accessibility_fail | FUCK YOU, GOOGLE!

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

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

ROFLMAO... I was just re-reading this and thinking the same damn thing.....

I get excited sometimes and in the interest of trying to stay brief (a challenge for me. Grin.), I often make leaps that work in my head, but not so well for others if they are not explicitly stated. Sorry....

The other part of it is that calling the ADA (and similar laws in other countries) a civil rights law, rather than a law to correct flaws, is that it leads to the ability to design a system like Captcha, and then accommodate it to meet the letter of a law. The approach of design, then accommodate, guarantees that we never go beyond a level of minimum standard because the minimum standard becomes the goal.

On another note, I am sorry also for assuming a common experience with ADA. The internet is a big place... I forgot that we are not all Americans for a second there. I apologize for my assumption, and consider it a lesson learned. Avoiding assumptions is really hard and I am not always good at it.

Edited 2010-09-18 14:46 (UTC)

No worries, I figured it was a case of 'brain working faster than fingers and/or speech-to-text software' and thus asked for clarification. Happens to me in my posts all the damn time and I have to go back and edit. *g*

It always confused the hell out of me that the US viewed the ADA as a civil rights thing. Germany approaches disability rights differently again - it gets filed under legal/medical accommodations and thus must be expanded as far as possible. I have far fewer problems here, since I returned (my disability is relatively new) and people automatically include me in life as a person first, with my disability second, even as they're helping me. Children regularly ask questions, school-age ones on their own, little ones get sent by their parents ('Mummy, what's wrong with the lady?' 'If you want to know, go ask her politely. I can't tell by looking at her. Just remember to be polite.'). In the US, parents were always shushing and dragging their kids away as if disabled persons were invisible or shameful or something. It's nice to be automatically treated as 'normal' by society again, with allowances for my limitations, rather than ignored/seen as a leper.

But, digression aside, you're right, and I think Google's general American-centric focus as evidenced by some of those quotes above and the limitations of the ADA are part of the problem. Which is why we're talking about a focussed, targeted campaign to wake Google up and make them the centre-point of a flood of communications letting them know how they are failing in their self-styled quest for web-wide accessibility. Oooh, they're going to regret asking for feedback.... *evil feline smile*

As for failing to check your assumptions at the door, don't feel bad about it, just work on it in the future. :D I am, unfortunately, used to, even here on DW, people assuming that "everyone's an American" and I am quite used to gently reminding people that yes, Virginia, there IS a world outside your borders. ;)

PS Checked out your blog. What a pity, two and a half years ago, I left your area. And your kitty is adorable beyond words!

FUCK YOU, GOOGLE!

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