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The issue was that people with disabilities across the country (i.e. non-Berkeley-students) were suing* Berkeley for not making their videos accessible. That's

The issue was that people with disabilities across the country (i.e. non-Berkeley-students) were suing* Berkeley for not making their videos accessible. That's why you can't have nice things unfortunately. See here: http://news.berkeley.edu/2016/09/13/a-statement-on-online-course-content-and-accessibility/ http://news.berkeley.edu/2016/09/13/a-statement-on-online-co... Lectures up to 2015 are still there though? Do you consider their materials obsolete or something? *Edit: Specifically, the Attorney General was threatening to file a lawsuit pursuant to the ADA, and damages were ordered to be paid (I don't know if they actually were). Follow the link above to find the Department of Justice letter; the interesting bits are on the last two pages.

0xFFC 10y ago
Yeah, I watched most of them already, But it is always better to have more and updated classes.
libeclipse 10y ago
What? So a lawsuit to allow more people access to knowledge resulted in no one having access to more of it. Damn, that's just.. I'm struggling to refrain from saying a word that'd get me in trouble.
- eru 10y ago
  You'd get symmetric situation if someone sues a biased employer who only hires gingers, and the guy decide to shut shop instead---don't you?
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - cousin_it 10y ago
    It would be symmetric if hiring gingers was cheaper, like making non-accessible videos.
  - Chris2048 10y ago
    Arbitrarily discriminating against gingers isn't the same as not doing extra work to make the videos more accessible. Further more, the right to run a business, and participate in a particular economy, is regulated in many ways - these videos were given away for free to everyone, possibly at cost. I don't think a free educational resource should have to meet this burden.
    - eru 10y ago
      I'm not sure whether it makes a difference, but in my example the biased employer was arbitrarily discriminating in favour of gingers.
      - Chris2048 10y ago
        Yes, I was suggesting your example was different to the situation in the article, or not relevant in the same way.
- tdkl 10y ago
  Yes, we live in a time where minorities tyrannize the rest.
  - yummyfajitas 10y ago
    Or at least lawyers purporting to represent minorities, who collect 30% of the payout while the minorities get a $20 gift card (or some similar token).
  - Yizahi 10y ago
    No. Minorities are still in worse situation than majority globally. And all so called "minority tyranny" is just a random malfunctioning of institutes usually directly involved in screwing minorities. E.g. some black woman successfully sued some white white male for racial/gender reasons and it was bad for common sense? That's because it was possible in the first place to do that, only previously it was done the other way. PS: I'm not a minority.
    - Chris2048 10y ago
      > Minorities are still in worse situation than majority globally The "group average" of a persons designated (prescribed?) demographic is irrelevant on the level of comparing individuals and their interactions. > only previously it was done the other way. Given it was different individuals, this is only true if you define groupings specifically to, say, match a racist white and a non-racist white, from different generations, simply because they are both white; Hence mistreatment of some innocent, random modern white can be interpreted as 'comeuppance'..
  - Chris2048 10y ago
    I'd pause to blame them, ultimately the law allows this stuff to happen.
- denzil_correa 10y ago
  > So a lawsuit to allow more people access to knowledge resulted in no one having access to more of it. There is a merit in the lawsuit here. This is how discrimination starts. Over a reasonable period of time, the horse has left the barn and then will scramble over quick fix solutions to stem the rot.
- lr4444lr 10y ago
  The doctrine of Disparate Impact is way out of control.
Mayzie 10y ago
> The issue was that people with disabilities across the country (i.e. non-Berkeley-students) were suing Berkeley for not making their videos disabled-friendly. What the f#$k? Suing because their videos are not "disabled-friendly"? What does that even mean? God, the lawsuit trigger-happiness of some people...
- wfunction 10y ago
  > Suing because their videos are not "disabled-friendly"? What does that even mean? Sorry, bad wording on my part (had other things on my mind and wasn't Englishing properly). Meant to say the content was not accessible; see edit.
  - emiliobumachar 10y ago
    Specifically, it means subtitled. So that deaf people can acess them.
- matt4077 10y ago
  > "disabled-friendly"? What does that even mean? I'd say lawsuits such these would be far fewer if people were at least aware of the existence of disabled people, and spend a modicum of attention on how to enable their participation in society. "video" being latin for "to see" may provide a clue as to the type of disability that could have trouble accessing this content. I'm not familiar enough with the subtleties of this case to know if subtitles, which IMHO could have been created rather cheaply or through volunteers, would have been enough to make them accessible, or there would have been problems with, for example, visual content such as diagrams and photos. In any way, I suspect the project was on weak footing within Berkeley anyway, and whatever support it may have had within the administration couldn't overcome the legal risks. It's rare to find an example where the outcome, in strictly utilitarian terms, is as clearly negative as it is in this case. However, the ADA and similar legislation will always be a net negative if you're evaluating it in those terms. To use the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act which has recently been in the news: guaranteeing disabled students equal access to public education is a losing proposition in terms of total utility. There will always be cases where a school needs to spend, say, $30,000 to make the new library accessible to people in wheelchairs, or may even decide not to build that library in the first place, because it doesn't have those $30,000. Without a doubt, spending the $30,000 on more books for that library would create more "total learning", even if means the few students in wheelchairs never even see a real book in their lifetime. There will even be cases where all this happens at school that don't even have any students in wheelchairs. The reasoning, therefore, has to be different than purely utilitarian. Laws for disability access are a collective decision to break with purely economic rationality in an effort that emphasises a limited core of rights to be guaranteed for everyone much stronger than the broad welfare of society as a whole. That's not an unusual tradeoff. It's the same that's at play when we don't torture drug dealers to get them to give up their suppliers. Note that there lots of reasonable exceptions on the books. Nobody is saying that your paragliding school needs to make accommodations for people in a persistent vegetative state. In this case, I'd argue that remote learning is an opportunity almost tailor-made for people with disabilities, and that whoever made this ill-fated decision at Berkeley – knowing how it will become a talking point against disability access – made a grave mistake.

0xFFC 10y ago

Yeah, I watched most of them already, But it is always better to have more and updated classes.

libeclipse 10y ago

What? So a lawsuit to allow more people access to knowledge resulted in no one having access to more of it. Damn, that's just.. I'm struggling to refrain from saying a word that'd get me in trouble.

eru 10y ago
You'd get symmetric situation if someone sues a biased employer who only hires gingers, and the guy decide to shut shop instead---don't you?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- cousin_it 10y ago
  It would be symmetric if hiring gingers was cheaper, like making non-accessible videos.
- Chris2048 10y ago
  Arbitrarily discriminating against gingers isn't the same as not doing extra work to make the videos more accessible. Further more, the right to run a business, and participate in a particular economy, is regulated in many ways - these videos were given away for free to everyone, possibly at cost. I don't think a free educational resource should have to meet this burden.
  - eru 10y ago
    I'm not sure whether it makes a difference, but in my example the biased employer was arbitrarily discriminating in favour of gingers.
    - Chris2048 10y ago
      Yes, I was suggesting your example was different to the situation in the article, or not relevant in the same way.
tdkl 10y ago
Yes, we live in a time where minorities tyrannize the rest.
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  Or at least lawyers purporting to represent minorities, who collect 30% of the payout while the minorities get a $20 gift card (or some similar token).
- Yizahi 10y ago
  No. Minorities are still in worse situation than majority globally. And all so called "minority tyranny" is just a random malfunctioning of institutes usually directly involved in screwing minorities. E.g. some black woman successfully sued some white white male for racial/gender reasons and it was bad for common sense? That's because it was possible in the first place to do that, only previously it was done the other way. PS: I'm not a minority.
  - Chris2048 10y ago
    > Minorities are still in worse situation than majority globally The "group average" of a persons designated (prescribed?) demographic is irrelevant on the level of comparing individuals and their interactions. > only previously it was done the other way. Given it was different individuals, this is only true if you define groupings specifically to, say, match a racist white and a non-racist white, from different generations, simply because they are both white; Hence mistreatment of some innocent, random modern white can be interpreted as 'comeuppance'..
- Chris2048 10y ago
  I'd pause to blame them, ultimately the law allows this stuff to happen.
denzil_correa 10y ago
> So a lawsuit to allow more people access to knowledge resulted in no one having access to more of it. There is a merit in the lawsuit here. This is how discrimination starts. Over a reasonable period of time, the horse has left the barn and then will scramble over quick fix solutions to stem the rot.
lr4444lr 10y ago
The doctrine of Disparate Impact is way out of control.

Mayzie 10y ago

> The issue was that people with disabilities across the country (i.e. non-Berkeley-students) were suing Berkeley for not making their videos disabled-friendly. What the f#$k? Suing because their videos are not "disabled-friendly"? What does that even mean? God, the lawsuit trigger-happiness of some people...

wfunction 10y ago
> Suing because their videos are not "disabled-friendly"? What does that even mean? Sorry, bad wording on my part (had other things on my mind and wasn't Englishing properly). Meant to say the content was not accessible; see edit.
- emiliobumachar 10y ago
  Specifically, it means subtitled. So that deaf people can acess them.
matt4077 10y ago
> "disabled-friendly"? What does that even mean? I'd say lawsuits such these would be far fewer if people were at least aware of the existence of disabled people, and spend a modicum of attention on how to enable their participation in society. "video" being latin for "to see" may provide a clue as to the type of disability that could have trouble accessing this content. I'm not familiar enough with the subtleties of this case to know if subtitles, which IMHO could have been created rather cheaply or through volunteers, would have been enough to make them accessible, or there would have been problems with, for example, visual content such as diagrams and photos. In any way, I suspect the project was on weak footing within Berkeley anyway, and whatever support it may have had within the administration couldn't overcome the legal risks. It's rare to find an example where the outcome, in strictly utilitarian terms, is as clearly negative as it is in this case. However, the ADA and similar legislation will always be a net negative if you're evaluating it in those terms. To use the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act which has recently been in the news: guaranteeing disabled students equal access to public education is a losing proposition in terms of total utility. There will always be cases where a school needs to spend, say, $30,000 to make the new library accessible to people in wheelchairs, or may even decide not to build that library in the first place, because it doesn't have those $30,000. Without a doubt, spending the $30,000 on more books for that library would create more "total learning", even if means the few students in wheelchairs never even see a real book in their lifetime. There will even be cases where all this happens at school that don't even have any students in wheelchairs. The reasoning, therefore, has to be different than purely utilitarian. Laws for disability access are a collective decision to break with purely economic rationality in an effort that emphasises a limited core of rights to be guaranteed for everyone much stronger than the broad welfare of society as a whole. That's not an unusual tradeoff. It's the same that's at play when we don't torture drug dealers to get them to give up their suppliers. Note that there lots of reasonable exceptions on the books. Nobody is saying that your paragliding school needs to make accommodations for people in a persistent vegetative state. In this case, I'd argue that remote learning is an opportunity almost tailor-made for people with disabilities, and that whoever made this ill-fated decision at Berkeley – knowing how it will become a talking point against disability access – made a grave mistake.