4 ms·

One thing I don't understand, maybe because I'm hearing, but how is the UC Berkeley YouTube not accessible to deaf people? Doesn't YouTube have a CC feature des

One thing I don't understand, maybe because I'm hearing, but how is the UC Berkeley YouTube not accessible to deaf people? Doesn't YouTube have a CC feature designed to make videos accessible for the hearing impaired or just so hearing people can watch them with the sound off? Is the suit because the lectures don't have a sign language translation for every single lecture?

mulmen 10y ago
This was discussed in previous threads, Youtube captioning is not (yet) good enough to meet the courts standard.
niij 10y ago
Auto-generated captions are nearly useless for more technical topics. No one is advocating for sign language translation, but to comply with the ADA they would need to be manually Closed Captioned. 20,000 videos would be prohibitively expensive to pay for people to caption these, so they decided to take them down instead. I think it's a shame, but if they had just captioned them as they released them, it wouldn't have been such a burden to do all 20,000 at once.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
DanBC 10y ago
It's not just deaf people. It's people with hearing impairment, or with visual impairment, or with manual disability. The complainants in this case were people with hearing impairment, but the DoJ expanded the scope. You're right that YT can auto-caption some video. The DoJ looked at the accuracy of a selection of video, and found it was rather low. That inaccuracy, coupled with the lack of reasonable adjustments for people with visual impairment or manual disability means that YTs auto-captioning isn't enough to make a video accessible.
- NathanKP 10y ago
  Okay that makes sense, sounds like someone at UC Berkley took a risk thinking that auto captioning would be enough but it isn't good enough yet. I hope the auto captions improve over time. I feel like Facebook auto captions are already really, really good. If YouTube can reach that level of auto captioning it would benefit a lot of people.
detaro 10y ago
> Doesn't YouTube have a CC feature designed to make videos accessible for the hearing impaired or just so hearing people can watch them with the sound off? From a previous discussion, they are not of good enough quality: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13769549 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13769549

mulmen 10y ago

This was discussed in previous threads, Youtube captioning is not (yet) good enough to meet the courts standard.

niij 10y ago

Auto-generated captions are nearly useless for more technical topics. No one is advocating for sign language translation, but to comply with the ADA they would need to be manually Closed Captioned. 20,000 videos would be prohibitively expensive to pay for people to caption these, so they decided to take them down instead. I think it's a shame, but if they had just captioned them as they released them, it wouldn't have been such a burden to do all 20,000 at once.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

DanBC 10y ago

It's not just deaf people. It's people with hearing impairment, or with visual impairment, or with manual disability. The complainants in this case were people with hearing impairment, but the DoJ expanded the scope. You're right that YT can auto-caption some video. The DoJ looked at the accuracy of a selection of video, and found it was rather low. That inaccuracy, coupled with the lack of reasonable adjustments for people with visual impairment or manual disability means that YTs auto-captioning isn't enough to make a video accessible.

NathanKP 10y ago
Okay that makes sense, sounds like someone at UC Berkley took a risk thinking that auto captioning would be enough but it isn't good enough yet. I hope the auto captions improve over time. I feel like Facebook auto captions are already really, really good. If YouTube can reach that level of auto captioning it would benefit a lot of people.

detaro 10y ago

> Doesn't YouTube have a CC feature designed to make videos accessible for the hearing impaired or just so hearing people can watch them with the sound off? From a previous discussion, they are not of good enough quality: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13769549 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13769549