On the link addition / submission page for search.ie there are instructions on how to add a link. It includes information on what kind of things will help to either get your site listed or banned permanently.
The Jobs.ie employee who tried to add jobs.ie to the directory yesterday obviously cannot read or is simply too lazy to do so.
Which part of this sentence is unclear?
If you feel your site belongs in more than one category please use the control key to add it to up to three categories.
Three categories. NOT FORTY categories.
If you’re going to submit sites to directories reading the submission rules / instructions doesn’t take much effort.
Why don’t people get this?
But I wonder was it an employee from jobs.ie or an over-zealous (and under educated) SEO?
At least the person in jobs.ie was just chancing their arm. What is the reason for continuing to use Captcha for authentication when the inaccessibility of this system is already known?
Captcha requires that a user confirm that they are actually a lagitimit user as apose to an automated service by typing the text located in a graphic before they are allowed to submit a form.
A screen reader used by the visually impaired cannot read the contents of a graphic and therefore cannot enable a blind user to get past this validator.
Alternatives to Captcha are available and in fact the most simplist of methods is often the most effective and if memory serves, you use it on the blacknight blog.
Users who want to respond to a post are prompted to write a string or answer a simple question. This is a very simple addition to integrate onto any website and is much more accessible than the captcha alternative.
I appreciate that this has probably just been an oversight however I’d ask that anyone in the situation where greater security is required consider that your decisions can inhibit accessibility if not thought out fully. Alternatives to Captcha are out there and usually very easy to install. There are plenty of barriors to accessibility out there without us making more because it’s the handyist option.
Finally, I appreciate that you’ve actually taken time to fix other accessibility issues in the past. I would ask that you consider taking the time to improve the accessibility of search.ie by replacing the current Captcha authentication with a validator that is more accessible.
Ouch!
This a classic case of careless and lazy reading in addition to a poorly thought-out user interface.
Unfortunately, there’s not much we can do about the former as such is the world me live in 🙁
However, regarding the user interface, there are some simple steps they could have taken to prevent this from happening:
1. Accentuate the limitation (i.e. the word “three”) in the instructions. I must admit, when I first read your post, I didn’t really see the word “three” until I saw your “NOT FORTY” comment below. That leaped from the screen!
2. Enforce the restriction in the logic behind the submission page so that it is not possible to select more than the three categories.
Neither of the above are rocket science but would have gone a long way towards preventing this sort of thing from happening.
Well.. you never can rely on users to get things right, or rely on them to read everything. How many disclaimers have you clicked through without reading?
Which is why all input should be validated to prevent rubbish submissions.
Richard
Their email address was @jobs.ie and I didn’t see any bounces coming back. Unlike browse.ie, search.ie’s mail has been working properly for ages! 🙂
The IP address wasn’t much help, as it was just part of an Eircom netblock
Michele
James / Paul
Part of the reason why there isn’t any extra validation etc., is that most people don’t try to submit to anything close to that number of categories at once. If it happened regularly I’d have fixed the text on the submission page ages ago 🙂
In light of your comments I’ll be revising it to make the limits a lot clearer. I think the current text kind of grew organically 🙂
Michele
Darragh
I know it’s not accessible at present, unfortunately I was being hit with literally thousands of spam submissions from automated scripts every single day, so I had to take swift action. I would have preferred a text based capctha, but the only plugin I could find uses graphics and since I can’t program I was forced to use what was available to me or shut down the site.
I’ve implemented forced registration on browse.ie and the drop in spam was immediate, however I’d prefer not to force people to register, which is why I haven’t gone down that route on search.ie yet. And of course, since nobody had complained about the accessibility until now it wasn’t that high on my todo list 🙂
I’ll have another look to see what I can do, but maybe forcing registration is the lesser of two evils?
Michele
@Richard Hearne.
Or perhaps an over educated SEO, looking for exposure such as this by annoying directory owners. ;o)
Just a thought..
Uff,… just a reminder I should do some SEO for my site, or I’ll never catch up with those Jobs guys.
I’ll do my best to read the instructions! 🙂