On 10/04/2008, Per Reisender@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.