to accessibility out there. And no, the sound alternatives are not a panaceas and typically add even more difficulty in getting past the captcha.

Two, it can create cultural barriers if the image verification task appears. I've seen some tasks that ask me to identify storefronts, but I failed because I clicked an image of a stand at a farmers market. Others have asked for trucks but where do you draw the line? I consider a delivery van a truck? These might seem minor cultural impasses, but it gets worse when it comes to language. Supposedly, reCAPTCHA will use the default language of the browser unless you override it in the link during setup. However, not all users get to change a browser's default language due to security restrictions on the machine. This penalizes users who are not fluent in the default language of the browser.





Katherine Deibel | PhD
Inclusion & Accessibility Librarian
Syracuse University Libraries 
T 315.443.7178
[log in to unmask]
222 Waverly Ave., Syracuse, NY 13244
Syracuse University


-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of TAILOR, BHAVIN
Sent: Monday, April 22, 2019 3:59 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [CODE4LIB] ArchivesSpace reCAPTCHA

Hi everyone,

Apologies for the repost if you got this elsewhere. Have any of you successfully integrated reCAPTCHA or another spam reducer into ArchivesSpace? We've had issues with spam emails coming through the resource request form and reCAPTCHA makes sense since we have it elsewhere but we haven't quite gotten the serverside validation side of things figured out in ArchivesSpace. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I know some institutions have just disabled the request feature but where's the fun in that?

Thanks,
Bhavin

-------------------------------------------------
Bhavin Tailor
University Libraries
University of South Carolina
[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> | 803-777-9584