Prompt's TechBlog

You've probably seen those online authentication tests that make you enter numbers that are so blotchy you can hardly recognise them. The idea is to stop programs from using web services that are only supposed to be available to humans, such as forums. Well now someone's come up with an alternative to the so-called captcha. It's kitten authentication, where you're shown nine pictures of cute animals and have to click on the kittens. It's highly unlikely software could correctly guess which pictures were kittens, making the method a reasonable way of identifying a basic level of human intelligence.

There is a problem though - in common with many captcha systems, this one is inaccessible. That means people who using assistive devices - and who might depend on online services more than others because of limited mobility - can't get in. You'll need good vision to log in to the service, even though you could probably use a screenreader or braille reader to use the service once you've logged in. Traditional captchas use audio recordings to get around this although that often requires external software which may be inaccessible.