FUCK YOU, GOOGLE!

[mathsnerd]

So I am wishful of obtaining a second Gmail account, since my mail email is used for communicating with family, and for a myriad of reasons, I am forced to be permanently invisible on chat, and that makes me sad. Also, I'd like an email address that doesn't use my legal name in the handle for my internet stuff. So, I go to the sign-up page and try my usual options (mathsnerd, mathsie), only to find that they're both taken. Okay, no problem. I start trying logical workarounds to see which ones are available.

Oh, wait, what's that, Google? After trying more than three names, I have to go through CAPTCHA to prove I'm a real person? Okay, that's kind of soon, but whatever. Gee, you sure scrunch those letters together and make them all wavy so that I have a real hard time figuring out what the hell you want me to enter...

Huh, okay, I've tried eight times, Google, and I can't seem to read it well enough that you're satisfied that I'm a real person. And while you offer a "read-aloud" accessibility option for the CAPTCHA down below for submitting the form (which, incidentally, doesn't work in Chrome, yeah, you know, YOUR BROWSER!), for the CAPTCHA to keep trying different handles you conveniently don't offer any alternate options.

So, in conclusion, FUCK YOU, GOOGLE, AND FUCK YOUR UTTER LACK OF ACCESSIBILITY ON THIS PAGE. You should be ashamed of yourselves. Right now you're not living up to your usual standards. And I'm seriously wondering why I bother with Gmail accounts.

No love and a fuck-load of frustration,
mathsnerd

Comments

[amadi]

Yeah, GMail is where I once encountered this CAPTCHA image after my fourth attempt to remember a forgotten password:



I understand why they do what they can to keep GMail secure from fake accounts, but they are really lacking in options for accessibility.

[mathsnerd]

Yeah, they all looked like that! Sorry, Google, but NO CAN READ. And if you're not going to give me an audio option, you fail at accommodating me in getting a second address with you. Grrrr....

[codeman38]

For what it's worth, when the audio option does work, you can't hear the digits above the background noise of gibberish speech in the same pitched voice.

I say this from experience. -_-;;

[mathsnerd]

Lovely. Shall we descend on Google Headquarters en masse to kick the CAPTCHA developers in the genitalia to express our ... displeasure?

[trouble]

Actually, lobbying Google about this issue isn't a bad idea at all. I wonder if this is something we should do.

[mathsnerd]

I would be willing to donate spoons to the cause (I use a lot of Google stuff on the web and am QUITE displeased about this), if people are willing to work in a group. I am, however, on the wrong side of the world to do anything in person (sadly). ;)

[trouble]

Yeah, actually showing up at Google headquarters is not really viable for me, either. But yes, something online could be good.

*ponders more*

[willow]

It wasn't just me?? I thought something was wrong with my speakers or something that I couldn't make anything out- I was so frustrated and near tears I just gave up. Luckily by the next day I remembered the password.

[mathsnerd]

According to some research and a lot of anecdotal evidence here, this is Google failing harder than the Failboat itself. :/ So, no, it wasn't you at all.

[techstep]

I'm a able-bodied friend of mathsnerd's, and I was just discussing this with her and she asked me to post here.

My hearing is generally pretty good -- I'm a veteran shortwave radio listener, spent a lot of time listening to noisy experimental music, and can otherwise do a decent job of extracting signals from noisy audio -- but the audio version of Google CAPTCHA is nothing short of awful. I listened to a clip several times while trying to create an account, and couldn't figure out, for the life of me, what the hell was going on.

I understand that voice recognition technology for discrete letters and numbers has become pretty decent. And I understand they need to develop anti-spam techniques. But if Google's "accessible" CAPTCHA is failing for amateur audio engineers, then they're just using "accessible" as a marketing label.

[codeman38]

Wow. Sometimes I wish DW had a "like" feature on comments, because I would totally be clicking it here.

Seriously, though. If you're going to have gibberish speech in the background to throw off speech recognition systems, is it that hard to choose samples that don't also sound like numbers?

[trouble]

May I quote parts of this?

[techstep]

Of course!

[codeman38]

...oh yeah, and the gibberish quite often sounds vaguely like numbers. So I can't tell if the "two" I heard was actually a "two" or part of the background noise. >_<;;

[mathsnerd]

ARGH!

[codeman38]

Seriously, you'd think they might have done just a bit of usability testing on this... both the visual and audio versions.

Heck, someone else did a survey showing that the audio CAPTCHA is made of fail, but it's not as if Google will listen...

[trouble]

Hey, can I use this screengrab in a post?

[mathsnerd]

I don't see why not. If amadi doesn't get back to you shortly, I can get you another one as well!

[amadi]

If you can snag it and upload it to your own server, knock yourself out!