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You're arguing for a dichotomy that doesn't exist. I've heard excuses my entire life why accessibility laws are impossible and costly to apply. Meanwhile most

You're arguing for a dichotomy that doesn't exist. I've heard excuses my entire life why accessibility laws are impossible and costly to apply. Meanwhile most infractions I see are egregious, easy to fix, and not punished. With Covid we changed our entire lifestyle, we modified facilities with plastic screens, markers on the floors, instituted work from home, all of this practically overnight. Meanwhile all over the western world you've got decades-long ongoing lawsuits to make the most basic of accessibility accommodations available. In addition to that every public space, physical or digital, is made and thought through according to very specific accessibility requirements: the normal range of human abilities. In the majority of cases it's not anymore complicated to make a website accessible for the people who sit slightly out of that range. Open your website, put a blindfold on, install a screenreader and go through it. Next put on earplugs and do the same thing, next tie your arm behind your back and do the same thing. It sounds silly but it'll take two hours max and the issues will be self-evident. Don't tell me the guy who has been at it for 15 years didn't have time to do this, and don't tell me he gives a crap if he didn't. He didn't give a crap then and he doesn't give a crap now. I'm sure he put plenty of thought into making his website responsive so it's accessible to mobile users but you don't see him complaining about that.

coryrc 4y ago
> You're arguing for a dichotomy that doesn't exist. It literally exists: https://reason.com/2017/03/07/berkeley-deletes-200000-free-online-vide/ https://reason.com/2017/03/07/berkeley-deletes-200000-free-o...
- ad404b8a372f2b9 4y ago
  Not a dichotomy, the third option of making your website accessible is right there within their reach. Them putting their hands up and saying "guess we'll do nothing" is not evidence that they couldn't have. I could have done that with two interns over a summer in 2017, I've done much larger labeling projects with fewer resources. Had they even thought about accessibility before being called on it, they could even have done it over time as they were recording the videos, surely they put resources into that.
  - BitwiseFool 4y ago
    >"they could even have done it over time as they were recording the videos, surely they put resources into that." If a professor is lecturing a class that has no disabled students in it, does it really make sense to hire someone to sign or transcribe the lecture on the off chance someone disabled in the future who isn't even enrolled will want to watch it for free online? I can totally understand requiring the university to accommodate students who are currently enrolled with disabilities. But it doesn't seem right to mandate this for every individual lecture that has been recorded.
    - ad404b8a372f2b9 4y ago
      Does it make sense to build a ramp in a building which has currently no wheelchair-bound residents? There is a reason access to higher-ed is so difficult for the disabled. You don't need to hire someone to transcribe a lecture, you can push it through a speech to text algorithm and ask one of your 300 students to volunteer to make the few corrections necessary with a minimum amount of work. And this is the forethought you have when you care about these things. If you don't you can do the harder version where you hire a couple interns to do it afterward. It's not an insurmountable task either way.
      - BitwiseFool 4y ago
        I don't believe the ramp comparison is appropriate because physical accommodations are concrete and long lasting whereas access accommodation on things like recordings and lectures require specialized work on every single instance. As for your "There is a reason access to higher-ed is so difficult for the disabled" point, I fully endorse the requirement that the university has to accommodate disabled students. But my expectation is that they accommodate actively enrolled students and if any disabled student wants to access some archived content they provide resources to do so. But I don't expect them to make the entire archive accessible on-demand for people online. Presumably the UC System considered text-to-speech transcription. I assume that for some reason it would have been deemed inadequate or unacceptable to the people who brought the suit against them. You've mentioned having interns and volunteers do this, which, yes, they could, but it also implies that this work is indeed expensive. I'm also unsure if there is a certain level of quality or detail that is expected in order for it to be considered sufficiently accessible. Even if we generously assume a 1:2 ratio on the length of content vs the time to transcribe, edit, and verify, they would still be looking at something like 40,000 person hours. (~20,000 lectures, assuming 2 hour classes).
- punyearthling 4y ago
  I've seen this link posted at least 4 times on this post as evidence of some kinda excessive ADA overreach. If it's this pervasive, there'd be more recent examples than a site purporting "Free minds. Free markets." from 2017.

coryrc 4y ago

> You're arguing for a dichotomy that doesn't exist. It literally exists: https://reason.com/2017/03/07/berkeley-deletes-200000-free-online-vide/ https://reason.com/2017/03/07/berkeley-deletes-200000-free-o...

ad404b8a372f2b9 4y ago
Not a dichotomy, the third option of making your website accessible is right there within their reach. Them putting their hands up and saying "guess we'll do nothing" is not evidence that they couldn't have. I could have done that with two interns over a summer in 2017, I've done much larger labeling projects with fewer resources. Had they even thought about accessibility before being called on it, they could even have done it over time as they were recording the videos, surely they put resources into that.
- BitwiseFool 4y ago
  >"they could even have done it over time as they were recording the videos, surely they put resources into that." If a professor is lecturing a class that has no disabled students in it, does it really make sense to hire someone to sign or transcribe the lecture on the off chance someone disabled in the future who isn't even enrolled will want to watch it for free online? I can totally understand requiring the university to accommodate students who are currently enrolled with disabilities. But it doesn't seem right to mandate this for every individual lecture that has been recorded.
  - ad404b8a372f2b9 4y ago
    Does it make sense to build a ramp in a building which has currently no wheelchair-bound residents? There is a reason access to higher-ed is so difficult for the disabled. You don't need to hire someone to transcribe a lecture, you can push it through a speech to text algorithm and ask one of your 300 students to volunteer to make the few corrections necessary with a minimum amount of work. And this is the forethought you have when you care about these things. If you don't you can do the harder version where you hire a couple interns to do it afterward. It's not an insurmountable task either way.
    - BitwiseFool 4y ago
      I don't believe the ramp comparison is appropriate because physical accommodations are concrete and long lasting whereas access accommodation on things like recordings and lectures require specialized work on every single instance. As for your "There is a reason access to higher-ed is so difficult for the disabled" point, I fully endorse the requirement that the university has to accommodate disabled students. But my expectation is that they accommodate actively enrolled students and if any disabled student wants to access some archived content they provide resources to do so. But I don't expect them to make the entire archive accessible on-demand for people online. Presumably the UC System considered text-to-speech transcription. I assume that for some reason it would have been deemed inadequate or unacceptable to the people who brought the suit against them. You've mentioned having interns and volunteers do this, which, yes, they could, but it also implies that this work is indeed expensive. I'm also unsure if there is a certain level of quality or detail that is expected in order for it to be considered sufficiently accessible. Even if we generously assume a 1:2 ratio on the length of content vs the time to transcribe, edit, and verify, they would still be looking at something like 40,000 person hours. (~20,000 lectures, assuming 2 hour classes).
punyearthling 4y ago
I've seen this link posted at least 4 times on this post as evidence of some kinda excessive ADA overreach. If it's this pervasive, there'd be more recent examples than a site purporting "Free minds. Free markets." from 2017.