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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

#101

Post by greggman »

jamesbrownuhh wrote: post #82
Kalium wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More viewers is more better. Captions are a really easy way to achieve that. In a world where perfectly accurate captions are zero-cost and zero-effort, absolutely. That is not this world.

It really shouldn't be beyond anyone's capabilities, though. In its simplest form all you need is a plain .txt file with the spoken words. Major services like YouTube can take that file and align it to the timing of the video, automatically. Almost all the hard work is done for you. Obviously all content is different, but for the benefit you get, it's hard to understand how any creator of any size at all does anythin…

Why only captions? Why not require translations into all 300+ languages? I mean there are billions of people who can't understand whatever language the video is in and therefore can't access these videos.

It seems to me if it's the responsibility of people who can't understand the video to deal with that themselves (learn the language, hire a translator, etc...). Why is that different if your language is sign language or something else?

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

#102

Post by cl0ber »

sp332 wrote: post #37
Someone1234 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a confusing sentiment. So deaf people shouldn't be given something for free, but they should get something for free "from the beginning?" Which is it?

The communication needs to be made accessible by the person or group who produces it. Not by some outside organization that goes around cleaning up other people's accessibility messes.

This makes no sense. What's wrong with outsourcing something you're not very good at?

I don't speak Hindi, I'll happoly outsource the translation of video to an agency that can do this for me.

Same with sign language, I don't know it. I'll happily outsource to an agency that can do the sign language translation.

Care to explain why you think I should have the skills inhouse to suport multiple types of accessibility when those skills can be hired in via a third party?

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

#103

Post by sp332 »

cl0ber wrote: post #102
sp332 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The communication needs to be made accessible by the person or group who produces it. Not by some outside organization that goes around cleaning up other people's accessibility messes.

This makes no sense. What's wrong with outsourcing something you're not very good at? I don't speak Hindi, I'll happoly outsource the translation of video to an agency that can do this for me. Same with sign language, I don't know it. I'll happily outsource to an agency that can do the sign language translation. Care to explain why you think I should have the skills inhouse to suport multiple types of accessibility w…

Outsource if you like, but at least pay for it. Don't make deaf people pay for something you gave for free to everyone else.

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

#104

Post by jamesbrownuhh »

jdreaver wrote: post #31
sp332 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deaf people aren't a charity case. The content needs to be accessible from the beginning, not as an afterthought.

Alright, then who will pay for it, either in time or money? You are free to go caption videos all you want, but why should people be forced to caption videos they make in their spare time?

No-one is saying that anyone should be forced to do anything.

Personally, I caption the hobby videos that I put on YouTube, because doing so brings in far more views, both domestically and from around the world.

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

#105

Post by sp332 »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #97
sp332 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MIT and Harvard's "largess" is funded in part by tax money collected from deaf people. Anyway, donating to a a discriminatory cause is still discrimination even if it is generous or well-intentioned.

What's the "discriminatory cause" you're talking about here?

It was hypothetical, but I guess you could say that donating courses only to non-deaf people is a cause.

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

#106

Post by murbard2 »

jamesbrownuhh wrote: post #98
murbard2 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you and find it immoral to compel MIT and Harvard to close caption their courses. This is because I embrace a deontological ethic. If I were to be the devil's advocate however, I would say that the difference between you putting a video out there, and MIT doing it is one of elasticity. The effort of putting closed captions on your informal video would be much too great and would be very likely to prevent…

> The effort of putting closed captions on your informal video would be much too great. $1 per minute (if you farm it out) or even less if you do it yourself. In exchange you get 7-15% more views - is that really an unbearable deal?

It totally depends on your means, your audience, your goals, etc.

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

#107

Post by hga »

jamesbrownuhh wrote: post #90
hga wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" Captions are a really easy way to achieve that. " Not that easy. Script -> timing -> correctly muxing, right? Not super hard (I'm an old school, from the very early '90s anime fan), yeah, but what about cheap? Then to move it into the context of this lawsuit, a likely outcome is red tape to put anything with a audio track on the net, even if it's just to determine that close captioning it is not required (and let m…

If you've got a script then software like CMU Sphinx (open source) can use voice recognition to align the words of the script with the time of the soundtrack. Services like YouTube will even do that for you, if you can provide the bare minimum of a transcript. If even that sounds too hard, you can let YouTube's automatic subtitling produce an initial transcript - sometimes this can be surprisingly good, depending on…

Perhaps you're getting down voted because of who's pocket you want this "access" to come out of?

Perhaps because you can't conceive that one inevitable result of this is that whole lot less material with audio is going to be published by US institutions going forward?

Especially if a legal regime has to be set up to vet everything posted in any formal way by a member of these communities? In the case of MIT students, they have better things to do with their time than wade through red tape, which they hate.

And how much valuable material already published will likely be pulled?

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

#108

Post by jamesbrownuhh »

greggman wrote: post #101
jamesbrownuhh wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really shouldn't be beyond anyone's capabilities, though. In its simplest form all you need is a plain .txt file with the spoken words. Major services like YouTube can take that file and align it to the timing of the video, automatically. Almost all the hard work is done for you. Obviously all content is different, but for the benefit you get, it's hard to understand how any creator of any size at all does anythin…

Why only captions? Why not require translations into all 300+ languages? I mean there are billions of people who can't understand whatever language the video is in and therefore can't access these videos. It seems to me if it's the responsibility of people who can't understand the video to deal with that themselves (learn the language, hire a translator, etc...). Why is that different if your language is sign languag…

Just a single native-language caption track is all that's necessary. Computers can already do a pretty good job of translating that into the hundreds of other possible languages.

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

#109

Post by jamesbrownuhh »

Kalium wrote: post #100
jamesbrownuhh wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you've got a script then software like CMU Sphinx (open source) can use voice recognition to align the words of the script with the time of the soundtrack. Services like YouTube will even do that for you, if you can provide the bare minimum of a transcript. If even that sounds too hard, you can let YouTube's automatic subtitling produce an initial transcript - sometimes this can be surprisingly good, depending on…

Bluntly, when I make and release content for free I'm generally not very interested in paying for small boost in user numbers. Especially since for most videos, that 7-15% boost is maybe ten views.

Fine - your choice. No-one is suggesting otherwise.

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

#110

Post by teraflop »

jamesbrownuhh wrote: post #108
greggman wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why only captions? Why not require translations into all 300+ languages? I mean there are billions of people who can't understand whatever language the video is in and therefore can't access these videos. It seems to me if it's the responsibility of people who can't understand the video to deal with that themselves (learn the language, hire a translator, etc...). Why is that different if your language is sign languag…

Just a single native-language caption track is all that's necessary. Computers can already do a pretty good job of translating that into the hundreds of other possible languages.

This is extremely dependent on which languages you're talking about. For instance, my experience with automatic translation between Japanese and English varies from "jumbled, but conveys the gist of the original text" to "entirely incoherent". (Bing seems to do slightly better than Google, incidentally.)
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