A statement on online course content and accessibility

Reality is a multi-class system. It's always and everywhere going to be more difficult to get things done when one lacks a capacity which most people have (e.g. sight, hearing or mobility); it's always and everywhere going to be easier to get things done when one possesses a capacity which most people lack (e.g. intelligence, strength or wealthy parents).

Measures which aim to level the playing field really can't raise those who lack up: all they can do is lower those who have. But that leaves us all poorer in the end, because those who could have achieved did not.

Harrison Bergeron was a cautionary tale, not a guidebook.

If you expect to accomplish that via a community effort to make tools for deaf people, you're likely right. But i bet we aren't that far away from "Hey alexa/siri/google, what are the top stories on hacker news right now?"

It's a release of course videos that they don't charge for. Making free videos available for the public certainly isn't going to help UC Berkeley's $150 million budget deficit.[1] It's not going to make anybody rich. If any university wants to provide free videos to the public with no strings attached, I consider that a generous gesture on their part. I want us (society) to be generous in return. Therefore, lawsuits are the wrong tool for captioning videos for the disabled audience. (Oh btw, I know your school is losing money and may lay off some employees but about those free videos ... yeah we're suing you for that!)

>Disabled people pay taxes in California, and yet cannot avail themselves of this content that's ostensibly provided for the public benefit.

There seems to be a "accommodate-ADA-no-matter-what" principle that's present in many comments. We are not that inflexible. Disabled people may pay Federal taxes but we did not install multi-million chairlifts on Yosemite Half Dome (a Federal Park) so wheelchair bound people can experience the summit. The Yosemite Park entrance pass is $15 per car and we didn't all agree to make it $200 per car so that we can subsidize helicopters to take all disabled people to the summit for those who can't climb it on their own power. Yes, we do have wheelchair lifts for the buses running on the valley floor but we didn't make everything equal for all disabled tourists.

If a business has 14 employees or less, we also don't make them comply with ADA access. That exclusion is written into the ADA law.

The point is that there are are tradeoffs, limits, exceptions, and compromise to make ADA work. If a "14-employee threshold" seems like a reasonable exemption from ADA, let's make "freedom of spreading knowledge" another reasonable exemption. Don't punish institutions for providing free knowledge. Let's not disincentivize other institutions from releasing free videos just because they didn't cross every 't' and dot every 'i' to comply with ADA. Let's find another way to add captions and braille without the lawsuits.

[1]https://www.google.com/search?q=uc+berkeley+operating+defici...

It would need some kind of percent complete count, or something, along with maybe a rating system where visitors who need those captions can report poor or confusing transcription.

Braille is harder; but, I would think most courses already have written course notes and materials, which can be read by screen readers. I'm not sure what to make of the mention of braille, here, actually. Are they expecting UCB to send out printed materials? That doesn't make sense, and goes beyond what websites are required to do by the ADA.

I don't know what kind of tools UCB could make available on their videos...but, the technology exists to community source the video captioning.