In T6845#7608088, @Ijon wrote:

(It seems to me @DrMel does not have the wherewithal, despite good intentions, to make progress on this, and therefore that it would be better to unassign the task and restore the previous priority, to better reflect actual status.)

Having spent a lot of time getting my own head around why this still an unsolved problem can I ask for help with the simplest of the low-tech solutions?

Who here could meet up in a zoom this weekend (Jan 8-9) to discuss possibilities? There are ways to move forward - takes some version of collaboration to persist through the obstacles. I’ve got a Zoom room available and a flexible schedule all weekend.

This my reply to the email I got from Phabricator - hadn’t realized it’d post to the group…

Newbie Hackathon Qs: Could someone here let me/us know:

In T6845#6840433, @APerson wrote:

Silly idea: volunteer-staffed (or contractor-staffed?) phone bank where you call them with your desired username. How many of these do we get, anyway? (Or an estimate, I guess, since by definition we wouldn't know.)

In T6845#7089146, @Aklapper wrote:

@DrMel: Could you elaborate on your plans to go forward, code-wise?

In T6845#7089069, @Aklapper wrote:

@DrMel: You are welcome to increase priority and set yourself as task assignee if you plan to work on fixing this, as the Priority field summarizes and reflects reality and does not cause it. If you're interested in contributing code to fix this, please see How_to_become_a_MediaWiki_hacker - thanks in advance for your help.

In T6845#4857904, @Bawolff wrote:

In T6845#4856993, @Thryduulf wrote:

So the question is why has work not been put aside to fix an issue of recognised high importance that will, 13 years after first being raised, resolve an issue that results in us discriminating against people who are (in many jurisdictions) a legally protected minority?

Because it basically involves solving an open problem in computer science which despite more than 13 years of people attempting to solve it, there aren't really any good solutions to.

In T6845#4856949, @jrbs wrote:

In T6845#4856935, @WereSpielChequers wrote:

I have corrected the priority to high. Obviously something that excludes such a large group of people needs to be fixed as a matter of priority. It shouldn’t be all that difficult to do a workaround such as MzMcbride suggested. If everyone who verifies an email address was exempted from such capchas then not only do we solve a major disability barrier, we also fix a problem that is a barrier for all new Wikipedians.

Please note that "priority" on Phabricator does not mean "importance", it just reflects how tasks are being handled by the teams in question. See this for more information: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Phabricator/Project_management#Priority_levels

As such, I'm lowering this back to Normal, since no work has been committed for this. While I agree this is an important task to work on, marking this as "high" is misleading as it implies work has been put aside for it, which it has not.

Yes please. We have user group WikiBlind.org connected with fabulous talented problem solvers in Blind and Visually Impaired communities.