First, I don't pretend to understand morality as a whole, or even know "the answer" to this issue of spam prevention and its effect on people with disabilities. I regard moral inquiry as an opportunity for exploration and furthering understanding. (Thus my first message in this thread is to be construed as an invitation, not as a threat.)

Second, some moral theories do make a great deal of intentions and good will. Staying in the meta level for a moment, and not committing myself to these theories, I'd like to point out that rejecting the importance of intentions outright like you do limits you to an area of argumentation that puts a lot of weight on utility and consequence, and very often requires, to make any headway at all, a lot of economical calculation to determine what it calls good. I point this out because knowingly hurting others is is almost inevitable, and you really do need some thory to explain when it's acceptable to do so. Taken to the extreme, a Utilitarian might sum up the cost of "special access" to people with disabilities against the cost of spambots etc., and get a bottom line that it's "more moral" to exclude some people. I don't take that view, personally, but it seems that it's on your court to explain this away, not mine.

Then again, you seem to also lay down a principle of anti-exclusion, so maybe that's your explanation. Is this a basic principle? Is it immutable? Does it have precendece against not being able to knowingly harm others?

Back to my view, which in this case was pragmatic. I was claiming that for many people, audio Captcha would be sufficient, and that for the rest, talking to support would get them assistance. Personally, I found audio Captcha less convenient than the visual one, but not excessively so, and believe that for blind people with good hearing, this would usually be acceptable. You thought otherwise. Pending some sort of data about success and satisfaction rates in general, I regard this point as moot. Now, for blind and deaf people (and for those who find Captcha difficult), my claim that LJ support is likely to provide satisfactory manual assistance, that is, have a brief exchange with them via email, and create an account for them. I appealed to good will, you said it was irrelevant. Do you still think so? Note that I didn't challenge a quantification or qualification by you of LJ's good will; I called you to make one.

I agree that Captcha to some extent, and manual support more so, are a bit like the storage room handicap access. Please clarify, though, what you would regard as "good enough" as an alternative to this. Is your demand total equality in access? Is it a prevalence of elevators, or an abolishment of staircases? Can you envision a spambot prevention scheme that *is* acceptable in terms of access?

Update 2004-11-12T23:04IST: minor editing