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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

#151

Post by psychometry »

hga wrote: post #148
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And as has been amply pointed out, in the case of any of the outcomes you're calling, a great deal of material will be withdrawn from the net (or campus servers and official Youtube channels), little will be returned, at least from MIT, which doesn't have the money (well…

Some details on the NAD vs. Netflix case: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/10/netflix-settles-w...

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

#152

Post by justcommenting »

ars wrote: post #125
sp332 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that could have been clearer. Deaf people are 100% as deserving of this content as non-deaf people. They should not be treated as a separate group. Captions are a required part of the distribution, not an optional add-on. There is not "the real message" and then "the message for deaf people".

So would you rather they don't distribute it at all, if they can't (or won't) caption it? (Not a rhetorical question, I'm actually asking you.) Keep in mind that these are recordings of a professor talking - there is no script, no captions exist already. The choice is paying for captioning, or not releasing at all. If they are unwilling to pay, which should, in your opinion, they pick: Not release, or release without…

this is a false choice; no one would credibly make that sort of claim about audio-only courses in podcast form or video recordings without audio. you're focusing on the economics, and that's fine, but the court is focusing on whether it complies with the law.

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

#153

Post by icebraining »

eseehausen wrote: post #142
aneeshm wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I consider Rand's political theories misguided, but it's certainly not "the state of nature", nor is that aneeshm's position. Claiming so is just flamebait, not having an honest discussion.

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

#154

Post by icebraining »

kryptiskt wrote: post #85
hullo wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow to the downvotes on this. Leaving aside their toxic personal politics, they don't even know how to use the site. (This one can be correctly downvoted as meta)

I don't mind the downvotes really, it's kinda interesting to see how the wind blows. But damn, must it be frustrating to be deaf and see how how little thought goes in that direction, compared to the tears shed for Harvard ($32B endowment 2013) and MIT ($11B endowment 2013).

Not everyone stands by the side they consider more sympathetic; some people actually try to be impartial and apply judgment based on their principles, whether they benefit a big institution or a poor person.

That doesn't mean we must agree with those principles, of course.

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

#155

Post by justcommenting »

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.

so access to knowledge--most of which, it's worth noting, is massively subsidized by taxpayers in the form of grants and related overhead--is a luxury good?

that's not a world i want to live in; access to knowledge is foundational infrastructure.

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

#156

Post by eseehausen »

icebraining wrote: post #153
eseehausen wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I consider Rand's political theories misguided, but it's certainly not "the state of nature", nor is that aneeshm's position. Claiming so is just flamebait, not having an honest discussion.

"Flamebait" was certainly not my intention. I may be naive, but what is the difference between a society comprised of people with no obligations toward each other and the state of nature?

Edit: For instance, for Hobbes, that pretty much is the definition of the state of nature, in which everyone has the natural right to their own self-preservation and goals. The rise of sovereign power is often conceived of as the enforcement of obligations that override natural rights to complete liberty (through something that is probably even more properly called "thuggery" than deaf advocacy groups' political actions).

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

#157

Post by icebraining »

jamesbrownuhh wrote: post #113
teraflop wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

Accepted. Far better than nothing at all (in most cases) though, I'd suggest.

I think the point people are making is that a video without captions is also far better than no video at all.

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

#158

Post by aldordeah »

hga wrote: post #145
chucksmart wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-tr…

I am deaf and I specifically remember about MIT OCW from a couple years ago that, whenever I found something that seemed interesting and had video lectures available, the lectures didn't even have a transcript, much less captions. I went to their website again and literally the first course I picked lacked captions,[1] unless you count the YouTube-generated "love with a system age to have an with a system" as captions. It wasn't very hard to find another seemingly interesting course that doesn't have captions either.[2] Admittedly, after further inspection, more courses seem to have captions than before.

[1]: http://ocw.mit.edu/resources/res-6-008-digital-signal-proces...

[2]: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/8-851-effective-field-the...

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

#159

Post by bphogan »

jdreaver wrote: post #8

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,…

Once you learn how to do these things, they become second nature. That's the problem though. People don't think twice about learning a new programming language. But learning how to caption videos, choose colorblind friendly colors, or turn transcripts of a video into something that's braile-display or screen-reader friendly are skills that are relatively simple to acquire and will definitely outlast whatever new framework comes out this year.

I am visually impaired. And I have been helping people make the web accessible since 2001. If you plan it from the beginning, it's only a few extra yards, not an extra mile.

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

#160

Post by hudibras »

hga wrote: post #148
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…

I guess I'm missing some nuances you're seeing in that press release, but it seems pretty innocuous. Certainly don't see any evidence of those thugs you mention, just some people concerned about deaf Americans not having their civil rights protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

And I'll take that bet: In 3 years, every video on the Harvard and M.I.T. websites will be captioned.

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