Observations

Greetings. I haven't been posting in awhile. Though the gap between tonight's post and the last one isn't as long as in the past few months, I had something interesting happen to me.

Apparently, shortly after the July 28 post, the Blogger spam bots got the idea that my blog looked like a spam blog. Whenever I went to the blog to try and post, I was presented with a visual word verification graphic, those annoying graphics that JAWS doesn't read and that you either have to get someone to read or use the audio solution to hear what letters/numbers are in the graphic and that you need to fill in. Actually, this started happening before the July 28 post, but it was after this post that I finally got fed up with having to approve my own posts in essence for publication. I was ready to pull the plug on Blogger and move to another blog host, when someone gave me a solution. Thanks to Darrell Shandrow of the Blind Access Journal for bringing this to my attention. He said that there was a link near the verification graphic that offered help. Previously, I thought this had to do with filling in the letter/number combination, which is why I didn't initially check it out. Rather, the page that came up explained that from time to time, Blogger misidentifies blogs as relating to spam, and then it prompted the reader to fill in one more word verification and their email address, in order to have a human review their blog. This was to ensure that the blog wouldn't be in the spam category anymore. I completed and submitted the form, and now I have a regular old blog again and can post to my heart's content. Its funny though that I can go weeks without putting a post up, and then when I have news or something to say, I'm unable to do so due to the word verification, :)

One other thing: while I totally support the implementing of word verification on sites to cut down on spam and automatic sign-ups, as long as an alternative is presented to the blind/low vision person that they can independently use (whether it be audio or otherwise), the idea of having to approve your posts to your own blog is going a little far. Thankfully Blogger has a fail safe for that if it ever happens. If you have a blog on Blogger and are faced with this situation, then do submit that form in the Help link near the graphic. Though they said it would take 2 days, I filled out the form yesterday and got a response back today.