Accessibility issue with webmail site

[#1]

I want to pass some feedback to the PN team about a problem I have, as a visually impaired customer, with the new webmail site.
When replying to a message you have to view and enter a verification code. I find this code extremely difficuly to see and get it wrong several times before I get it right. Also my screen reading software can't read it. Totally blind users will not be able to use this system at all. Can anything be done to make this better?
Also. This is the first time I've used the new Community forum. It took me ages to find the button to allow me to post a new topic. The text on the button is so small compared to the rest of the text on the page that I didn't spot it for ages. Any chance this can be improved too?
Thanks.

[#2]

Hi there,
Whilst I'm not sure about the verification boxes, we are currently reskinning this site to make the buttons more apparent and easier to see.
I do feel your pain.

[#3]

I believe this only appears when sending or replying to an email, not when logging in.

[#4]

The webmail CAPTCHA Image only appears for people sending email when not connected to our network. This is required to prevent spammers.
Unfortunately, the CAPTCHA system included with Squirrelmail as standard is not very good, and doesn't include a audio reading option for the code. We are concious of this, but it's the problem with using a third party webmail solution and there isn't an easy answer for us. We have looked at a couple of plugins that could improve this, but our testing showed these to be pretty unreliable.
We will keep looking for a solution, but in the mean time we are a bit stuck.
Ian

[#5]

Hi there,
This is currently something im working on. We have rolled a version of captcha on our 'forgot password' page on our portal which has audio functionality.
However, because this needs new software installed on every single Portal server we have, this will, as you can tell mean a time consuming process for rolling the software and having our QA Guys test each and every one.
I have also built our own plugin for Captcha for our Webmail servers, so that it doesn't use Squirrelmail's own plugin. This means we can also offer a audio solution for that to.
Once we have made more progress we will let you know.
As with everything it does take time, but we haven't forgotten so rest assured.
Dan.

[#6]

Thanks for those responses everyone. It sound like things are in hand.
Having now used this new forum for a bit I'd also like to raise the issue of the font colours used. A lot of them are very feint compared to the background and I am having trouble seeing them. Any chance of increasing the contrast between text and background?
Also a lot of the links don't have any ALT text. This is a major problem for visually impaired people when the link is an icon (graphic). There seem to be lots like this in these forum pages.
Thanks again for listening.

[#7]

Hi,
Have a read of this thread:
http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php?topic=464.0
Mitch will be making sure that all the alt tags are covered too where possible!