On 10/04/2008, Per <Reisender(a)online.de> wrote:
For example: I would like to learn why it is not
possible to use the
Mediawiki extension from reCAPTCHA for Wikipedia. This would allow the use
of an alternative audio CAPTCHA, but there are surely important arguments
against this idea.
I believe the answer is that reCAPTCHA is not even close to free
software, and they don't seem interested in freeing it.
There was talk here a short while ago of putting stuff in the
MediaWiki bot API to make bolt-on captchas of any sort (text, audio,
whatever) much easier to implement.
Don't worry, I am not an accessibility hawk. I
just want to inform about the
needs of blind Wiki users.
There should be lots of potential sponsors for the suggested
accessibility/usability development project. If one or more parties would
give money, a professional Wiki programmer could be hired to optimize the
monobook CSS and JS for screen reader software.
An easier way is to use a skin suited to screen reading. Classic,
Nostalgia or (especially) the printing CSS would be much better suited
to screen reading than Monobook, whose purpose is, after all, to look
slick and pretty.
Why shouldn't we find similar help for MediaWiki
and thereby for the great
and well known Wikipedia? The costs would be low and the benefits
significant. The WikiMedia Foundation and the global blind community will
surely appreciate sponsored accessibility improvements.
Mostly I suspect it's a case of "Great idea! Please code it."
Sponsorship could help here, of course.
- d.