Edit: If you've never run into H CAPTCHA and want to see what I mean, go to HCAPTCHA.com and use the checkbox under the ("Try it Out") heading. Once it loads the pictures, there should be a button for finding info on the accessibility mode which will let you sign up.:
Email addresses are near the bottom.
For those who do not know what H CAPTCHA is, It is a newer technology being embraced by large and small websites alike which provides a more secure CAPTCHA than the previous solutions. Note: A CAPTCHA is that thing where you need to look at a picture and write something or click something before signing up for a website, sometimes when logging back in after a long time, and occasionally just when trying to access another page.
H CAPTCHA decided to get rid of there audio option (they say it was because of deafblind users but I'm guessing the fact that people have been developing bots to take advantage of it was a bigger factor), and they don't analyze the user's actions to determine whether they are a bot or not like ReCAPTCHA (the I'm not a robot checkbox) from google does either.
Instead they use both the pictures and analysis, and in order to allow blind and visually impaired users access they have us sign up for an account with them and send us a permanent login link where you can press a button and download a cookie to your browser. This cookie lasts 24 hours before you need to download another from the same page, and has a limited number of uses for security reasons.
All of this would be fine but for the fact that for almost every user, the thing just plain doesn't work!
If you can get the cookie to actually download, then it is still incredibly likely that when you go and try to pass the CAPTCHA again by checking the "I am human" checkbox, it will just take you right through to the pictures again.
They say you need to disabled cookie protections for their site, and allow it through your adblocker. That's a security risk but at least it's a single site... However for almost everyone who tries that, even on multiple different browsers their is no change.
They also suggest an extension called privacy pass which is supposed to allow you to bypass their system, but again, that doesn't work, even more so than the cookie from all I've heard from others and experienced my self.
Support runs you down the troubleshooting checklist again and again without any fix, the company has no phone support, and this problem has literally been happening for years.
H CAPTCHA is used on discord, yelp, and now cloudflare, a security provider for more than seven and a half million websites, along with government portals, utility payment sites, and job hiring sites among others. There reach only continues to grow in 2022.
I feel like we have a better chance of being heard if others from the community pitch in as well, so that I can't be written off as just one random angry blind guy who doesn't really matter.
I think it's probably best that people who have actually used the joke of an accessibility service they claim to offer be the ones to help out here, so that we don't give the impression that we have know idea what we're talking about.
So basically, if you have ever been screwed over by H CAPTCHA's incompetents, and it still won't work for you consistently even after understanding and following all the instructions on this support article, https://www.hcaptcha.com/accessibility then please feel free to send a (reasonable!) email to the addresses I will provide below.
Here are the emails to contact, more info below.
contact@imachines.com
support@hcaptcha.com
sales@hcaptcha.com
Imachines AKA Intuition Machines is the company that owns H CAPTCHA. You'll notice that their website makes some pretty flowery claims about diversity and lists some important people as being board members. I don't have an active Linkedin account but if you can find contact info for any of these board members, then communicating with them directly may be highly effective given that otherwise your email could easily be ignored or buried before reaching them.
H CAPTCHA's support address will almost certainly give you some kind of automated reply if you mention disability or accessibility. My advice is to send a reply to any automated email with a copy of your original message, so that maybe a human will see it.
The sales address is just a way to get someone else's attention that may not know anything about this. Someone who might be concerned about a potential undisclosed legal risk to customers that this accessibility SNAFU could present. :) But hey, emails get sent to the wrong place all the time right?
If you want to email some of H CAPTCHA's customers, like Discord, Cloudflare, and any other services on this list, https://trends.builtwith.com/websitelist/hCaptcha/Historical[ that interest you, then please do because if one of them leans on H CAPTCHA, it's likely to have more impact than just some end user.
,Please do direct interested people on other platforms to this link, I would appreciate it greatly.