Vidoop...

Why Vidoop? Because we liked it. The word sounds cool. It's as simple as that. But there is a bit more to the story...
We were sitting in the last row of the right hand corner section of the Web 2.0 keynotes when the CEO of vidoop.com did his ten minute spiel. The technology he was introducing was very exciting: A way to visually authenticate a user. The process is quite nifty in its simplicity. A user has a pre-set group of images (2,3,5, etc) that are presented within a grid (size set by an administrator) of other random images. Each image has a letter super-imposed in one corner. These letters and order of the images change each time a user attempts a login. The user looks at the images and sees which ones correspond to the categories they've chosen (the example was boats and airplanes). They then type in the letters that are superimposed on the images into a text field and press 'login'. If everything matches up, the user is authenticated and can proceed. Great concept. Cool interface and an ingenius idea for authentication... Just one problem and it's a big one. ADA compliance and standards compliance.

According to the CDC approximately 14 million people, 18 to 64, have "vision trouble" and for every 10 sighted users there will be 1 blind user. So, by nature, any system that employs images for authenticating a user will be exclusionary to this segment of the population. Real-life example: Let's say a major bank utilizes Vidoop's technology for authentication on their online banking system. They've just excluded approximately 1 in 10 of their users and possibly more who have "vision trouble" from using their online banking system.

When I asked the representatives of Vidoop about standards compliance and ADA compliance and related the statistics to them regarding visual impairment, they agreed that it was an issue, but they didn't have a solution at this time. They also didn't have a plan to address this issue for future releases of their product. In their words, they "weren't really working on that aspect (ADA compliance) of it." I was stunned, to say the least.

It bothers me that a company featured at the Web 2.0 Expo would be moving forward with a product that is very Web 1.0. It'd be like a web development company designing web sites using tables and non-semantic HTML.

Vidoop has a great idea for authentication, I just hope they can bring it forward into the 21st Century so everyone can use it.