Avoid using CAPTCHAs when possible.

A CAPTCHA is an attempt to stop nonhuman users (bots) from interacting with website forms by requiring the user to perform a task that a bot wouldn’t be able to complete. While CAPTCHAs are generally effective at stopping spam, they are not accessible to all users; they prevent some human users from completing the form.

The Washington University web standard is to avoid using CAPTCHAs.

However, in circumstances when a form is attracting troublesome amounts of fake submissions, stopping spam entries may outweigh the accessibility and user experience disadvantages of using a CAPTCHA. Formidable Forms, the form solution primarily used by the WashU digital team, provides reCAPTCHA as an option. While it is still better to avoid using a CAPTCHA at all if possible, reCAPTCHA is somewhat more accessible than many other CAPTCHA offerings and is a free service from Google.

Additional perspectives on CAPTCHA accessibility

Fun fact: “CAPTCHA” is an acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.”