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I think your comments here and in the other thread are thoughtful and well-intentioned and are in general the right comments to make. However, I must admit tha

I think your comments here and in the other thread are thoughtful and well-intentioned and are in general the right comments to make. However, I must admit that the incidents where UC Berkeley and other universities removed public access to many thousands of hours of videos of online undergraduate lectures severely reduced the extent of my sympathy for accessibility advocates. It sounds like a no-brainer to be sympathetic to the needs of disabled minorities, but in fact I would suggest that if the community of accessibility advocates wants to be successful in their aims, then they need to absolutely avoid being associated with the intellectual vandalism we saw at UC Berkeley and elsewhere.

mwcampbell 9y ago
What Berkeley did with its lectures is not the fault of accessibility advocates. I'll just point you to this comment from a blind friend: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14580342 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14580342
- Myrmornis 9y ago
  I am not sure what you mean by "fault" but it was certainly the result of accessibility advocacy. I'm sorry but I disagree strongly with your blind friend. E.g. > this continuing trope of "OMG I didn't realize we needed to make our content accessible! Woe, woe are we!" passed through the realm of disingenuous and into that of pure bullshit a long, long time ago. They are just videos of a lecture. They can be put on the internet. EDIT: That sounds like I don't understand his point. I think I do: we've had decades to get used to the idea that content should/must be accessible, and of all institutions, a large public university should certainly be doing that now, in 2017. However, I just can't make myself accept it. They are just videos of a lecture. They can be put on the internet. Certainly they would be better if accessible, but once up it is vandalism to take them down.
  - mwcampbell 9y ago
    I think I understand why the outcome in this case frustrates you. Taking down the videos didn't do anyone any good, except that it was the easiest way out for Berkeley. Now, nobody has access to that information. So, one might argue that it's stupid that Berkeley was required by law to remove inaccessible content. But if that requirement wasn't there, the law would have no teeth, and other content wouldn't be made accessible. What we all wanted, of course, was for Berkeley to make the lectures accessible, not remove them. The fact that Berkeley removed them is Berkeley's fault, not ours. Your problem should be with Berkeley, not with us.
    - Myrmornis 9y ago
      I'm just going to be honest and admit that my instinct is that demanding accessibility is too high a barrier. I want to live in a world where a lecturer is about to start a lecture and someone in the class says "hey can I record this it would be cool for others to see" and the lecturer says "sure!" and the simple phone-captured video goes up on the internet for ever. Now if someone can make technology to make that accessible, post-hoc, awesome. And if someone can make it easy for the content to be born accessible, even better! But I do not agree with making accessibility required.
      - mwcampbell 9y ago
        I understand your opinion, but I think I must still disagree with it. I do think accessibility should be required, unless it's just not possible in some situation. And content should be, as you said, born accessible. And not just accessibility for blind people, of course. And here I have to be honest and admit that I haven't lived up to this ideal myself. Several months ago, I gave a presentation to a local Meetup group for software developers on making software accessible to blind people. It's on YouTube. But I haven't yet had it captioned so a deaf person can benefit from it. Nobody's coming after me with a lawsuit in hand. But now that I've thought of this, I should get that video captioned. Or maybe the presentation or lecture itself is an archaic way to share information. You can see it in the word "lecture". It comes from reading, as in reading out loud. But the people who attend today's lectures can read for themselves. Maybe the best way for content to be born accessible is just to stick to electronic text, that everyone can read in their own way and at their own pace.

mwcampbell 9y ago

What Berkeley did with its lectures is not the fault of accessibility advocates. I'll just point you to this comment from a blind friend: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14580342 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14580342

Myrmornis 9y ago
I am not sure what you mean by "fault" but it was certainly the result of accessibility advocacy. I'm sorry but I disagree strongly with your blind friend. E.g. > this continuing trope of "OMG I didn't realize we needed to make our content accessible! Woe, woe are we!" passed through the realm of disingenuous and into that of pure bullshit a long, long time ago. They are just videos of a lecture. They can be put on the internet. EDIT: That sounds like I don't understand his point. I think I do: we've had decades to get used to the idea that content should/must be accessible, and of all institutions, a large public university should certainly be doing that now, in 2017. However, I just can't make myself accept it. They are just videos of a lecture. They can be put on the internet. Certainly they would be better if accessible, but once up it is vandalism to take them down.
- mwcampbell 9y ago
  I think I understand why the outcome in this case frustrates you. Taking down the videos didn't do anyone any good, except that it was the easiest way out for Berkeley. Now, nobody has access to that information. So, one might argue that it's stupid that Berkeley was required by law to remove inaccessible content. But if that requirement wasn't there, the law would have no teeth, and other content wouldn't be made accessible. What we all wanted, of course, was for Berkeley to make the lectures accessible, not remove them. The fact that Berkeley removed them is Berkeley's fault, not ours. Your problem should be with Berkeley, not with us.
  - Myrmornis 9y ago
    I'm just going to be honest and admit that my instinct is that demanding accessibility is too high a barrier. I want to live in a world where a lecturer is about to start a lecture and someone in the class says "hey can I record this it would be cool for others to see" and the lecturer says "sure!" and the simple phone-captured video goes up on the internet for ever. Now if someone can make technology to make that accessible, post-hoc, awesome. And if someone can make it easy for the content to be born accessible, even better! But I do not agree with making accessibility required.
    - mwcampbell 9y ago
      I understand your opinion, but I think I must still disagree with it. I do think accessibility should be required, unless it's just not possible in some situation. And content should be, as you said, born accessible. And not just accessibility for blind people, of course. And here I have to be honest and admit that I haven't lived up to this ideal myself. Several months ago, I gave a presentation to a local Meetup group for software developers on making software accessible to blind people. It's on YouTube. But I haven't yet had it captioned so a deaf person can benefit from it. Nobody's coming after me with a lawsuit in hand. But now that I've thought of this, I should get that video captioned. Or maybe the presentation or lecture itself is an archaic way to share information. You can see it in the word "lecture". It comes from reading, as in reading out loud. But the people who attend today's lectures can read for themselves. Maybe the best way for content to be born accessible is just to stick to electronic text, that everyone can read in their own way and at their own pace.