Harvard and M.I.T. Sued Over Failing to Caption Online Courses • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by wyager » Fri, Feb 13, 2015, 2:23 AM UTC

bphogan wrote: post #174

wyager wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a matter of "thinking about it"; captioning is difficult and expensive, and if we force universities to caption educational materials they release * for free *, we're incentivizing them to never release these materials again.

HN is a community where people solve difficult problems for a living. So someone using "difficult" as a reason for something doesn't really fly with me. As for expensive? I'll agree. Going cost is about $1 per minute minimum. And they're not releasing that material "for free." Make no mistake - it's either because they got a grant (that's what we face) or part of some marketing thing. I apologize if it sounds like I'…

>If you are preparing a video for something online, you should be planning it and writing a script, which you can easily turn into a transcript.

Please don't presume to tell content providers how they should produce content, or presume to tell them that a part of the process is easy. That's not up to you to decide for anyone but yourself.

>These are all things responsible educators do. Proudly.

Nice; insult the awesome folks over at MIT and Harvard who are giving us this material for free because they are "not responsible".

I'd be a hell of a lot more proud releasing content that happens to be inaccessible to deaf people than never releasing anything at all because I'm afraid of getting sued under the ADA.

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

#182

Post by justcommenting » Fri, Feb 13, 2015, 2:38 AM UTC

stolio wrote: post #170

justcommenting wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are different levels of accessibility. The courses are still there, there isn't an audio captcha making sure deaf people can't read the notes, read the book (when available) or do the problem sets. This is nothing like an inaccessible sidewalk keeping somebody in a wheelchair from getting to the grocery store. And I'm only talking about MIT's OCW here, their edX courses are all captioned. OCW was scheduled to r…

As a longtime OCW donor myself, I definitely hear you but would still say we still have miles to go until we've made OCW accessible to all. I could see how OCW might not feel very open to the blind and deaf.

I never said I supported the lawsuit or even its goals; but ignoring accessibility shortcomings for certain groups because of financial or other barriers sort of misses the point of aiming to make knowledge accessible to all.

edit: just noticed sensory references in first paragraph

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

#183

Post by theVirginian » Fri, Feb 13, 2015, 2:46 AM UTC

aldordeah wrote: post #140

morgante wrote: post #78

This is beyond ridiculous and will have a serious chilling effect on the growth of online learning content. That you should be obligated to spend additional money on captioning your free videos is incredibly unfair and also unjustifiable. Unfortunately, in many cases it will make the costs unsustainable so we'll see videos taken down entirely—thus, the deaf are selfishly insisting that if they can't have something no…

Please explain to me how it is fair that, by studying a free online uncaptioned lecture, someone gets even more of an advantage over me just because they weren't born deaf.

because being deaf is a disadvantage... you can't hear.

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

#184

Post by szierk » Fri, Feb 13, 2015, 3:01 AM UTC

aldordeah wrote: post #180

barrkel wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you follow the principle behind that logic, everybody should be blinded, deafened and crippled immediately after birth, reduced to the lowest common denominator, because otherwise they get an advantage because they weren't born blind, deafened, or crippled. If a free lecture provides benefit to someone, but forcing it to be captioned causes it not to be released, would you be happy with that outcome? It's the same…

The population of deaf people in the USA is comparable to the population of Asian Americans (ranging from about 1% to 4% by state in both cases). If an organization gave a leg up in life to everyone except Asian Americans (e.g. by covering some share of the education costs), would you be happy with that outcome? Now this really is the same principle.

No, it's not, since it's equivalent covering of cost for Asian-Americans and everyone else. That's an example of straightforward discrimination. This is demanding that an organization put forward additional specialized effort at its own expense for materials it is releasing for free.

Whatever your opinion is here, they are not the same principle.

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

#185

Post by hga » Fri, Feb 13, 2015, 3:04 AM UTC

justcommenting wrote: post #182

stolio wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are different levels of accessibility. The courses are still there, there isn't an audio captcha making sure deaf people can't read the notes, read the book (when available) or do the problem sets. This is nothing like an inaccessible sidewalk keeping somebody in a wheelchair from getting to the grocery store. And I'm only talking about MIT's OCW here, their edX courses are all captioned. OCW was scheduled to r…

As a longtime OCW donor myself, I definitely hear you but would still say we still have miles to go until we've made OCW accessible to all. I could see how OCW might not feel very open to the blind and deaf. I never said I supported the lawsuit or even its goals; but ignoring accessibility shortcomings for certain groups because of financial or other barriers sort of misses the point of aiming to make knowledge acces…

One problem is that, unless you're a deaf teacher, it was not in OCW's remit to make it's offering accessible to you.

Now that OCW has run out of its original block of money and is passing around its hat, that could of course change, then again it shows every sign of being only a step away from maintenance mode right now (all the mojo is presumably with edX, which OCW obviously helped to blaze a path to).

So it this "ignoring", or simply a trade-off in the face of limited resources? If you want the properly captioned option, what are you willing to give up to achieve that?

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

#186

Post by fpgeek » Fri, Feb 13, 2015, 3:04 AM UTC

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 took a look at the press release. At the top it I found: "Sorry, you need to install flash to see this content."

I understand how that happens, but, given the subject of the lawsuit, it's still very ironic.

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

#187

Post by chrischen » Fri, Feb 13, 2015, 3:09 AM UTC

The government should provide a the money for implementing a government mandated captioning. The company should be sued if they choose not to use the money to implement captioning.

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

#188

Post by burkaman » Fri, Feb 13, 2015, 3:24 AM UTC

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…

Well, I had to look up mendacious and invidious, but I believe you're claiming they're lying to provoke an angry reaction. It seemed pretty straightforward to me; they present the lawsuit, explain their interpretation of the law, explain the goals of the suit, and demonstrate why the current captioning system is insufficient.

The only line I had any kind of problem with was "No captions is like no ramp for people in wheelchairs or signs stating ‘people with disabilities are not welcome.’" I do think that's hyperbolic, but I understand the idea that these schools were given the resources to "build a ramp" and just decided not to. Regardless, it's not "thuggery", it's just a point of view I disagree with.

Where are the lies?

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

#189

Post by jasonwocky » Fri, Feb 13, 2015, 3:30 AM UTC

dougabug wrote: post #16

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,…

No good deed goes unpunished... This just makes it that much more likely that institutions will hesitate before offering free access to materials online.

> This just makes it that much more likely that institutions will hesitate before offering free access to materials online.

No, it doesn't "just" do that.

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

#190

Post by SeanLuke » Fri, Feb 13, 2015, 3:38 AM UTC

> The lawsuits, filed by the National Association of the Deaf, which is seeking class-action status, say the universities have “largely denied access to this content to the approximately 48 million — nearly one out of five — Americans who are deaf or hard of hearing.”

Um, what?

U Gallaudet itself estimates that the percentage of people with severe hearing loss in the US is 2%, half of whom are over 64. Functionally deaf people account for 0.4% of the US population.

https://research.gallaudet.edu/Demographics/deaf-US.php