I was trying to create an account at a website today and ran into a situation that always has me shaking my head.
You’ve all experienced CAPTCHAs, a series of letters and/or numbers that you’re asked to type into a form to prove that you’re a human and not a bot. Well, occasionally I can’t read them, and I’m probably not the only one. I don’t have this problem often. The ones in this Wikipedia CAPTCHA article are clear to me, though I can see how one of the lower three could be confusing.
But today I came across a CAPTCHA that had a black background, a white foreground, and white wispy lines running through the characters. I couldn’t read the darn thing. One letter (or number?) stumped me; I couldn’t tell if it was a b or a 6. So I guessed, and got it wrong.
When the “You’re an idiot so we’ll try this again” page loaded, the CAPTCHA’s background colour had changed to blue, making it much easier to read. So they must have observed that people who get it wrong the first time have a better chance of getting it right the second time if the background is blue. So, um, why not just show it with a blue background in the first place? It wouldn’t make a difference to bots, but it certainly would to humans.
This is the first time that colour has been the problem. Usually I can’t tell if something is a letter or a number (is it the letter ‘l’ or the number ’1′?), or if a letter is upper- or lowercase. If the form states that case doesn’t matter, that’s great. If not, getting the case right can be challenging when uppercase letters have the same height as lowercase ones.
About a year ago, I wanted to buy a book off a website (unfortunately I can’t remember which one). I’d read the sales copy, I was sold, the credit card was out—all that remained was to register so I could make the purchase. Guess what was on the registration form? Yep, a CAPTCHA I couldn’t read. After five attempts, I gave up. So they lost a sale. Thwarted by the CAPTCHA!
I understand the need for CAPTCHAs, but if they’re difficult to read, they’ll turn away humans with credit cards along with the bots.
