I note lots of websites that have no obvious means to prevent abuse by spambots. They just have input fields in their forms with a send capability. Is there really a need for caltcha installations in all situations?
Hi There,
We have found there are proâs and conâs to CAPTCHA.
Genuine visitors and enquiries will not mind filling in a CAPTCHA - so in a sense it will sift the wheat from the chaff.
Regards,
Marketing Quotes Support
Iâd thank them but they always use forged email addresses. 
Thank the spammers. Nobody likes CAPTCHA.
Itâs static on a poormanâs short-wave; leaving subliminal messages, attempting mind control via hidden messages to create a zombie army, or it might as well be for the ones I have heard.
LOL! 
I hate the audio ones even more than I hate the text ones! They sound like the thoughts of a lunatic.
I entertained the thought that maybe they were really taken from old horror films.
Someone closing their eyes and trying to do the things they normally do in the way they normally do them is completely different to someone being blind, who has adapted their life to living without sight. In just the same way that blind people can use guide dogs to help them walk around town safely, they can use assistive technology to navigate the web. This means that they donât need to rely on clicking an invisible mouse, but they navigate with the keyboard. They read the screen either with a text-to-speech synthesiser or a Braille device.
Yes, I am talking about people with no ocular vision at all. They can use computers and they do use computers. As long as people with no mental vision donât arbitrarily discriminate against them and deliberately or out of ignorance build websites that they canât use.
Ah - was not taking into account any form of technology being used.
I used to work with someone that was registered blind (but he could see fine when he chose to) and he had technology bought from a government grant. He had a computer that could magnify the screen (which was huge) and could talk (cost an absolute fortune).
He had no problem using CAPTCHAâs when househunting when he was supposed to be working.
Indeed technology can help people that are registered as blind - but I do not think CAPTCHAâs will cause any issues as it would for an able bodied person.
Ah - I thought (when you said blind) you meant âblindâ - as in people that cannot see.
Yup, I did : )
Here is a quick testâŚ
1/ Close your eyes (really tight - so you cannot peek).
I turn my monitor off when testing, except where I lose my instructions to do that (I work on a laptop so I have to turn it off in the terminal).
Then I start up one of my Screen readers (I have JAWS for Windows, NVDA (windows) and Gnome-Orca (linux))
2/ Try to find a computer, a keyboard, a mouse
Computer: check.
Keyboard: check.
Mouse: Donât need it. Web sites (except horribly-written ones) are built from text, and beyond that, keyboard navigation is important to a web developer. Screen readers usually deal with the Accessibility Layer of the application they are running on top of (a web browser, a word processor, an office tool, a music player) which gives the reader information over what kinds of things it can do, which modes to go into, and lets the user know where s/he is.
3/ Guess where the mouse is on the screen (or use your special powers) and click (hopefully you will hit a browser button).
Iâll use the keys on my keyboard that allow me to navigate with my screen reader. Iâll hear back where I am and whatâs there.
(users also may have a Refreshable Braille Device, but my god those things are expensive! and blind users who actually know Braille are still in the minority. But for those who do have a Braille device, they say doing things and reading is much faster that way than a screen reader. Often the two devices work together. They may also work with a screen magnifier, for those people you mentioned who are maybe legally blind but have some vision)
4/ Use F6 (if you can find it) and type something into the keyboard (using your powers).
5/ etc.
The powers are pretty cool sometimes : )
If youâre interested, you could run through some of the mailing list archives of the Orca (screen reader) mailing list.
You get a peek at both the geeky side of Linux users, but also at regular frustrations of blind computer users.
Example thread
So, yeah, we were actually being serious : )
He had a computer that could magnify the screen (which was huge) and could talk (cost an absolute fortune).
The commercial ones are very expensive. However there are free ones available now. If youâre on Windows and would like to experience one, try NVDA. It sounds horrid (uses espeak engine) compared to some of the commercial ones but itâs a full screen reader.
If youâre on a Mac, all Macs with OSX come with VoiceOver. You have to find it in the user settings or preferences or something.
If youâre on Linux, Orca runs on Gnome windowing system on many distros (also with espeak unless you configure other voices/engine). Thereâs also speakup for the terminal.
Indeed technology can help people that are registered as blind - but I do not think CAPTCHAâs will cause any issues as it would for an able bodied person.
I have trouble with them. Iâm mostly okay with the ones from Project Gutenberg (the ones Wikipedia and Google use) but most of the rest I have to try several times, or I try to use the Web Visum Firefox plugin to solve them. Sometimes it canât.
Those come with an âaudio CAPTCHAâ option. Someone tweeted today: the people who make those should be forced to solve 5 of them in a row before implementing them on a web site.
Ah - I thought (when you said blind) you meant âblindâ - as in people that cannot see.
Here is a quick testâŚ
1/ Close your eyes (really tight - so you cannot peek).
2/ Try to find a computer, a keyboard, a mouse
3/ Guess where the mouse is on the screen (or use your special powers) and click (hopefully you will hit a browser button).
4/ Use F6 (if you can find it) and type something into the keyboard (using your powers).
5/ etc.
My point is you said âblindâ and I thought you meant people that cannot see as opposed to people that can, but are âregistered as blindâ 
No, if youâve ignored all the research into accessibility and made a form that breaks all the guidelines and rules, there wonât be many people filling in your web form. Instead, the millions of blind and partially sighted people who do use the web will in to other websites that welcome them.
You would be amazed at how quickly and proficiently a lot of blind people can use the web. Itâs one place where their blindness doesnât put them at a disadvantage ⌠at least, not if websites have been built properly!
True True - but not many blind people will be filling in a web form anyway 
Itâs only the robots that donât mind since they are mindless; if itâs a human visitor they have to waste time filling in another form component.
Genuine visitors and enquiries will not mind filling in a CAPTCHA
The blind ones will curse your name into the cold, bleak earth and wish a pox upon your children. Or at least, I will if theyâre too nice to.
No. Sites with lower volumes of traffic wonât attract anywhere near the same level of abuse as high-profile sites. Sites that only have a contact form will attract much lower levels of abuse than those that allow posting comments.
Sites with low levels of traffic and abuse may get away with server-side spam protection and/or a patient administrator.
Not quite true about low volume sites.
Some spammers seem to search for shopping carts with a tell a friend feature (using, Iâd guess, the âpowered by xyzâ line to find them), and if there is no captcha, they will hammer you as a free emailer. This happened to a shop I set up, and on reading the shopâs own forum I saw there were several others being hit by the spammers. The web host had spotted the high email traffic and warned me to find a way to stop it or have the hosting cancelled. The captcha solved this.
Thanks for the comments/advice.
CAPTCHA is very much need in order to avoid Spammers for Spamming of Content. CAPTCHA should be unique.
I find CAPTCHA to be one of the the most annoying elements of the web today. I think it is better to endure 5 or 10 junk messages a day and let the visitor (the reason we build the site) have a better experience.
That being said, you can also build a check function in the code that will look for key phrases that spambots submit and disregard the messages if one is sent. For example, as an application developer, Iâm quite certain a contact form submission containing the word âViagraâ more than once or twice is spam. My code gets updated and I can reuse that function. It takes about 2 minutes to update with a new phrase.
I wonder if there are any stats out there that examine if people are more likely to walk away from a contact engagement if a form includes CAPTCHA vs. a form that doesnât. Iâll have to look for that when I get some timeâŚ