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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

#41

Post by extra88 »

vizeroth wrote: post #36
jimiz wrote: post #9

Unfortunate to see this free content be lost. In the same line of thinking it is also sad that in this day and age there are not easy tools / systems to help transcode and make content ADA approved. (At least cost effective)

One of the things pointed out in the findings is that Berkeley makes people/tools/systems readily available to the people producing these resources, but does not require them to be used. Generally, the costs may be prohibitive after the fact if the people producing the material did not take them into consideration. However, they can usually be factored into the costs of production up front, and steps can be taken to…

Yes, Berkeley has quite a few resources available, more than most schools. It's probably because of a settlement in a separate case about not serving the needs of their enrolled students. The costs may be prohibitive to an instructor or their academic department but they shouldn't be for the institution as a whole. Not cheap, but not prohibitive.

Re: A statement on online course content and accessibility

#42

Post by Rylinks »

mhurron wrote: post #32
NhanH wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

So holding something some people would find valuable is an acceptable way to bypass the law? UCB has another alternative, use those public funds they take to make the course material accessible. They don't want to do that because that takes money away from them. Taking down the material is not the only alternative, it's just the only alternative they're willing to take because it's cheap.

>They don't want to do that because that takes money away from them.

It takes money away from the enrolled students that UCB is currently spending money on.

Re: A statement on online course content and accessibility

#43

Post by extra88 »

vizeroth wrote: post #26
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…

Yes. There are more options for providing accommodations to individual students taking a short list of classes in person. Out of all the classes, relatively few will have a student enrolled who requires the most elaborate accommodations. Some books will be used for many years so making an accessible version will likely get reused but quite a lot of course content can have a short shelf life so an accessible version made for a student today may never be reused.

Re: A statement on online course content and accessibility

#44

Post by icantdrive55 »

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…

"Importantly, this is NOT a lawsuit."

It will be soon.

There's a lawyer, in the Bay Area, that has made his wad off ADA lawsuits. I guarantee, he is setting up shop as we speak.

I know this because my best friend (deceased) got caught up the ADA lawsuit game. He took a driving job. He drove around these two handicapped individuals. They drove through out the U.S.

He used to call me from the road, and say the strangest things. Like, it seems like they want to go to resturants/gas stations that don't have the required ADA construction. Then they slip, and fall? My job is to take pictures of them on the ground. He was naieve, and thought it was a "travesty", the way these horrid capitalists couldn't build the right way. Most of these owners had no idea they were breaking the law. These subsequent lawsuits shut down many small businesses. Although, this lawyer would settle out of court--much of the time.

He got home, and I told him he was being used by these guys, and that lawyer. He couldn't believe they would do such a thing.

Re: A statement on online course content and accessibility

#45

Post by [deleted] »

malloryerik wrote: post #2

U.C. Berkeley has some fantastic classes online. It would truly be a shame to lose them. Many were clearly produced on shoestring budgets. The Department of Justice seems to have received complaints mainly regarding absence of transcripts for audio or video content. Can't speech-to-text tech help? Other complaints include poor formatting of pdf's. If the courses are indeed taken down, I can only hope that at least th…

[deleted]

Re: A statement on online course content and accessibility

#46

Post by cortesoft »

NhanH wrote: post #27
arkades wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

For one, they haven't made it clear that they need to take them down; they said they are going to do whatever they can first, but leave open the possibility that they will be unable to meet the regulations and would need to remove the content.

I understand your argument, but if you only have to say "I can't afford to support disabled people!" in order to not have to be in compliance with the ADA, then the ADA becomes meaningless.

The answer of "we can't afford it" is always about priorities. They could choose to spend money spent on other things to make this content accessible; it isn't like they are spending their entire school budget on this. It is ALWAYS going to be cheaper to NOT provide accessible content, so this argument could happen in every single instance. The resources spent making content accessible could always be spent on making more stuff for non-disabled access. However, as a society we have decided, no, it is unfair to choose not to spend those resources on accessibility,so we mandate it, because we know a pure utilitarian action will leave disabled people always getting the short end of the stick.

Yes, this means that non-disabled people will lose out on some stuff (and maybe this content is one of those things). That is a price we as a society have decided to pay, and I think it is a worthy one.

Think about it; the same goes for handicapped ramps and the like. If businesses didn't need to pay for those, they could use the money on other stuff. Prices would go down. So yes, we all have to pay a little more so everyone can enjoy the same access (or at least a certain level of access)

Re: A statement on online course content and accessibility

#47

Post by cheriot »

A lot of this sounds like there's an engineering solution that edX and Coursera can offer as a service. Course creators would have SOME work to do, but limited to uploading the charts and files used in their video.

From the DOJ letter:

> 1. Some videos did not have captions.

> 2a. many videos did not provide an alternative way to access images or visual information (e.g., graphs, charts, animations, or urls on slides)

> 2b. videos containing text sometimes had poor color contrast, which made the text unreadable for those with low vision

> 3. Many documents were inaccessible ... [HTML and PDF stuff]

> 4. Some links were not keyboard accessible

> 5. Websites and materials that were integrated into the course material were not fully accessible

Before we jump to debating the ADA, let's see if there's a sensible solution!

Re: A statement on online course content and accessibility

#48

Post by [deleted] »

posterboy wrote: post #31
hacker314159 wrote: post #8

Thanks DOJ for the Kafka-esque move that will most likely deprive everyone of free educational materials. Glad to know justice was served.

What if the proposition to take down the content is rather a threat to instigate the public, than a real concern.

[deleted]

Re: A statement on online course content and accessibility

#49

Post by mavhc »

sandworm101 wrote: post #40
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…

There are plenty of other areas where this same law has similar effects but is tolerated. One niche area is the provision of legal services to the deaf. The lawyer must not charge extra, despite the need to hire a translator. That means taking a case involving a deaf defendant/plaintiff might be unprofitable. But you have to do it all the same. We do such things, foot the bill, because the law is the law. The governm…

We don't do it because it's the morally correct thing to do? Or even to promote a society where such things happen, just in case we or our relatives become disabled?

Re: A statement on online course content and accessibility

#50

Post by mavhc »

cheriot wrote: post #47

A lot of this sounds like there's an engineering solution that edX and Coursera can offer as a service. Course creators would have SOME work to do, but limited to uploading the charts and files used in their video. From the DOJ letter: > 1. Some videos did not have captions. > 2a. many videos did not provide an alternative way to access images or visual information (e.g., graphs, charts, animations, or urls on slides…

If you're going to crowd source education, crowd source this. Ask people to correct computer generated captioning, annotate slides.

2b, 3, 4 should be fixed at the CMS level.

5 Can't you blame those website creators?

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