Social networks 'could improve website accessibility'

Social networking websites could do more to improve accessibility for disabled web users, it has been claimed.

According to charity Abilitynet and the British Council of Organisations of Disabled People, a number of social networks fail to consider the needs of internet users with disabilities by offering accessible alternatives to elements such as Captchas.

Robin Christopherson of Abilitynet told Computeractive: "It's more of a challenge to make one of the new sites accessible than it was before - so things may actually get worse."

The term Captcha was coined in 2000 and stands for Completely Automated Public Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart.

Captchas are used to block bots that spam websites and blogs with links and comments by determining whether a user attempting to make a post on such sites is human or not.

One Captcha provider, reCAPTCHA, offers this technology with an audio-enabled alternative option for blind or partially-sighted web users to improve accessibility.

This news story was brought to you by Bluhalo, a leading UK digital agency.