WebVisum Can Automatically Solve Visual Captchas For A Blind Or Low Vision Person

Posted on: May 10th, 2011 at 3:53 AM
by Justin Daubenmire
Accessibility, Accessible Software , , , ,
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We just returned from a family vacation at Walt Disney World and wow! What a blast! The boys loved seeing Mickey Mouse, Buzz Lightyear, Goofy, Donald Duck, and all the rest of the characters. Oh and of course Olivia loved seeing Cinderella since she already is our princess! I got one really really cool thing from Animal Kingdom. I asked Judy to get me a huge, and I mean huge, coffee cup with a cute picture of Mickey Mouse on it. What did I get instead? Well, Judy found a huge coffee mug but with one slight difference. It had a picture of Grumpy on it! She felt that Grumpy fit my morning mood better than the cute Mickey mouse. Go figure. Well vacation is over for me, but hopefully this spring or summer you take a safe and fun vacation too! Let’s get back to software and accessibility now.

In last week’s post I talked about the Solona Captcha Service and how it can help you solve visual captchas as a blind or low vision person. In this post I am going to show you another software tool that can help you solve visual captchas. It’s called WebVisum.

Unlike the Solona Captcha Service which requires a human to help you solve the captcha, WebVisum is automated and uses the internet and optical character recognition (OCR) technology to try to automatically figure out the captcha for you. What does all that OCR mumbo jumbo actually mean? Simply put, it’s automatic and doesn’t require a human to figure out the visual captcha for you. WebVisum is an add on that you install into Firefox. Firefox is a free web browser that for the most part, is pretty accessible. Be aware though, how useable Firefox is for you is based on your brand and version of screen reader. So how does this actually work under the hood?

While you are on a page with a visual captcha, you press control+alt+6 and then the WebVisum add on looks for a captcha on the web page. If it finds one, it submits the captcha on the web page to the WebVisum OCR service. The OCR service then uses OCR technology to try to figure out the captcha for you. It then returns the final result to you. The WebVisum add on puts the solved captcha text onto the clipboard for you to paste into the captcha box. All of those steps take around 30 seconds.

As of the writing of this post, according to the WebVisum website, it’s recommended to use Firefox version 3.5 together with the latest version of the WebVisum add on. However, I installed Firefox version 4.0, the latest version of Firefox, and it worked fine. Ok, enough with me rambling on about it, let’s give it a whirl! Follow these steps.

  • Install Firefox onto your computer.
  • Request an invitation code to sign up for the WebVisum service… this is a way to prevent spammers from abusing the service. It took 1 day to get my invitation code emailed to me from the company. This part of the sign up process is not automated and an actual human must read your request and send out the invitation code via email to you so please be patient!
  • When you get the invitation email, click the link in the email, or copy it to the clipboard and paste it into the run prompt (windows key+r) and press enter. This will jump you to the registration form. You should complete it by filling in all required fields.
  • You’ll get an activation email with a link in it to confirm your account. We are almost done so hang in there! If you do not see the email, check your spam or junk folder. Click the link or copy it to the clipboard and paste it into the run prompt (windows key+r) and press enter. Your now active… sweet!
  • Open up Firefox and navigate to www.WebVisum.com and download and install the WebVisum add on.
  • You’ll be prompted to restart Firefox so go ahead and restart it.
  • When Firefox restarts, you will be prompted for your WebVisum user name and password so type them in and tab to ok and press enter. Note: the automatically log into WebVisum option is checked by default so just leave it at that so you do not need to log into the WebVisum service each time you open up Firefox.

Now that you’re totally freaking out from the 900 steps that you had to complete to get WebVisum started, let’s try it out. Go to my blog and choose any post. In fact, feel free to test with this post you are reading. I use a visual captcha on the leave a comment form. You can get an audio challenge instead of a visual challenge but for testing purposes, let’s leave it at the visual captcha option. Press control+alt+6 and WebVisum will find the visual captcha and submit it to the OCR service. IN around 30 seconds, you will hear a result message and the solved captcha code will be on the clipboard. Paste it into the visual captcha box and Walla! There you have it. Oh and leave me an actual comment, ok?

WebVisum cannot solve every visual captcha out there so that is one thing to keep in mind. For a list of frequently asked questions about WebVisum, see this page.

Do you use WebVisum? If yes, please let us know what web site and visual captcha it successfully solved for you or which web site/visual captcha it could not solve for you. Leave us all a yummy comment on it, ok?

Thanks and talk soon!

Justin


12 comments so far...

  • Jeffrey Turner Said on May 13th, 2011 at 5:08 pm:

    It is quite nice if it works, now that I’ve done all the set-up. I love Salona when people are available, but as often as not, nobody is standing by. This could be a good alternative.

  • Justin Daubenmire Said on May 13th, 2011 at 6:42 pm:

    Hey Jeffrey, thanks for stopping by man and leaving a comment. Yeah, seems like Salona is needing more volunteers so hopefully the blog post I put up about it will get some attention and possibly get some more sighted folks to volunteer. Oh about WebVisum… leave us all a comment on your experiences with it and what sites it worked with and which sites it did not work with, ok?

    thanks and talk soon!
    Justin

  • jedger.blogspot.com Said on May 18th, 2011 at 2:33 am:

    Interesting…if it works-

  • Marina Said on May 21st, 2011 at 2:34 pm:

    Okay, I don’t like the fact that you need to request an invitation code. It really gets on my nervs when you have to give information instead of just signing up when you want to.

  • Justin Daubenmire Said on May 21st, 2011 at 6:25 pm:

    Hey Marina thanks for taking the time to post. Yes, I agree… that is super annoying! Especially when they could have just sent an email to you to click a linkt to confirm your not a spammer. However, in spite of that minor annoyance, it is a really cool tool to use. Have you had a chance to try it out yet?

    Talk soon,
    Justin

  • Marina Said on May 21st, 2011 at 6:47 pm:

    I want to try the service, but I don’t feel comfortable giving out information, just to get an invitation code.

  • Justin Daubenmire Said on May 22nd, 2011 at 5:43 am:

    Hey Marina … I understand. If you are not comfortable with giving out your information, then you probably shouldn’t look into trying it out. There are some other posts on my blog that you may find useful that do not require you giving out personal information.

    Have fun looking around and thanks for stopping by!

    Justin

  • Bryan McGucken Said on May 25th, 2011 at 1:36 pm:

    This does sound cool, although I think it’d be neat if they made a version that runs inside Internet Explorer 7/8. Of course, my wife had to download Firefox for something on that blackboard thing Cleveland State has here. DOes anyone know if Firefox works well with JFW 12?

  • Justin Daubenmire Said on May 27th, 2011 at 8:08 am:

    Hey Bryan… thanks for stopping by! yeah, jaws 12 works ok with Firefox. Let us know how Webvisum works out for you and what sites work with it that you visit, ok?

    Talk soon,
    Justin

  • David Said on May 29th, 2011 at 7:47 am:

    Got it all ready and just trying to get it to work.

  • Justin Daubenmire Said on May 29th, 2011 at 8:21 am:

    Hey David thanks for stopping by man. Did you get it to work on any sites yet? If you did, can you let us all know what sites you had success with and what sites did not work for you?

    thanks!

    Talk soon,
    Justin

  • Hwaen Ch'uqi Said on June 1st, 2011 at 8:29 pm:

    Many Greetings,
    Yes, I have used webvisum for my personal website, and it works wonderfully — Although, at times, it simply does not seem to work, and I am left wondering.