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LinkedIn Becoming Less Accessible?
LinkedIn used to be one of those social networking sites which I have highly recommended to people with disabilities, as it was one of the most accessible ones. Visiting the site for a couple of minutes one can tell that it was designed, with accessibility in mind. Maybe not anymore?
The other day I signed into my account and noticed they had a CAPTCHA after the login screen, which requires me to type in an image from a picture to validate that it is really me. I didn't think much of it at that point, I just couldn't believe LinkedIn would do something like this.
This morning I signed in again, but I found the same thing.
Unfortunately, as it was discussed several times on this site, this makes it impossible for deaf blind people to use such a service, and also makes it much more difficult to people with learning disabilities.
I have seen many sites which did not make a move towards accessibility, but it is hard to come by one which will after such a great example, make it more difficult to use for people with disabilities.
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LinkedIn appears to be ignoring us, too.
It appears LinkedIn is ignoring communications from concerned blind users.
I've tried twice now to reach someone in the company's press relations department to no avail. E-mails are consistently ignored.
Shocking to see a career and networking site acting in such an unprofessional manner.
Some at LinkedIn are listening
Hi Tom
Did you see that @SandiWassmer had trouble with this new CAPTCHA feature the other day, but a LinkedIn employee at @LinkedIn actually contacted her about it. Sandi said she had a nice, constructive talk. They talked about SAPTCHA, the text CAPTCHA.
This is them contacting her: "@SandiWassmer Do have a second 2 chat? Would love 2 get your feedback on how we could improve the experience. If so, plz DM us # we can call"
Sandi then tweeted "Talked to the lovely Berek Homann @LinkedIn who took on board my suggestions for quick fixes and got to grips with SAPTCHA. Fingers crossed!"
Next, she tweeted "@LindaEskin Have a look at an API for SAPTCHA http://textcaptcha.com/"
Finally, LinkedIn closed with "@SandiWassmer @redcrew Thx for the kind words. We already passed the info on and got some discussion started about possible improvements :)"
Yes, using CAPTCHA was a bad move, but it is great they were truly listening to a complaint and having a dialogue. I also tweeted ideas from @stcaccess that they should contact some accessibility experts to set this up, in case they lacked experience in-house.
Let's hope this is one battle with win-win so we can move on to the next!
Cheers!
The 4 link references in order.
1. https://twitter.com/LinkedIn/status/20404883435
2. https://twitter.com/SandiWassmer/status/20409421997
3. https://twitter.com/SandiWassmer/status/20416677116
4. https://twitter.com/LinkedIn/status/20417190726
Hi Tom, I was really
Hi Tom,
I was really impressed with how quickly LinkedIn responded to questions about accessibility via Twitter. When I saw Sandy Wassmer's original tweet, I sent a tweet to LinkedIn asking what changes they planned to make to provide a more accessible experience. I received a tweet reply from LinkedIn within 4 hours.
Like Karen, I also provided links to various accessibility professionals for LinkedIn to contact. From my tweets with Sandi, I understand LinkedIn staff were very interested in resolving the issue.
It's amazing how Twitter has provided easy access to those people in organizations who can make changes, or at least lend a listening ear and response.
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