4 ms·

Everybody chill out, it's just a lawsuit. Four Americans disagree with how Harvard and M.I.T. are interpreting the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, and so

Everybody chill out, it's just a lawsuit. Four Americans disagree with how Harvard and M.I.T. are interpreting the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, and so they're asking the courts to help out with the disagreement. I doubt anybody here will disagree with Americans being able to use their courts to redress perceived injustices. As to the ultimate outcome, I'm calling it: Either DOJ will clarify the rules so that captions are required, or the schools will settle the lawsuit by agreeing that captions are required, or the courts will decide that captions are required. And then 30 years from now, at least one person in this thread will have lost their hearing but will click open and watch a captioned M.I.T. or Harvard video without even thinking about how much they railed against that one article on HN back in 2015.

hga 12y ago
Read this mendacious, invidious PR thuggery 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... and tell me again it's "just a lawsuit". And as has been amply pointed out, in the case of any of the outcomes you're calling, a great deal of material will be withdrawn from the net (or campus servers and official Youtube channels), little will be returned, at least from MIT, which doesn't have the money (well, absent a big fundraising campaign, which would crowd out other things), and perhaps most importantly, it will have a serious chilling effect on future offerings, since they will have to be vetted for not just captioning, but sufficient quality captioning, "by legal". MIT students, at least, have better things to do with their time. And 3 years from now, let along 30, at least one person will click on a "see the video" link and get a 404. And you severely underestimate people's memories, and ability to hold grudges.
- psychometry 12y ago
  Some details on the NAD vs. Netflix case: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/10/netflix-settles-with-deaf-rights-group-agrees-to-caption-all-videos-by-2014/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/10/netflix-settles-w...
- hudibras 12y ago
  I guess I'm missing some nuances you're seeing in that press release, but it seems pretty innocuous. Certainly don't see any evidence of those thugs you mention, just some people concerned about deaf Americans not having their civil rights protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act. And I'll take that bet: In 3 years, every video on the Harvard and M.I.T. websites will be captioned.
  - hga 12y ago
    You can only take my bet (and I used 3 years for symmetry, make it more like 1-8), if you take the whole thing, which includes there being precious few of those nicely captioned videos on MIT websites and Youtube channels. But, yeah, every video you will be able find on an accessible to the outside of MIT website will be perfect. Yea! BTW, MIT has rather nicely developed fine grained control over what can and can't be seen by outsiders, all this sort of thing developed for Project Athena starting back in the '80s.
    - handojin 12y ago
      I will take that bet, if you explain the odds you are offering.
- burkaman 12y ago
  Well, I had to look up mendacious and invidious, but I believe you're claiming they're lying to provoke an angry reaction. It seemed pretty straightforward to me; they present the lawsuit, explain their interpretation of the law, explain the goals of the suit, and demonstrate why the current captioning system is insufficient. The only line I had any kind of problem with was "No captions is like no ramp for people in wheelchairs or signs stating ‘people with disabilities are not welcome.’" I do think that's hyperbolic, but I understand the idea that these schools were given the resources to "build a ramp" and just decided not to. Regardless, it's not "thuggery", it's just a point of view I disagree with. Where are the lies?
  - hga 12y ago
    And I had to look them up to make sure I'd remembered their meanings correctly. The Big Lie, if what everyone is saying about Harvard and MIT's joint edX project properly handling their courses correctly is true, is confounding that with MIT Open CourseWare (OCW) "best effort" offerings which we've had the deaf "aldordeah" helpfully confirm: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9042399 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9042399 (OCW's remit was to publish materials useful to other teachers, with things like self-learning gravy). Things like, from their PR: “Online content represents the next frontier for learning and lifelong education,” said Howard A. Rosenblum, NAD’s CEO. “Yet both Harvard and MIT betray their legendary leadership in quality education by denying access to approximately 48 million Americans who are deaf or hard of hearing. All they have to do is provide accurate captioning to such online educational content, yet they provide no or inaccurate captioning which is contrary to these schools’ ideals of excellence and service to all.” "Betray" is a very strong word, just the sort of thing to provoke an angry reaction. Then there's the fact that they don't actually call out any specific online courses for not having captioning (which unless OCW has been spending a lot of their money in their new mode on this should have been trivial), but stuff of much less importance, of course leading with a discussion of the holy Brown v. Board of Education, as well as e.g. Bill Gates and Chomsky talking. Then there's the criticism of the quality of what appears to be Youtube auto-captioning of videos of nothingburger Lady Gaga and Obama visits placed on official Harvard and MIT Youtube channels. Unlike the 3rd example of the President of Liberia talking about Ebola at a Harvard Political Institute event, the only sane thing for institutions to do with the former sorts of events is to not publish them in any form with audio on any venue. That, plus a lot of the wording, including stuff you incorrectly assume implies that "that these schools were given the resources to "build a ramp" and just decided not to", is clearly designed to provoke an angry reaction. As I've detailed elsewhere, MIT's Open CourseWare was explicitly not "given" the resources to do that, nor do I remember it being part of their fundraising appeals. And I hope you're not claiming Harvard, let alone the much less wealthy MIT, were given the resources to properly caption video of every vacuous celebrity who visits. If you want, I seem to remember there are more lies that I can detail, but seeing as it not just made me angry, but enraged me after a close reading.... Although see e.g. their gross overstatement of how many people are truly blocked from hearing these soundtracks: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9042760 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9042760 Not 48 million, "U Gallaudet itself estimates that the percentage of people with severe hearing loss in the US is 2%, half of whom are over 64. Functionally deaf people account for 0.4% of the US population." per SeanLuke. Especially if you understand that endowment does not equal arbitrarily spendable wealth, the vast majority of gifts are earmarked. And I suppose it's time again to make the disclaimer that I'm MIT Class of '83 and donate to OCW.

hga 12y ago

Read this mendacious, invidious PR thuggery 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... and tell me again it's "just a lawsuit". And as has been amply pointed out, in the case of any of the outcomes you're calling, a great deal of material will be withdrawn from the net (or campus servers and official Youtube channels), little will be returned, at least from MIT, which doesn't have the money (well, absent a big fundraising campaign, which would crowd out other things), and perhaps most importantly, it will have a serious chilling effect on future offerings, since they will have to be vetted for not just captioning, but sufficient quality captioning, "by legal". MIT students, at least, have better things to do with their time. And 3 years from now, let along 30, at least one person will click on a "see the video" link and get a 404. And you severely underestimate people's memories, and ability to hold grudges.

psychometry 12y ago
Some details on the NAD vs. Netflix case: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/10/netflix-settles-with-deaf-rights-group-agrees-to-caption-all-videos-by-2014/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/10/netflix-settles-w...
hudibras 12y ago
I guess I'm missing some nuances you're seeing in that press release, but it seems pretty innocuous. Certainly don't see any evidence of those thugs you mention, just some people concerned about deaf Americans not having their civil rights protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act. And I'll take that bet: In 3 years, every video on the Harvard and M.I.T. websites will be captioned.
- hga 12y ago
  You can only take my bet (and I used 3 years for symmetry, make it more like 1-8), if you take the whole thing, which includes there being precious few of those nicely captioned videos on MIT websites and Youtube channels. But, yeah, every video you will be able find on an accessible to the outside of MIT website will be perfect. Yea! BTW, MIT has rather nicely developed fine grained control over what can and can't be seen by outsiders, all this sort of thing developed for Project Athena starting back in the '80s.
  - handojin 12y ago
    I will take that bet, if you explain the odds you are offering.
burkaman 12y ago
Well, I had to look up mendacious and invidious, but I believe you're claiming they're lying to provoke an angry reaction. It seemed pretty straightforward to me; they present the lawsuit, explain their interpretation of the law, explain the goals of the suit, and demonstrate why the current captioning system is insufficient. The only line I had any kind of problem with was "No captions is like no ramp for people in wheelchairs or signs stating ‘people with disabilities are not welcome.’" I do think that's hyperbolic, but I understand the idea that these schools were given the resources to "build a ramp" and just decided not to. Regardless, it's not "thuggery", it's just a point of view I disagree with. Where are the lies?
- hga 12y ago
  And I had to look them up to make sure I'd remembered their meanings correctly. The Big Lie, if what everyone is saying about Harvard and MIT's joint edX project properly handling their courses correctly is true, is confounding that with MIT Open CourseWare (OCW) "best effort" offerings which we've had the deaf "aldordeah" helpfully confirm: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9042399 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9042399 (OCW's remit was to publish materials useful to other teachers, with things like self-learning gravy). Things like, from their PR: “Online content represents the next frontier for learning and lifelong education,” said Howard A. Rosenblum, NAD’s CEO. “Yet both Harvard and MIT betray their legendary leadership in quality education by denying access to approximately 48 million Americans who are deaf or hard of hearing. All they have to do is provide accurate captioning to such online educational content, yet they provide no or inaccurate captioning which is contrary to these schools’ ideals of excellence and service to all.” "Betray" is a very strong word, just the sort of thing to provoke an angry reaction. Then there's the fact that they don't actually call out any specific online courses for not having captioning (which unless OCW has been spending a lot of their money in their new mode on this should have been trivial), but stuff of much less importance, of course leading with a discussion of the holy Brown v. Board of Education, as well as e.g. Bill Gates and Chomsky talking. Then there's the criticism of the quality of what appears to be Youtube auto-captioning of videos of nothingburger Lady Gaga and Obama visits placed on official Harvard and MIT Youtube channels. Unlike the 3rd example of the President of Liberia talking about Ebola at a Harvard Political Institute event, the only sane thing for institutions to do with the former sorts of events is to not publish them in any form with audio on any venue. That, plus a lot of the wording, including stuff you incorrectly assume implies that "that these schools were given the resources to "build a ramp" and just decided not to", is clearly designed to provoke an angry reaction. As I've detailed elsewhere, MIT's Open CourseWare was explicitly not "given" the resources to do that, nor do I remember it being part of their fundraising appeals. And I hope you're not claiming Harvard, let alone the much less wealthy MIT, were given the resources to properly caption video of every vacuous celebrity who visits. If you want, I seem to remember there are more lies that I can detail, but seeing as it not just made me angry, but enraged me after a close reading.... Although see e.g. their gross overstatement of how many people are truly blocked from hearing these soundtracks: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9042760 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9042760 Not 48 million, "U Gallaudet itself estimates that the percentage of people with severe hearing loss in the US is 2%, half of whom are over 64. Functionally deaf people account for 0.4% of the US population." per SeanLuke. Especially if you understand that endowment does not equal arbitrarily spendable wealth, the vast majority of gifts are earmarked. And I suppose it's time again to make the disclaimer that I'm MIT Class of '83 and donate to OCW.