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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

#141

Post by chucksmart »

stolio wrote: post #137
dethstar wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take your stand to other disabilities. Should we in fact thell them "is it illegal to build a sidewalk to benefit much of humanity, without also expending additional effort to benefit the part of humanity that requires of wheelchairs"? I think we should, because I think people with disability have the same right to move or to learn than I do. And accommodating to them is important.

Sidewalks are infrastructure. Free online courses from MIT are not. They're a luxury.

Some of these courses have "certificates" awarded for fees; and said certificates are the entry point to some businesses; just like the steep steps in front of the building.

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

#142

Post by eseehausen »

aneeshm wrote: post #128
Sanddancer wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which means you'll have just as much access to the knowledge as deaf people. Accessibility should never be an add-on.

Deaf people's problems are not my problems (except insofar as I choose to act on empathy I may feel), and making something accessible is a choice, and not something deaf people have any right to, nor I any obligation to provide. They are entitled to nothing (from me) I do not freely choose to give. They may have achieved sufficient political power to force others to do what they want, whether or not the other person…

How does that even square? According to your initial premise, your problems are not deaf people's problems (except insofar as they choose to act on empathy they may feel), and they should do everything in their power to maximize their access, even if it costs you. If you want to live in the state of nature, everyone has the right to trample on everyone else. Mercifully, our social structure still is more in line with Rawls than Rand.

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

#143

Post by ljf »

shaunol wrote: post #83
stolio wrote: post #60

MIT's OpenCourseWare is Creative Commons licensed, the only restrictions placed on a third party who wanted to caption the courses are 1) attribution, 2) the derivative work must be non-commercial in nature, 3) that the license remains the same. A building without a ramp can't be copied and rebuilt with a ramp without rebuilding the entire thing, but a video without a caption can be copied and captioned without havin…

This makes me so sad, it makes me wonder why the National Association of the Deaf doesn't try to encourage recruiting volunteers to the association to help with closed captioning. With this litigation I feel they're only alienating those that can actually help their cause.

Yeah, we could get other charities to build their own ramps and accessible parking too...

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

#144

Post by hudibras »

Everybody chill out, it's just a lawsuit. Four Americans disagree with how Harvard and M.I.T. are interpreting the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, and so they're asking the courts to help out with the disagreement. I doubt anybody here will disagree with Americans being able to use their courts to redress perceived injustices.

As to the ultimate outcome, I'm calling it: Either DOJ will clarify the rules so that captions are required, or the schools will settle the lawsuit by agreeing that captions are required, or the courts will decide that captions are required.

And then 30 years from now, at least one person in this thread will have lost their hearing but will click open and watch a captioned M.I.T. or Harvard video without even thinking about how much they railed against that one article on HN back in 2015.

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

#145

Post by hga »

chucksmart wrote: post #141
stolio wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sidewalks are infrastructure. Free online courses from MIT are not. They're a luxury.

Some of these courses have "certificates" awarded for fees; and said certificates are the entry point to some businesses; just like the steep steps in front of the building.

And if you read the PR release carefully, no where does it specifically say one of those courses isn't properly captioned. The examples it gives of non- or poorly captioned items aren't even courses at all (http://nad.org/news/2015/2/nad-sues-harvard-and-mit-discrimi... which is a really nasty piece of work).

Without looking at the lawsuit (waiting for lawyers like the Instapundit to tear into it, he's big on non-traditional learning like this), I suspect the mention of MOOCs is bullshit, confounding perhaps a MIT Open CourseWare (OCW) offering with the edX ones you're talking about, which others in this discussion have ensured us are properly treated.

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

#146

Post by binarysolo »

I know several of the lawyers involved on the plaintiff's end (several of them blind and/or deaf) on a friendship, nonprofessional level -- and I'm noticing there's a lot of misunderstanding in the comments. However I am not a lawyer nor am I hugely aware of the nuances of the issues, so take this with a grain of salt.

Basically the law firm in question is using lawsuits as a method of social activism to compel large orgs to adhere to the ADA. (Similar thing happened to Scribd.) Basically deaf/blind nonprofits ask these entities in question for open accessibility accommodations and typically do NOT get denied the request, but this ends up being a low-priority task that gets tabled for years. Unfortunately between asking nicely, mobilizing social support to effect change, and lawsuits, the legal stick is by-and-large most effective at making things happen.

This is also NOT a shakedown; the end goal is NOT that lawyers or plaintiffs get fat stacks of cash, but that these accommodations be implemented. To the disabilities orgs, these requests are similar to asking for accessibility ramps and what not.

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

#147

Post by rayiner »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #73
6stringmerc wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I think you're misapplying your principle in this instance. I think Harvard or MIT should have to provide captions in the spirit of the law that exists. It's not like the ADA was passed last year, so to think that the physical Harvard/MIT facilities would be ADA compliant but online facilities would not strikes me as a necessary coming to grips with the law as it's written. Hence the lawyers will fight this out…

For the purposes of armchair moralizing, who cares about the law as written? Pretend we're making the law, instead of deferring to the law as written. Should we in fact tell them "it is illegal for you to put out this material to benefit much of humanity, without also expending additional effort to benefit the deaf part of humanity?"

> For the purposes of armchair moralizing, who cares about the law as written?

Because the law embodies certain moral conclusions. The ADA is premised on the idea that businesses have an obligation to make reasonable accommodations for the disabled. At least in 1990, this moral conclusion was compelling enough that the ADA carried a 377-28 margin in the House, and a 91-6 margin in the Senate.

As an aside, to me, laws like the ADA are one of the things that make America great. It is a virtuous people that decides that the lucky among them should take on the burden of enabling the unlucky among them to live life as normally as their disabilities allow.

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

#148

Post by hga »

hudibras wrote: post #144

Everybody chill out, it's just a lawsuit. Four Americans disagree with how Harvard and M.I.T. are interpreting the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, and so they're asking the courts to help out with the disagreement. I doubt anybody here will disagree with Americans being able to use their courts to redress perceived injustices. As to the ultimate outcome, I'm calling it: Either DOJ will clarify the rules so that…

Read this mendacious, invidious PR thuggery http://nad.org/news/2015/2/nad-sues-harvard-and-mit-discrimi... and tell me again it's "just a lawsuit".

And as has been amply pointed out, in the case of any of the outcomes you're calling, a great deal of material will be withdrawn from the net (or campus servers and official Youtube channels), little will be returned, at least from MIT, which doesn't have the money (well, absent a big fundraising campaign, which would crowd out other things), and perhaps most importantly, it will have a serious chilling effect on future offerings, since they will have to be vetted for not just captioning, but sufficient quality captioning, "by legal". MIT students, at least, have better things to do with their time.

And 3 years from now, let along 30, at least one person will click on a "see the video" link and get a 404.

And you severely underestimate people's memories, and ability to hold grudges.

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

#149

Post by tagawa »

sadfaceunread wrote: post #94

Penn&Teller covered the ADA in this episode of their TV Series Bullshit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLfo979TDaY . The sue first model of accessibility is sickening especially in this case.

This is not a "sue first" case, it just hit the news when the process reached the suing stage.

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

#150

Post by icebraining »

Sanddancer wrote: post #115
erok wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. There goes free online courses from MIT and Harvard due to the impending legal fees implied. Thank you National Association of the Deaf.

Which means you'll have just as much access to the knowledge as deaf people. Accessibility should never be an add-on.

That's not actually true, since a deaf person (or community) could pay to get them captioned. That doesn't mean they should have to, but it's not the same as not having the video in the first place.
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