5 ms·

> No, this is a public institution using public funds to create a public resource... which it then only makes accessible to a subset of the public. I thought a

by NhanH 10y ago

> No, this is a public institution using public funds to create a public resource... which it then only makes accessible to a subset of the public. I thought about this, and I'm actually not sure what to think. As UCB made clear that the alternative would be to take those resources down, making it completely unavailable to the public. Do we just consider this an acceptable collateral damage from the ADA?

mhurron 10y ago
So holding something some people would find valuable is an acceptable way to bypass the law? UCB has another alternative, use those public funds they take to make the course material accessible. They don't want to do that because that takes money away from them. Taking down the material is not the only alternative, it's just the only alternative they're willing to take because it's cheap.
- Rylinks 10y ago
  >They don't want to do that because that takes money away from them. It takes money away from the enrolled students that UCB is currently spending money on.
  - AndrewD_ 10y ago
    If anyone wants the numbers, tuition is 28% of the budget and state funds are 14% of the budget. http://cfo.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/2013-14%20UC%20Berkeley%20Budget%20Plan%20-%20Final%20%289-5-13%29.pdf http://cfo.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/2013-14%20UC%20B...
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
cortesoft 10y ago
For one, they haven't made it clear that they need to take them down; they said they are going to do whatever they can first, but leave open the possibility that they will be unable to meet the regulations and would need to remove the content. I understand your argument, but if you only have to say "I can't afford to support disabled people!" in order to not have to be in compliance with the ADA, then the ADA becomes meaningless. The answer of "we can't afford it" is always about priorities. They could choose to spend money spent on other things to make this content accessible; it isn't like they are spending their entire school budget on this. It is ALWAYS going to be cheaper to NOT provide accessible content, so this argument could happen in every single instance. The resources spent making content accessible could always be spent on making more stuff for non-disabled access. However, as a society we have decided, no, it is unfair to choose not to spend those resources on accessibility,so we mandate it, because we know a pure utilitarian action will leave disabled people always getting the short end of the stick. Yes, this means that non-disabled people will lose out on some stuff (and maybe this content is one of those things). That is a price we as a society have decided to pay, and I think it is a worthy one. Think about it; the same goes for handicapped ramps and the like. If businesses didn't need to pay for those, they could use the money on other stuff. Prices would go down. So yes, we all have to pay a little more so everyone can enjoy the same access (or at least a certain level of access)
- crazy2be 10y ago
  While your comparison to wheelchair ramps seems analogous, it in fact has a significant flaw. Wheelchair ramps cost the business almost nothing to build relative to the cost of operating the business. The tax for these sort of physical accommodations is almost certainly less than 1%, which nearly everyone would consider acceptable. In the case of captioning the videos, the captioning costs several times more than putting up the videos in the first place. Probably on the order of 100x more. A lot of these lecture videos are just someone with a camera recording the lecture live, someone who would be there, watching the lecture, regardless. They do some trivial editing / splicing, and upload to YouTube. This is essentially free, other than having the professor/school sign off on them doing it. Once the ADA gets involved, you now have to caption the video while watching, or after the fact, something you likely would not have done otherwise. You probably also have to submit it to some authority in the university now (don't want to get sued!), who will have to rewatch the video and verify the captions. In the old system, it took you less than 5 minutes of inconvenience per lecture to upload them. In the new system, it takes you 2 x len(lecture) => 120 minutes or so, per lecture. This is a huge tax in relative terms.
  - bonaldi 10y ago
    > In the case of captioning the videos, the captioning costs several times more than putting up the videos in the first place. Probably on the order of 100x more Automatic caption creation is coming on in leaps, well beyond what YouTube is achieving already. The quality is startlingly good in some cases, certainly good enough to allow a (crowd-sourced) editing pass. The cost is nothing, nothing like 100x. Hell, the BBC has a project that will automatically translate content into other languages [0], and they have that publishing to a live site without editorial intervention. If the will is there, these things are eminently possible. The ADA is trying to make sure the will is there. [0] http://bbcnewslabs.co.uk/projects/alto/ http://bbcnewslabs.co.uk/projects/alto/

by NhanH 10y ago

mhurron 10y ago

So holding something some people would find valuable is an acceptable way to bypass the law? UCB has another alternative, use those public funds they take to make the course material accessible. They don't want to do that because that takes money away from them. Taking down the material is not the only alternative, it's just the only alternative they're willing to take because it's cheap.

Rylinks 10y ago
>They don't want to do that because that takes money away from them. It takes money away from the enrolled students that UCB is currently spending money on.
- AndrewD_ 10y ago
  If anyone wants the numbers, tuition is 28% of the budget and state funds are 14% of the budget. http://cfo.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/2013-14%20UC%20Berkeley%20Budget%20Plan%20-%20Final%20%289-5-13%29.pdf http://cfo.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/2013-14%20UC%20B...

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

cortesoft 10y ago

For one, they haven't made it clear that they need to take them down; they said they are going to do whatever they can first, but leave open the possibility that they will be unable to meet the regulations and would need to remove the content. I understand your argument, but if you only have to say "I can't afford to support disabled people!" in order to not have to be in compliance with the ADA, then the ADA becomes meaningless. The answer of "we can't afford it" is always about priorities. They could choose to spend money spent on other things to make this content accessible; it isn't like they are spending their entire school budget on this. It is ALWAYS going to be cheaper to NOT provide accessible content, so this argument could happen in every single instance. The resources spent making content accessible could always be spent on making more stuff for non-disabled access. However, as a society we have decided, no, it is unfair to choose not to spend those resources on accessibility,so we mandate it, because we know a pure utilitarian action will leave disabled people always getting the short end of the stick. Yes, this means that non-disabled people will lose out on some stuff (and maybe this content is one of those things). That is a price we as a society have decided to pay, and I think it is a worthy one. Think about it; the same goes for handicapped ramps and the like. If businesses didn't need to pay for those, they could use the money on other stuff. Prices would go down. So yes, we all have to pay a little more so everyone can enjoy the same access (or at least a certain level of access)

crazy2be 10y ago
While your comparison to wheelchair ramps seems analogous, it in fact has a significant flaw. Wheelchair ramps cost the business almost nothing to build relative to the cost of operating the business. The tax for these sort of physical accommodations is almost certainly less than 1%, which nearly everyone would consider acceptable. In the case of captioning the videos, the captioning costs several times more than putting up the videos in the first place. Probably on the order of 100x more. A lot of these lecture videos are just someone with a camera recording the lecture live, someone who would be there, watching the lecture, regardless. They do some trivial editing / splicing, and upload to YouTube. This is essentially free, other than having the professor/school sign off on them doing it. Once the ADA gets involved, you now have to caption the video while watching, or after the fact, something you likely would not have done otherwise. You probably also have to submit it to some authority in the university now (don't want to get sued!), who will have to rewatch the video and verify the captions. In the old system, it took you less than 5 minutes of inconvenience per lecture to upload them. In the new system, it takes you 2 x len(lecture) => 120 minutes or so, per lecture. This is a huge tax in relative terms.
- bonaldi 10y ago
  > In the case of captioning the videos, the captioning costs several times more than putting up the videos in the first place. Probably on the order of 100x more Automatic caption creation is coming on in leaps, well beyond what YouTube is achieving already. The quality is startlingly good in some cases, certainly good enough to allow a (crowd-sourced) editing pass. The cost is nothing, nothing like 100x. Hell, the BBC has a project that will automatically translate content into other languages [0], and they have that publishing to a live site without editorial intervention. If the will is there, these things are eminently possible. The ADA is trying to make sure the will is there. [0] http://bbcnewslabs.co.uk/projects/alto/ http://bbcnewslabs.co.uk/projects/alto/