Blind users cant use your support forum because of inaccessible Captcha

[abletec]

I think the subject speaks volumes, actually. I am truly disappointed. I’ve been recommending Weaver Xtreme to my clients, both sighted & sight-impaired, for years, & now blind folks using a screen reader can’t even access it.

There are alternatives. ReCaptcha is 1. There are others. Please remedy this. It’s against everything the WordPress community stands for. & BTW, I wouldn’t have called you out on a public forum except, of course, I couldn’t contact you privately because of the captcha.

[scrambler]

I am not sure how a Captcha issue would prevent the use of the official forum below
https://forum.weavertheme.com/
So you may want to elaborate.

that said, If there is an issue with forum access I am pretty sure it is not intentional and will be fixed.
I will Alert the developer to this message, as this form is not quite monitored.

[abletec]

When registering an account on https://forum.weavertheme.com/forum-login/ there is a box to enter a captcha code. It’s a graphic. The screen reading programs used by those who are blind cannot interpret it.

I’m not saying denial of access is intentional–I highly doubt that, actually. No one’s going around saying, “I’m going to develop a solution to keep bots & blindies out”, of that I’m certain. Truthfully, very few developers consider the needs of those w/sight impairment at all,. But in using images to exclude bots, sight-impaired humans are excluded also. So, unfortunately, intentional or not, the effect is the same.

Thanks for investigating.

[wpweaver]

Thank you for your input on this issue. I am acutally a bit embarrassed by this as I am generally quite aware of all these issues.

One of my goals for the Weaver Theme is to get it certified for accessibility. It has the basics, but could use some of the more subtle changes that allow full accessibility.

That said, the accessibility of the Captcha just never made it to my awareness level.

It should be a matter of switching to a new Captcha plugin.

There are several modes of reCaptcha operation. One uses the “I am not a robot” checkbox, the other is supposed to be invisible but may not work as well.

I would be happy to add either version, but as the forum draws quite a few spam robots, I would like to use the most secure version – as long as that would work.

So, have you encountered the “I am not a robot” version which requires the user to check a checkbox, and does that work for you?

Thanks for your input, and now your help.

[abletec]

Thanks, WPWeaver. The “I am not a robot” checkbox does work. It might help to put a sentence at the top letting us know the checkbox is there. Sometimes you’re just breezin through, you know, & not quite paying as much attention as you should be. Having said that, though, version 3 actually goes beyond all that to give the user a site interaction score. That’s likely your most secure option.

I really did not want to call you out on this forum, but I couldn’t get to the private 1 to do it, obviously. I actually felt a bit bad about doing that, but didn’t feel I really had much of a choice.

If you’d like some help w/Weaver accessibility, hit me up here, & I’ll be glad to give input.

[wpweaver]

It really is okay to post here. If someone else sees it, they too might see the need to keep up with the latest Captcha plugin.

So, now the forum uses Google reCaptcha V3. Can’t even tell it is there!

The only plugin I could find that supports V3 is

Google Captcha (reCAPTCHA) by BestWebSoft

It has over 200,000 users, and that seems to be the most popular of any “real” Captcha plugin. There is another one with more users, but it seems to be dedicated to Contact Form 7.

The thing that this solution doesn’t solve is the two factor verification required for registration – you still must open your e-mail to get set your password, and then finally be allowed to login.

Again, I really appreciate your input on this.

[abletec]

WPWeaver, the confirming of the email address is the user’s responsibility. Yours was to allow that user to follow the process & arrive at that stage. Sounds like you’ve implemented it well. Thank you. I’ll notify my clients who use Weaver Xtreme they can now post to the forum. Glad we got it working, as I use Weaver Xtreme Plus on a number of my sites.

What I had to do in a situation similar to yours was to actually disable the WordPress registration facility, put a member ship plugin in place, (WP Simple Membership, as well as its captcha integration plugin), then put a link to the plugin’s registration page on the site’s menu. That has basically eliminated the bots. What no solution can eliminate, unfortunately, is people who don’t respect either themselves or others who insist on spreading their spam. It’s the wild wild west out there. Yippee kyo ki yay!

Best of luck & much success. Thanks again.