Can confirm, it's rare for me to be able to get at the audio captcha. Occasionally I'll find that tabbing onto the the button allows it load when clicking directly on it won't. I assume if Google is observing behavior that makes them think you're sighted, they'll block access.

I kind of wonder if it would be possible to force the issue legally as an accessibility problem, but other people than me would need to do it, and in any case it feels a kind of dirty to me to use blind accessibility as a tool in the fight for privacy.

On the other hand, it also feels dirty to me that being blind would mean you're not allowed to do as much on the web to protect your privacy. Blind people should be able to use Tor.

> Can confirm, it's rare for me to be able to get at the audio captcha. Occasionally I'll find that tabbing onto the the button allows it load when clicking directly on it won't. I assume if Google is observing behavior that makes them think you're sighted, they'll block access.

That'd be very cruel to ignore those with vision, but who don't have anything close to perfect vision or correctable vision through glasses. It would also ignore those who have poorer vision as well as have difficulties in recognizing patterns. There's a whole spectrum of accessibility issues, and trying to "fail people" who seem to have enough vision to click on an audio button would be the definition of being evil.

> I kind of wonder if it would be possible to force the issue legally as an accessibility problem, but other people than me would need to do it, and in any case it feels a kind of dirty to me to use blind accessibility as a tool in the fight for privacy.

Even if this is not possible legally in all jurisdictions, enough publicity and outrage could help. There should certainly be some journalists from major publications/site reading HN (or HN readers with journalist contacts) who can investigate and write about this.