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Coursera to combine with Udemy

investor.coursera.com

361–370 of 395 posts

Re: Coursera to combine with Udemy

#361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How accessible is the course now?

> How accessible is the course now? Entirely irrelevant. If a city has a public library, but refuses to build a wheelchair ramp, and an elevator to upper floors, and doesn't provide reasonable alternatives to these deficiencies, they can (and should) get sued. If the city then throws up their hand and says "Too expensive" and shuts down the library (everyone suffers), I will not be siding with the library.

Well, how much good does that do anyone?

But in this case, the complaint was that the transcription wasn’t perfect. Should they also be forced to take down the website if the speaker didn’t speak perfect English?

Re: Coursera to combine with Udemy

#362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I wrote something for my own use and decided to open source it and then someone hypothetically decided to sue me because it wasn’t accessible, I would say f%%%. them too and take it down.

> If I wrote something for my own use and decided to open source it and then someone hypothetically decided to sue me because it wasn’t accessible, I would say f%%%. them too and take it down. The difference is that they won't win in court. There's no law requiring you to make your open source work accessible - unless that open source work was part of a project for which you got federal grants. Sorry, but it's clear…

If the federal grant didn’t pay enough to cover making my project that I decided to open source accessible, I would still say f%%% it and take it down

Re: Coursera to combine with Udemy

#363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I wrote something for my own use and decided to open source it and then someone hypothetically decided to sue me because it wasn’t accessible, I would say f%%%. them too and take it down. The difference is that they won't win in court. There's no law requiring you to make your open source work accessible - unless that open source work was part of a project for which you got federal grants. Sorry, but it's clear…

If the federal grant didn’t pay enough to cover making my project that I decided to open source accessible, I would still say f%%% it and take it down

And you should. I'm not seeing the problem.

In the real world, though, when people ask for grant money, they justify how the money will be used. If you didn't put a line item for accessibility, and didn't budget for it, it's on you.

Re: Coursera to combine with Udemy

#364
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Those courses that were basically “we’re a top university and we let someone record the class from the back” were a literal life changer. Honestly, that was all I wanted. Does anyone remember what happened to UC Berkeley? They had a lot of their courses recorded and uploaded to youtube; an absolute joy. Then, some [beep] sued them for not making the recording accessible enough, i.e. not providing captions alongside…

> And they had to take down all their published courses! No. They chose to take them down, instead of providing reasonable accommodations to those with disabilities. Choosing to see everything in the most cynical light doesn't make that version of events true.

This is really a tragedy. Make millions of people suffer harm because 1 person cant be accomodated is about as pure an example of "throwing out the baby with the bathwater" as i can think.

There is no malicious intent here. Why arent these documents grandfathered in? It simply makes no sense.

Re: Coursera to combine with Udemy

#365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How accessible is the course now?

> How accessible is the course now? Entirely irrelevant. If a city has a public library, but refuses to build a wheelchair ramp, and an elevator to upper floors, and doesn't provide reasonable alternatives to these deficiencies, they can (and should) get sued. If the city then throws up their hand and says "Too expensive" and shuts down the library (everyone suffers), I will not be siding with the library.

You are being intentionally obtuse and completely ignoring any practical reality.

By this logic, because helen keller cant see or hear, we should eliminate all educational materials using written text and spoken word.

This is simply an insane, bad-faith take.

Re: Coursera to combine with Udemy

#366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How accessible is the course now? Entirely irrelevant. If a city has a public library, but refuses to build a wheelchair ramp, and an elevator to upper floors, and doesn't provide reasonable alternatives to these deficiencies, they can (and should) get sued. If the city then throws up their hand and says "Too expensive" and shuts down the library (everyone suffers), I will not be siding with the library.

Well, how much good does that do anyone? But in this case, the complaint was that the transcription wasn’t perfect. Should they also be forced to take down the website if the speaker didn’t speak perfect English?

> But in this case, the complaint was that the transcription wasn’t perfect.

This is a falsehood. The complaint was that some videos had no transcription at all.

There were other complaints, BTW - it wasn't just subtitles. There were complaints about blind people not being able to read the docs.

Edit: I think one of the (multiple) complaints was poor transcription. What I meant by "falsehood" was actually referring to an earlier comment that said something to the effect of "they provided subtitles". In some cases they did not provide subtitles.

Re: Coursera to combine with Udemy

#367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you somehow believe this kind of work is done in a couple of days, that's a good way to explain to the world how oblivious you are about the topic you are discussing. And, in turn, you appear to be oblivious to the point - the release cadence of this best-case scenario still means like a decade between updates to the project. C++26 was released 4months ago; pointless to update it until compilers and deps are upd…

> And, in turn, you appear to be oblivious to the point - the release cadence of this best-case scenario still means like a decade between updates to the project. It doesn't seem you are managing to think the issue all the way through. Even if you believe you can claim that release cadence is a factor, C++26 is the latest release in a process that outputs a new version every two years. Therefore, your argument would…

You'd come to correct conclusions if you attacked arguments not people.

Right now you don't stand a chance.

Re: Coursera to combine with Udemy

#368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I would never expect someone giving out a free service to spend extra money to make accommodations for me. And you should not expect all disabled people in the country to waive their rights just because you do.

So how did that work out for the hypothetical “disabled person”? Now they nor anyone else has access to the free content.

Edit: Just realized the library discussion was in another thread - but the discussion was still with you so I'm keeping it in this comment.

> So how did that work out for the hypothetical “disabled person”?

He didn't have access before, and he doesn't have access now. Nothing is worse for him.

It's not his responsibility to provide the service to others. It is the library's, and they clearly failed and are rightfully blamed for no one having access. If I were a normal person in the town, I would blame them, not the person filing the lawsuit.

If the library shut down because they had clear mold issues they refused to pay to fix, would you blame the immunocompromised, at risk person who filed the lawsuit? Or would you say the library should get its act together and provide a safe/healthy environment?

Imagine a school shutting down because they cannot afford all these new colored students that they could exclude before. Are you going to blame the colored students for insisting on their rights?

This is basic Civil Rights 101. You can't use the excuse of "we don't have money" to discriminate, which UCBerkeley was clearly doing.

> Now they nor anyone else has access to the free content.

Nothing is free. The library patron paid for it via taxes, as did everyone else. Just as everyone pays federal taxes, as did the person in another state who sued UC Berkeley. He's paying, and not getting what he is owed.

If you don't like it, just don't take federal funds. Many organizations' web sites are inaccessible, and that's totally OK and legal.

Re: Coursera to combine with Udemy

#369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, how much good does that do anyone? But in this case, the complaint was that the transcription wasn’t perfect. Should they also be forced to take down the website if the speaker didn’t speak perfect English?

> But in this case, the complaint was that the transcription wasn’t perfect. This is a falsehood. The complaint was that some videos had no transcription at all. There were other complaints, BTW - it wasn't just subtitles. There were complaints about blind people not being able to read the docs. Edit : I think one of the (multiple) complaints was poor transcription. What I meant by "falsehood" was actually referring…

Just doing a little research - I haven’t looked too deeply into- Google live caption has been built into Chrome since 2021 and there have been third party tools for accessibility since 2016.

But the overall question, is the world a better place now that the information isn’t available to anyone?

Re: Coursera to combine with Udemy

#370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how did that work out for the hypothetical “disabled person”? Now they nor anyone else has access to the free content.

Edit : Just realized the library discussion was in another thread - but the discussion was still with you so I'm keeping it in this comment. > So how did that work out for the hypothetical “disabled person”? He didn't have access before, and he doesn't have access now. Nothing is worse for him. It's not his responsibility to provide the service to others. It is the library's, and they clearly failed and are rightfull…

Did the federal funds cover making it accessible? Was the person suing a student or prospective student of UC Berkeley who couldn’t get in because of accessibility?

If the student had been blind and deaf should they hace flown someone out to personally communicate with them like was done with Helen Keller?

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