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I was banned from the hCaptcha accessibility account for not being blind (2023)

(michaels.world)
405 points blindgeek | 14 comments | 18 Nov 24 10:13 UTC | HN request time: 0.755s | source | bottom
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Rastonbury ◴[18 Nov 24 14:46 UTC] No.42172733[source]▶
Some captchas are getting pretty discriminatory, not everyone lives in the West and can identify the objects they are asking you to. Another recent one sticks out where they asked me to pick a shape as the same number of conoids on screen. If you ask people on a street what a conoids I bet a significant amount will give you blank looks

Also at least now I know some people call those markings crosswalks

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ta1243 ◴[18 Nov 24 14:57 UTC] No.42172860[source]▶
Sorry I live in the west, what's a "crosswalk"

Did you mean to say

> not everyone lives in the USA

Other things I don't have a clue about - a fire hydrant, yellow taxis, yellow buses

(Obviously I do, because of American cultural imperialism through things like Captchas which mean the world has to understand American cultural touchstones)

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smitelli ◴[18 Nov 24 16:05 UTC] No.42173694[source]▶
I distinctly remember a captcha which asked me to identify fire hydrants. Some of the pictures were hydrants, while others were standpipes. These are different things, and I answered accordingly.

The service refused to acknowledge my humanity until I relented that a standpipe was a hydrant. If at some future date any of us burn to death due to an automated fire truck that misbehaved due to this, we’ll know why.

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1. seanhunter ◴[18 Nov 24 18:13 UTC] No.42175159[source]▶
Yup - I recognize this problem. I am a motorcyclist and I frequently have to grit my teeth and misidentify scooters as motorcycles if I want to get past captcha.

For non-bikers, a scooter has an automated gearbox and small wheels etc. Think vespa.

In the UK at least they are generally a different category of license, although that's because of the size of a standard scooter engine.

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2. jachee ◴[18 Nov 24 19:01 UTC] No.42175710[source]▶
It's a squares/rectangles issue.

Scooters are cycles that have motors, and are thus motorcycles in the most-inclusive definition of such.

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3. arcanemachiner ◴[18 Nov 24 19:11 UTC] No.42175800[source]▶
My rationale is that they're teaching cars what things they shouldn't drive into, so I'm pretty liberal with what constitutes a motorcycle, including the person on top.
4. TeMPOraL ◴[18 Nov 24 19:15 UTC] No.42175839[source]▶
FWIW, I went out looking for a better category (something more like "two-wheeler" but without the engine), and discovered that Wikipedia actually agrees that scooters are motorcycles.
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5. bredren ◴[18 Nov 24 20:35 UTC] No.42176668{3}[source]▶
Scooters are arguably more like traditional motorcycles than ebikes.

Reminds me of this scene from Police Academy 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cil6HFXlccw

6. gsk22 ◴[18 Nov 24 21:39 UTC] No.42177384[source]▶
Except scooters are literally motorcycles? From Wikipedia:

> A scooter (motor scooter) is a motorcycle with an underbone or step-through frame, ....

Scooters are often legally motorcycles as well. For example, I had to get a motorcycle endorsement on my license for a scooter I owned, because the engine displacement was too large for the extremely restrictive "moped" category in my state.

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7. andrewflnr ◴[18 Nov 24 22:23 UTC] No.42177762[source]▶
They're not really considered as such by motorcycle people, for decent reasons too. Scooters generally have rather different ergonomics and controls, notably CVTs rather than manual transmissions for "proper" motorcycles. Overall a pretty different experience to ride. There's not really a good umbrella term, either, though.
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8. esperent ◴[19 Nov 24 00:47 UTC] No.42179000{3}[source]▶
I live in Vietnam where the entire population drives small motorbikes or scooters. There's no defining feature except for having a cutaway to place your feet in a scooter. Even the engine placement is less of a clear thing now that many of them are electric.

There's motorbikes with scooter like controls, there's scooters with motorbike like controls. Many small automatic motorbikes feel basically identical to driving a scooter except that your sitting position is very slightly different.

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9. andrewflnr ◴[19 Nov 24 01:27 UTC] No.42179240{4}[source]▶
Presumably an American motorcycle purist's brain would simply explode in such an environment. :)
10. gattilorenz ◴[19 Nov 24 06:44 UTC] No.42180628[source]▶
Classic Vespa does not have an automatic gearbox. Last one without it was probably a PX model in the early 2000s, though.
11. seanhunter ◴[19 Nov 24 07:03 UTC] No.42180720[source]▶
Of course as a scooter rider you say its a motorcycle. That wiki entry was probably written by a scooter rider also. ;-)

I actually feel a fellowship with all two-wheel riders but don't let any other bikers know or I'll be shunned.

12. Ekaros ◴[19 Nov 24 08:16 UTC] No.42181060[source]▶
And electric bicycle is in sense also motorcycle...
13. gsk22 ◴[20 Nov 24 05:44 UTC] No.42191106{3}[source]▶
The "decent reasons" just sounds like snobbery or a reason to feel superior. Cars are cars, whether manual, automatic, CVT, whatever. Why should bikes be any different?

I'm a big fan of two-wheeled transport in all its forms, but wow is there a prevailing toxic attitude among a large group of "true motorcycle" riders. Instead of welcoming people into the fold, it's just tribalism -- you drive a scooter, you're not a true biker; you ride a cruiser, true bikers only drive super sports; you drive an e-bike, but only loud pipes make a true rider!

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14. andrewflnr ◴[20 Nov 24 17:30 UTC] No.42196240{4}[source]▶
Agree about the snobbery, but there is a real difference in kind between them that would be nice to have a good name for. Even if, as the other reply pointed out, they exist on a spectrum, the endpoints are pretty distinct.