User:Guy Macon/Discrimination against the visually impaired

This page is under construction. Consider it a rough draft until this notice is removed.

History

On February 3 2006, it was reported to the WMF that our CAPTCHA system discriminates against blind people. See [ https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T6845 ]

This appears to be a direct violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and leaves Wikipedia open to discrimination lawsuits.

Related:
 * Help desk/Archives/2016 July 20
 * https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2008-April/037341.html
 * https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2013-January/065820.html
 * https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2008-April/037309.html

National Federation of the Blind v. Target Corporation was a case where a major retailer, Target Corp., was sued because their web designers failed to design its website to enable persons with low or no vision to use it. This resulted in Target paying out roughly ten million dollars.

I have been told that the proper way to present a proposal is through phabricator, but clearly this was not effective in this case. I do not consider 13 years of no answer to be reasonable behavior on the part of the WMF.

What I expect from the WMF

I expect a yes or no answer. Either the WMF makes an official statement saying "No, we have decided not to fix this" or an official statement saying "Yes, we have decided to fix this."

If the answer is "Yes", I expect a page to be created (preferably on the English Wikipedia, but I will accept a page on Meta) that gives us the requirements (a testable definition of "done"), a schedule with milestones and updates, and budget and staffing information. The WMF has made multiple statements saying that they intend to be more open about these sort of thing, and this is an excellent place to show that the commitment to openness is more than just talk.

Please discuss on User talk:Guy Macon/Proposals/CAPTCHA

(Note: I have been asking this question since 3 August 2017. No action so far.) --Guy Macon (talk) 22:04, 12 October 2019 (UTC)