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A statement on online course content and accessibility

news.berkeley.edu

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Re: A statement on online course content and accessibility

#21

Post by GFK_of_xmaspast »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #18
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #5

"...the Department of Justice has recently asserted that the University is in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act because, in its view, not all of the free course and lecture content UC Berkeley makes available on certain online platforms is fully accessible to individuals with hearing, visual or manual disabilities..." Wow. Talk about harming hundreds of people for no reason at all. IANAL, but I believe…

> Wow. Talk about harming hundreds of people for no reason at all. To be fair, the whole point of the ADA is to harm millions of people for the benefit of very few people.

About five years ago I was on crutches for several months and I can highly recommend the experience to anybody who is against the ADA as an eye-opener.

Re: A statement on online course content and accessibility

#22

Post by extra88 »

marbletiles wrote: post #16
jasode wrote: post #7

Fyi ... a related (not duplicate) HN discussion from Feb 2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9039798 In both this case about UC Berkeley and the lawsuit against Harvard & MIT, the legal attacks seem very wrong. What I see is: - Scenario A: spend $X to release free courses that benefits most of humanity - Scenario B: spend $X+$Y to release free courses that also benefits the disabled population (The $Y is extra…

And yet libraries have to meet disability access requirements. If you don't have minimum standards for accessibility, you perpetuate a two-class system, and this is especially bad when it applies to learning — which disabled people can benefit disproportionately from. Using the legal system to achieve these ends appears to be the American Way so I won't comment on that.

Libraries are not required to make every book available in Braille or in a digital format compatible with text to speech software. That's considered an unreasonable burden on the library.

It's highly unlikely that the complainants went directly to the Civil Rights Division without talking to Berkeley first, that's not how these things go. Frankly, it's preferable for the DoJ to be involved because a problem in this area is a lack of specific regulation and guidance to schools on how exactly to interpret the strong but vague language of the law. If the University just quietly works it out with individuals or a group, that's going to be a lot less helpful to making all educational institutions more accessible.

Re: A statement on online course content and accessibility

#23

Post by jasode »

eqmvii wrote: post #20
jasode wrote: post #7

Fyi ... a related (not duplicate) HN discussion from Feb 2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9039798 In both this case about UC Berkeley and the lawsuit against Harvard & MIT, the legal attacks seem very wrong. What I see is: - Scenario A: spend $X to release free courses that benefits most of humanity - Scenario B: spend $X+$Y to release free courses that also benefits the disabled population (The $Y is extra…

What you wrote is logical, but applicable to any instance of accommodation to those with impairments. The Americans with Disabilities Act and related actions/legislation/policies explicitly bind society to inefficient resource allocation. The actual letter from the Department of Justice (linked at the bottom of Berkeley's response) goes into more detail. The DoJ is not demanding current materials be removed, nor are…

>The Americans with Disabilities Act [...] explicitly bind society to inefficient resource allocation.

Sure, that seems justifiable for commercial businesses but many find the ADA to be an ugly legal weapon for attacking free donations. The spiritual intentions of "free" should be exempted.

If UC Berkeley used the viewing of those videos as a mandatory requirement to qualify for admissions into the school or required viewing for the students to pass a class, then I think most of us could see the fairness of forcing them to caption it -- regardless of costs.

However, the goodwill act of making them free for humanity's knowledge-seeking causes the DOJ to threaten lawsuit? That does not seem right.

>Importantly, this is NOT a lawsuit. It's a DoJ investigation under the ADA focused on enforcing existing laws and regulations. It's not about "formalizing it into the nastiness of a lawsuit"

In the last page of the cited PDF, the DOJ explicitly writes "lawsuit":

>"In the event that we are unable to reach such a resolution, the Attorney General may initiate a lawsuit pursuant to the ADA"

That this particular DOJ letter is one or a few steps removed from a "formal lawsuit" doesn't detract from my overall point. The DOJ threatening a lawsuit is the tool of choice we're using instead of other options ... such as raising a crowdsourced fund to pay for captioning or recruiting volunteers to transcribe them into braille.

If there is an effort of goodwill to make something available, I think society should pay that back with reciprocal goodwill in finding a way to make the material accessible to the disabled.

The donation and the litigation response to that donation is asymmetrical. It gives the ADA bad press.

Re: A statement on online course content and accessibility

#24

Post by vizeroth »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #11
reustle wrote: post #4

Sorry for sounding naive but isn't UCB a private company? I hate to say but "this is why we can't have nice things". We are trying to move into an age of more digital education, but if there are a bunch of hoops to jump through in order to even attempt it, won't the barrier to trying be too high for some institutions?

> Sorry for sounding naive but isn't UCB a private company? No. University of California, Berkeley is a part of the University of California system, not a private company.

To expand on this, the government of California requires the University of California (UC) and California State University (CSU) systems to comply with the ADA and the Rehabilitation Act of 1974 (if you've ever heard of 508 compliance, it's a reference to section 508 of the latter Act). In recent years, both systems have been expanding their efforts to comply with this requirement, especially in regards to technology. (The CSU system includes not only the schools with CSU or Cal State prefixes, but also most of the schools with State or SU suffixes, including SFSU, SJSU, and SDSU.)

For more information: - UC Policy: http://www.ucop.edu/electronic-accessibility/initiative/poli... - CSU Policy: http://teachingcommons.cdl.edu/access/

Re: A statement on online course content and accessibility

#25

Post by arkades »

eqmvii wrote: post #20
jasode wrote: post #7

Fyi ... a related (not duplicate) HN discussion from Feb 2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9039798 In both this case about UC Berkeley and the lawsuit against Harvard & MIT, the legal attacks seem very wrong. What I see is: - Scenario A: spend $X to release free courses that benefits most of humanity - Scenario B: spend $X+$Y to release free courses that also benefits the disabled population (The $Y is extra…

What you wrote is logical, but applicable to any instance of accommodation to those with impairments. The Americans with Disabilities Act and related actions/legislation/policies explicitly bind society to inefficient resource allocation. The actual letter from the Department of Justice (linked at the bottom of Berkeley's response) goes into more detail. The DoJ is not demanding current materials be removed, nor are…

All agreed, except:

UC Berk is a public institution, using public funds to create these resources. This is not a free charitable creation from a private person, to which people respond "well, you should give us MORE or we'll SUE!"

No, this is a public institution using public funds to create a public resource... which it then only makes accessible to a subset of the public. Public buildings, public libraries, public transportation, etc. are all subject to the ADA; I see no reason why this particular public resource should be an exception.

Re: A statement on online course content and accessibility

#26

Post by vizeroth »

bluesign wrote: post #13

can someone explain how they can keep the same material for access by enrolled students but not to public considering ADA requirements?

More than likely, the material released to the public is not the material used for enrolled students. At the same time, they most likely have funding to make material accessible to enrolled students on an as-needed basis. If a person with a particular disability is enrolled at the University, the University will work with the student to discover their requirements and how they can best meet their needs. At that point, they can go through the list of courses the student has enrolled in for each quarter or semester and ensure that all of the course materials are accessible to that student.

Once they've completed that process, it usually has the side benefit of making those specific materials accessible to all future students with similar needs. The whole process is also getting better over time, especially for textbooks and similar material. However, video and audio are especially problematic areas when they are produced by individuals who don't understand (or aren't aware of) these requirements. If you just setup a camera and/or microphone to capture a lecture, public release and captioning may not be on your mind at the time.

Re: A statement on online course content and accessibility

#27

Post by NhanH »

arkades wrote: post #25
eqmvii wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you wrote is logical, but applicable to any instance of accommodation to those with impairments. The Americans with Disabilities Act and related actions/legislation/policies explicitly bind society to inefficient resource allocation. The actual letter from the Department of Justice (linked at the bottom of Berkeley's response) goes into more detail. The DoJ is not demanding current materials be removed, nor are…

All agreed, except : UC Berk is a public institution, using public funds to create these resources. This is not a free charitable creation from a private person, to which people respond "well, you should give us MORE or we'll SUE!" No, this is a public institution using public funds to create a public resource... which it then only makes accessible to a subset of the public. Public buildings, public libraries, public…

> No, this is a public institution using public funds to create a public resource... which it then only makes accessible to a subset of the public.

I thought about this, and I'm actually not sure what to think. As UCB made clear that the alternative would be to take those resources down, making it completely unavailable to the public. Do we just consider this an acceptable collateral damage from the ADA?

Re: A statement on online course content and accessibility

#28

Post by increment_i »

arkades wrote: post #25
eqmvii wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you wrote is logical, but applicable to any instance of accommodation to those with impairments. The Americans with Disabilities Act and related actions/legislation/policies explicitly bind society to inefficient resource allocation. The actual letter from the Department of Justice (linked at the bottom of Berkeley's response) goes into more detail. The DoJ is not demanding current materials be removed, nor are…

All agreed, except : UC Berk is a public institution, using public funds to create these resources. This is not a free charitable creation from a private person, to which people respond "well, you should give us MORE or we'll SUE!" No, this is a public institution using public funds to create a public resource... which it then only makes accessible to a subset of the public. Public buildings, public libraries, public…

I guess this makes sense. I was pretty miffed at first but what you've said here is logical. UC Berkeley is bound by the ADA to make any and all of its services compliant, and in 2016 I'd imagine the DOJ isn't going to accept a "Well, it's the Wild West of the Web!" to set an undesirable precedent.

Re: A statement on online course content and accessibility

#29

Post by posterboy »

jasode wrote: post #7

Fyi ... a related (not duplicate) HN discussion from Feb 2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9039798 In both this case about UC Berkeley and the lawsuit against Harvard & MIT, the legal attacks seem very wrong. What I see is: - Scenario A: spend $X to release free courses that benefits most of humanity - Scenario B: spend $X+$Y to release free courses that also benefits the disabled population (The $Y is extra…

> That these lawsuits are obstinate in that you must spend that extra $Y to fulfill Scenario B or humanity can't have the knowledge at all is nonsensical to me.

It's almost the same as saying, they don't have to release free courses, which is also nonsensical to me.

Re: A statement on online course content and accessibility

#30

Post by anotheryou »

I feel like it's about time to ditch all that accessibility stuff and join forces to create a more human screen reader.

Though sadly it will be a while until we will hear: "You are visiting Hacker News, in a simple look and without any images, it features a list of links to articles and a menu at the top. Do you want me to read the articles titles, continue with accessing the menu or a more detailed description of the page?"

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