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

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211–220 of 309 posts

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

#211
post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want widespread knowledge, don't make it impossible to give knowledge away for free.

Nobody is making it impossible. People are asking (by means of the public courts, as is their right) for equal access to that knowledge.

>People are asking (by means of the public courts, as is their right) for equal access to that knowledge.

"Equal access" is not free. If universities are given the choice of not providing free educational resources and paying shit-tons of money to provide free educational resources accessible to every random group that sues the university over the way these free materials are presented, universities will obviously choose not to offer free educational resources.

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

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

I'm curious, is it just as expensive to have someone produce a transcript of a video, vs. captioning it? Because I'm having a hard time coming up with the 60 dollars per hour or more figure. Lets say you slow down the video (using one of the techniques that doesn't alter the audio pitch), so that it matches your typing speed. Then you can transcribe it in "real time" (i.e., without having to stop, back up, and restar…

In practice, professional transcription requires 5-10 times longer than the source material, depending on its content.

Slowing down to half speed and listening to it once isn't enough. You need a first pass to write all of it down which is usually not done with simple playback at half speed (which isn't that easy to understand) but instead with foot pedal switch for pausing and rewinding. It takes much longer than the video (well, depends on the video - different speakers speak at very different speeds), and at least a full pass re-listening everything for proofreading.

Technical videos take extra time - you often need to take minute or two to clarify a single term that you don't know, verify that you're not confusing it with another word and that it's spelled properly; and during an hour-long video such terms and the required time add up The same goes up for surnames - it takes a second to blurt out "paper by Mumblemumble et al", and it takes much longer to transcribe that even if the paper can be looked up in other related documents (and not always it can). A single neccessary clarification + a few related emails to solve it already can taka half an hour.

Captioning is some extra work in getting sure that the written segments align with the speech - it basically means that you have to note the start/end information, usually it's done at the initial transcript stage by the play/pause switches (the software packages apply the previously played segment start/end timestamps) and then you need to adjust many of them in proofreading. Not really an extra stage, but takes more work and care.

Transcribing at double speed, as you propose, is not really practical. People speak at 130-180wpm. Decent typists usually type at 65-75wpm. At that rate you would barely manage to 'type what you think you hear right now', which is usable for some purposes not really a transcript.

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

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

I'm curious, is it just as expensive to have someone produce a transcript of a video, vs. captioning it? Because I'm having a hard time coming up with the 60 dollars per hour or more figure. Lets say you slow down the video (using one of the techniques that doesn't alter the audio pitch), so that it matches your typing speed. Then you can transcribe it in "real time" (i.e., without having to stop, back up, and restar…

You are way off. Standard charge for transcription (without timing) is 1 hour work for 15 minutes audio. You can try subtitling yourself and see how difficult your real-time idea is in practice.

http://www.universalsubtitles.org/en/

$60 per hour audio is in the low end.

http://www.transcriptionlive.com/pricing.html http://www.transcriptionwing.com/price.html http://www.transcriptionwave.com/pricing.html

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

#214
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 aweso…

You seem angry and you are constructing a false dichotomy. No one is arguing that content should not be released, just that content, produced in institutions which are recipients of federal grants, should be made available to the widest possible audience.

What is the standard by which we define 'widest possible audience'? Reasonable accommodation.

Your argument reduces to a statement that it is better for Harvard and MIT to offer this content without making an accommodation for certain individuals (of class D), because:

a/it is unreasonable for them to do so

b/certain individuals (of class A) benefit

It's an interesting argument, but one you've introduced no facts in support of.

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

#215

> 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 d…

I think this is their source:

"We estimate that 30.0 million or 12.7% of Americans ≥ 12 years had bilateral hearing loss from 2001–2008, and this estimate increases to 48.1 million or 20.3% when also including individuals with unilateral hearing loss."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3564588/

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

#216
post #33
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,…

I generally agree with you, but the counter argument would be something like, If you opened a soup kitchen downtown to provide food for the homeless, should you be required to install accessibility facilities (ramps, elevator, bathroom, etc.)? I know the law says yes, but is it what we want? Have the extra building codes discouraged potential altruists? I wonder if there's a government subsidy for that part of it, an…

The standard is reasonable accommodation. Having someone walk the soup to people unable to climb the steps might perhaps constitute reasonable accommodation and not be an undue burden on the soup kitchen (which we'll assume for the sake of argument to be the recipient of a federal grant).

The law is not as black and white as you make it out to be.

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

#217
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can only take my bet (and I used 3 years for symmetry, make it more like 1-8), if you take the whole thing, which includes there being precious few of those nicely captioned videos on MIT websites and Youtube channels. But, yeah, every video you will be able find on an accessible to the outside of MIT website will be perfect . Yea! BTW, MIT has rather nicely developed fine grained control over what can and can't…

I will take that bet, if you explain the odds you are offering.

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

#218
post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is making it impossible. People are asking (by means of the public courts, as is their right) for equal access to that knowledge.

>People are asking (by means of the public courts, as is their right) for equal access to that knowledge. "Equal access" is not free. If universities are given the choice of not providing free educational resources and paying shit-tons of money to provide free educational resources accessible to every random group that sues the university over the way these free materials are presented, universities will obviously ch…

You are arguing from an abstract position. The universities in question have already chosen to provide free educational resources and are now being sued to provide a reasonable accommodation to allow a subset of the population access to those resources under the aegis of the law.

Old joke:

A marxist economist meets a market economist at a conference. After listening to an exposition on Smith and Hayek he nods vigorously and says "Yes, yes! I know it works in fact but does it work in theory?"

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

#219
Here are the complaints for Harvard[0] and MIT[1].

According to the complaints, the relevant laws are Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and Title III of the Americans With Disabilities Act. The former deals with institutions that receive federal financial assistance and the latter deals with places of "public accommodation".

[0] http://creeclaw.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/2015-02-11-MI...

[1] http://creeclaw.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/2015-02-11-Ha...

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

#220

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?

For a whole lot of people, I think it's safe to say that the answer is yes: the deal is unbearable. I personally would not bother putting videos online if I had to go through some closed captioning hassle, and I doubt I'm particularly special here.

You can argue that people ought to be okay with the extra effort of closed captioning, but don't mistake that for an argument that they will be.

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