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Harvard and M.I.T. Sued Over Failing to Caption Online Courses

nytimes.com

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Re: Harvard and M.I.T. Sued Over Failing to Caption Online Courses

#3

Post by saosebastiao »

nimblegorilla wrote: post #2

I prefer transcripts over videos. It often takes less than 10 minutes to read the transcript of a 60 minute presentation. And it is a lot easier to go back and review sections which were confusing.

Agreed. If I see a link to a video without a transcript or description or even a TLDR, I just won't bother. Maybe to some people I am just another impatient millenial, but I can't help but feel like I have better things to do than to sit through bad jokes, equipment problems, stuttering, and umm-ahhhs.

I'm usually pretty critical of a lot of Amazon's culture, but one thing I think is absolutely brilliant is its reliance on whitepapers and its shunning of presentations. With a presentation, the presenter retains 100% control over information flow, which can magnify the agitation that you feel when they just aren't spitting it out fast enough. With a whitepaper, a quick skim allows you to know exactly where you want to focus and you can control the information flow from there. Whitepapers take significantly more effort, which is why a lot of amazonians criticize them, but the reward is easily proportional to the effort.

Re: Harvard and M.I.T. Sued Over Failing to Caption Online Courses

#7

Post by cordite »

saosebastiao wrote: post #3
nimblegorilla wrote: post #2

I prefer transcripts over videos. It often takes less than 10 minutes to read the transcript of a 60 minute presentation. And it is a lot easier to go back and review sections which were confusing.

Agreed. If I see a link to a video without a transcript or description or even a TLDR, I just won't bother. Maybe to some people I am just another impatient millenial, but I can't help but feel like I have better things to do than to sit through bad jokes, equipment problems, stuttering, and umm-ahhhs. I'm usually pretty critical of a lot of Amazon's culture, but one thing I think is absolutely brilliant is its relia…

Here's an idea, a transcript where you can click on a word in the transcript, and it jumps to the point in the presentation so you also have the context of the slide shown during speaking.

Re: Harvard and M.I.T. Sued Over Failing to Caption Online Courses

#8

Post by jdreaver »

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.

Re: Harvard and M.I.T. Sued Over Failing to Caption Online Courses

#9

Post by Chevalier »

kelukelugames wrote: post #5

Does it really need to come to litigation?

Nope. My apologies on behalf of our profession. This is probably just a shakedown -- it'll be cheaper to settle than it will be to defend against this lawsuit, so the game is to find a mistake that could plausibly fall afoul of the ADA and file away.

I hope they don't settle, to put it mildly. Few institutions are as well-equipped to combat trolls as Harvard.

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