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I don't like this type of precedent. If I make a video wherein I teach some concept, but don't provide closed captions, and then distribute the video for free,
by jdreaver 12y ago
I don't like this type of precedent.
If I make a video wherein I teach some concept, but don't provide closed captions, and then distribute the video for free, am I discriminating against the deaf? If I knew I had to create closed captions, and then make a braille transcript, or maybe even make my video colorblind friendly, I just wouldn't make the video in the first place. I sympathize with folks with disabilities, and I applaud those who go the extra mile to accommodate them, but making it mandatory under the law seems ridiculous to me.
- chrisabrams 12y agoI share a similar viewpoint. Wouldn't it be a better usage of funds to donate to these projects for caption support instead of using those funds to pay attorneys? Why is it so hard to be constructive?
- jdreaver 12y agoAgreed. Really, I do applaud people going out of their way to accommodate others. If I had just one personal, direct request to create closed captions along with a "please," you bet I would try to help someone out. But making it illegal not to do so puts a sour taste in my mouth.
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- harperlee 12y agoTo play devil's advocate, if you fund the captioning, fewer people will do it for free. But yes, the current option is distasteful.
- chc 12y ago> To play devil's advocate, if you fund the captioning, fewer people will do it for free. Not necessarily. They still aren't obligated to close-caption any materials for free — they just have to not provide any materials.
- sp332 12y agoDeaf people aren't a charity case. The content needs to be accessible from the beginning, not as an afterthought.
- Someone1234 12y agoThat's a confusing sentiment. So deaf people shouldn't be given something for free, but they should get something for free "from the beginning?" Which is it?
- sp332 12y agoThe communication needs to be made accessible by the person or group who produces it. Not by some outside organization that goes around cleaning up other people's accessibility messes.
- Someone1234 12y agoFair enough. So you're saying that deaf people ARE a charity case, you just want them to be a charity case for the original content producer rather than a third party?
- sp332 12y agoYeah, that could have been clearer. Deaf people are 100% as deserving of this content as non-deaf people. They should not be treated as a separate group. Captions are a required part of the distribution, not an optional add-on. There is not "the real message" and then "the message for deaf people".
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- ars 12y agoSo would you rather they don't distribute it at all, if they can't (or won't) caption it? (Not a rhetorical question, I'm actually asking you.) Keep in mind that these are recordings of a professor talking - there is no script, no captions exist already. The choice is paying for captioning, or not releasing at all. If they are unwilling to pay, which should, in your opinion, they pick: Not release, or release without captions?
- Agustus 12y agoThen how would the attorneys keep their job and fund their lavish lifestyle?
- dougabug 12y agoNo good deed goes unpunished... This just makes it that much more likely that institutions will hesitate before offering free access to materials online.
- hga 12y agoBased on the breath of the demands per http://nad.org/news/2015/2/nad-sues-harvard-and-mit-discrimination-public-online-content http://nad.org/news/2015/2/nad-sues-harvard-and-mit-discrimi... it sounds like just about anything that's vaguely formal, way beyond instructional video and audio. And since they highlight quality problems, albeit bad ones but of mostly silly/very limited utility content.... Nothing good will come of this. Disclaimer, I'm MIT Class of '83, donate to OCW, and am beyond annoyed.
- pstrateman 12y agoIt appears that they're at least partially misunderstanding where the captains on youtube videos come from.... they're entirely automated voice recognition.
- hga 12y agoAaah. But if those are official university Youtube "channels" or whatever they're called as they appear to be, does that matter? Doesn't matter if "MIT goes dark" if the servers are Google's or MIT's.
- jasonwocky 12y ago> This just makes it that much more likely that institutions will hesitate before offering free access to materials online. No, it doesn't "just" do that.
- sp332 12y agoYes, of course that is discrimination. But it's only illegal in certain circumstances.
- harperlee 12y agoWell, I don't agree [1]. Neither does Wikipedia: "Discrimination is action that denies social participation or human rights to categories of people based on prejudice." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrimination) Note the prejudice part. [1] Not in this context; of course a visual communication discriminates among those who can and can not receive it, but what prejudice is there in just recording yourself talking?
- vonmoltke 12y agoThe wiki article then contradicts itself right in the next paragraph: Not all discrimination is based on prejudice, however.
- sp332 12y agoWell it's wrong. Wikipedia's source for that definition is listed as https://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/discrimination https://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/discri... but it says: "The unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people, especially on the grounds of race, age, or sex."
- erok 12y agoI agree. There goes free online courses from MIT and Harvard due to the impending legal fees implied. Thank you National Association of the Deaf.
- fps 12y agoOn EdX.org, where Harvard and MIT put many online courses for free, all course videos already are professionally captioned and accessible. The cited videos in the lawsuit aren't even course videos, they're promotional videos or streaming versions of conferences. Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, President Obama and Lady Gaga visiting campus for an event. - see http://creeclaw.org/online-content-lawsuit-harvard-mit/ http://creeclaw.org/online-content-lawsuit-harvard-mit/
- erok 12y agoThis will just change all of it though.
- fnordfnordfnord 12y agoMost of these videos are already being captioned. What's needed in large part is just higher quality captions. Nobody is shutting anything down for the mere lack of a better captioning system.
- Sanddancer 12y agoWhich means you'll have just as much access to the knowledge as deaf people. Accessibility should never be an add-on.
- Retra 12y agoYou have a good point, but I would point out that deaf people watching a silent un-captioned video is more access to knowledge than watching no video at all.
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- psychometry 12y agoThe article doesn't specify who is suing them, whether it's a MOOC user or an enrolled student, and what lectures they're suing over. There's a big difference between a MOOC lecture lacking captions and required online lecture for an undergraduate course lacking caption.
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- lovelearning 12y agoAll public online videos published by Harvard and MIT, including such gems as "video of students welcoming Lady Gaga to the Harvard campus". [1]: http://nad.org/news/2015/2/nad-sues-harvard-and-mit-discrimination-public-online-content http://nad.org/news/2015/2/nad-sues-harvard-and-mit-discrimi...
- rtkwe 12y agoIt sounds like it's talking about their MOOC offerings but it very ambiguous and could really be either.
- extra88 12y agoNone of the plaintiffs are enrolled students, the suit is only about videos offered for free to the public. Enrolled students with disabilities (not just in degree programs but also those in single continuing ed. courses) do receive accommodations like captioning for course videos.
- notadocta 12y agoI agree. Perhaps someone should step in and make the closed captions, braille transcript -- a third party. This is why we can't have nice things.
- libria 12y agoI generally agree with you, but the counter argument would be something like, If you opened a soup kitchen downtown to provide food for the homeless, should you be required to install accessibility facilities (ramps, elevator, bathroom, etc.)? I know the law says yes, but is it what we want? Have the extra building codes discouraged potential altruists? I wonder if there's a government subsidy for that part of it, and if so could a similar provision be allowed for educational institutions opening their courseware.
- Agustus 12y agoAbsolutely, people will not buy / old buildings in buildings older than ADA passage date because there is so much money that needs to be spent to retrofit it to code. Building a new building is cheaper long term, but how can you start a soup kitchen to gauge demand.
- handojin 12y agoThe standard is reasonable accommodation. Having someone walk the soup to people unable to climb the steps might perhaps constitute reasonable accommodation and not be an undue burden on the soup kitchen (which we'll assume for the sake of argument to be the recipient of a federal grant). The law is not as black and white as you make it out to be.
- ProAm 12y agoIs this because they offer certification or degrees through these programs? I think you create something on your own with no measurable achievement it wouldn't matter. That's the only reason I can see this being a suit.
- 6stringmerc 12y agoWhen it comes to individual works, I don't see how this would have any bearing on your product. You're not beholden to the ADA in your creative works, from what I understand. Double the exemption for making something for free. It's the institutionalization of education that is being called out here, in that Harvard et al receive compensation (advertisement is a form of compensation - see: radio airplay) for these products and do not maintain quality standards respective of existing laws. No musician has to include a print out of their lyrics in the liner notes, it's a completely voluntary transaction without stipulation of such ADA compliance, in that the terms of the relationship are different than this case where Harvard is a 'service provider' of sorts (the service being the transmission of knowledge). This is different than the occasional lawsuit trolling where a person in a wheelchair finds small businesses not in compliance with the ADA and brings a case...this is...well, an educational institution with the resources and capability for compliance, but they aren't complying. Seems pretty workable from a high-level standpoint to me.
- jdreaver 12y agoI understand that the law may not strictly apply to me. I am making a statement on the principle of the situation. I don't think MIT or Harvard should be forced to provide captions for their videos either.
- 6stringmerc 12y agoWell, I think you're misapplying your principle in this instance. I think Harvard or MIT should have to provide captions in the spirit of the law that exists. It's not like the ADA was passed last year, so to think that the physical Harvard/MIT facilities would be ADA compliant but online facilities would not strikes me as a necessary coming to grips with the law as it's written. Hence the lawyers will fight this out and we'll probably get an answer.
- fennecfoxen 12y agoFor the purposes of armchair moralizing, who cares about the law as written? Pretend we're making the law, instead of deferring to the law as written. Should we in fact tell them "it is illegal for you to put out this material to benefit much of humanity, without also expending additional effort to benefit the deaf part of humanity?"
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- kryptiskt 12y agoA precedent that big institutions aren't allowed to shut out disabled people? Sounds like a pretty reasonable precedent to me.
- hullo 12y agoWow to the downvotes on this. Leaving aside their toxic personal politics, they don't even know how to use the site. (This one can be correctly downvoted as meta)
- kryptiskt 12y agoI don't mind the downvotes really, it's kinda interesting to see how the wind blows. But damn, must it be frustrating to be deaf and see how how little thought goes in that direction, compared to the tears shed for Harvard ($32B endowment 2013) and MIT ($11B endowment 2013).
- icebraining 12y agoNot everyone stands by the side they consider more sympathetic; some people actually try to be impartial and apply judgment based on their principles, whether they benefit a big institution or a poor person. That doesn't mean we must agree with those principles, of course.
- bphogan 12y agoOnce you learn how to do these things, they become second nature. That's the problem though. People don't think twice about learning a new programming language. But learning how to caption videos, choose colorblind friendly colors, or turn transcripts of a video into something that's braile-display or screen-reader friendly are skills that are relatively simple to acquire and will definitely outlast whatever new framework comes out this year. I am visually impaired. And I have been helping people make the web accessible since 2001. If you plan it from the beginning, it's only a few extra yards, not an extra mile.
- wyager 12y agoIt's not a matter of "thinking about it"; captioning is difficult and expensive, and if we force universities to caption educational materials they release * for free *, we're incentivizing them to never release these materials again.
- bphogan 12y agoHN is a community where people solve difficult problems for a living. So someone using "difficult" as a reason for something doesn't really fly with me. As for expensive? I'll agree. Going cost is about $1 per minute minimum. And they're not releasing that material "for free." Make no mistake - it's either because they got a grant (that's what we face) or part of some marketing thing. I apologize if it sounds like I'm frustrated and angry, but I run into all sorts of inaccessible things created for the web by people who use "difficult and expensive" as the go-to excuse. If you are preparing a video for something online, you should be planning it and writing a script, which you can easily turn into a transcript. If it's a lecture recording, well, workstudy students can transcribe it for you and caption it. These are all things responsible educators do. Proudly.
- wyager 12y ago>If you are preparing a video for something online, you should be planning it and writing a script, which you can easily turn into a transcript. Please don't presume to tell content providers how they should produce content, or presume to tell them that a part of the process is easy. That's not up to you to decide for anyone but yourself. >These are all things responsible educators do. Proudly. Nice; insult the awesome folks over at MIT and Harvard who are giving us this material for free because they are "not responsible". I'd be a hell of a lot more proud releasing content that happens to be inaccessible to deaf people than never releasing anything at all because I'm afraid of getting sued under the ADA.
- mc32 12y agoI can see the requirement for actually matriculated students. (I wonder if they have to provide ASL signers in-class for deaf students and braille books for the blind.) What I don't see is a requirement for free courses. That would be ridiculous. Why would anyone want to make anything available if someone is going to come around and sue? Instead of suing, why not start a project to automatically CC the videos, something like audio-recaptcha?
- lucaspiller 12y agoYouTube will already automatically transcribe and add subtitles to some videos, I can't comment on the quality though: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/3038280?hl=en-GB https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/3038280?hl=en-GB
- mc32 12y agoYes, this is exactly the thing they should pursue. This antagonistic tactic is disheartening. I mean, WTF, yes, contribute and provide CC, fansubs, whatever, but this kind of sue-happiness is a total turn-off. Persuade people to help you, don't force people to help you, you'll get better results.
- hga 12y agoBut it appears the people suing most certainly can comment on the quality http://nad.org/news/2015/2/nad-sues-harvard-and-mit-discrimination-public-online-content http://nad.org/news/2015/2/nad-sues-harvard-and-mit-discrimi... They find it unacceptable (which in the cherry picked examples is unarguable), and have made that a very significant part of their PR campaign.
- ToastyMallows 12y agoAs a graduate from RIT, colleges definitely provide ASL interpreters in class for Deaf students.
- extra88 12y agoThe suit is not about access for students enrolled in Harvard or MIT college credit courses, they do indeed have accommodations: ASL interpreters, CART service (a person, similar to a court stenographer, types what's said where the student can read it), digitized text for the vision impaired, etc. Printing Braille is slow and the output cumbersome so providing digital text that can be read by text to speech software or displayed on a refreshable Braille display are much more common.