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Deaf man sues Pornhub over lack of closed captions in violation of the ADA

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Re: Deaf man sues Pornhub over lack of closed captions in violation of the ADA

#41

Post by ghaff »

tpaksoy wrote: post #35
aequitas wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find their CC to be pretty accurate most of the time with sometimes some words misunderstood. It's not perfect, but for me it often is very usable as aid in a noisy environment (mind you I have no hearing disability, just don't want to crank the volume to 11 when my kids are playing in the same room).

Until someone with an accent appears on the screen. And I don't mean someone from France or Turkey for instance. But Brits, and in particular Scots, usually break the automatically generated CCs.

TBH, even human transcribers have their limits. I often get transcripts of my podcasts. But if I have someone with a strong accent, I’ll often skip because I know I’ll be charged for a difficult transcription especially around technical terms and I’ll still have to do a lot of cleanup.

Surely the ADA requirement isn’t for a near perfect transcript.

That actually makes me wonder re podcasts and other audio. Is there any reason they’d have a different requirement or are these lawsuits specifically about video for some reason?

Re: Deaf man sues Pornhub over lack of closed captions in violation of the ADA

#42

Post by eesmith »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #28

This is funny (who cares about what do they speak in porn, really? I know some people learn German just to understand that but that's hardly essential for the experience) but there have been more alike case which were sad: universities removing (!) freely-available lecture videos as there were no subtitles (even those published on YouTube, I don't know why generated subtitles wouldn't qualify).

And here I thought it was Swedish - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPf3kO-p7hc (link to a clip from "Stripes" where John Candy's character speaks some Swedish, learned from watching porn).

Oh, perhaps that was back in the 1980s?

Re: Deaf man sues Pornhub over lack of closed captions in violation of the ADA

#43

Post by uncle_j »

lowdose wrote: post #40
michaelt wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the performance of Google's auto-captioning, I suspect developing worthwhile auto-captioning is pretty difficult; according to [1] the better Youtube channels use gig economy captioning at $1 per minute. Of course, there would be some scope for efficiency - no need to pay for captioning when the performers aren't speaking! [1] https://www.wired.com/story/problem-with-youtubes-terrible-c...

While Youtube auto captioning has a superior performance compared to Google Translate output. In youtube translations there is much more language specific nuance. In many European languages a more formal word for the English word "you" exists, in German it is "Sie", French "Vous". Correct interpretations of these nuances are applied by Youtube, Google however translates "you" by default to the most formal option. So…

Youtube auto captioning doesn't work for British Accents especially anything Northern English, Scottish or Welsh.

The same with any voice control, It doesn't work with my west country accent.

Re: Deaf man sues Pornhub over lack of closed captions in violation of the ADA

#45

Post by buboard »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #30
buboard wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

spoiler alert they never do.

Perhaps they do but we can't see that because PornHub doesn't have the full movies. E.g. I've actually done both the jobs once when I was a [real] cable worker.

thats a good point. always a cliffhanger

Re: Deaf man sues Pornhub over lack of closed captions in violation of the ADA

#46

Post by jeroenhd »

jascii wrote: post #18
tw1010 wrote: post #11

Curious: why isn't all porn sites sued for this? I don't quite get why they're only going after PH? Is it because it's harder to win a case against 1000 websites? Is it because it's more overhead to go after multiple sites and they expect the biggest return on investment only going after the biggest one? Anyone smarter than me who has a take?

Precedent: a conviction against one will encourage the others to do the right thing while avoiding the cost of having 1000's of defendants.

If "doing the right thing" means banning videos from all online platforms except those with the capability to automatically translate sound into subtitles, I'd rather they don't do the "right thing". The end result will be lawsuit money for a few disabled people and the end of most alternative video platforms.

Re: Deaf man sues Pornhub over lack of closed captions in violation of the ADA

#47

Post by iso1210 »

logicchains wrote: post #23
iso1210 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, just like if a company doesn't have the technology to keep its workers safe, it must stop putting them at risk

I don't see the similarity. If we go from blind people suffering from not having access to the audio transcription, to everybody suffering from not having access to either the audio or video (because all the videos were taken down), isn't that a lose-lose for everybody? In worker protection at least the workers win from having more safety.

That's the whole point of disability legislation across the world, including the ADA

If I were to build a new shopping centre, but decided not to put in wheelchair access, would you argue that everyone will suffer from not having access to the shops, and thus it's a lose-lose for everyone?

Re: Deaf man sues Pornhub over lack of closed captions in violation of the ADA

#48

Post by StevePerkins »

michaelt wrote: post #33
qwerty456127 wrote: post #28

This is funny (who cares about what do they speak in porn, really? I know some people learn German just to understand that but that's hardly essential for the experience) but there have been more alike case which were sad: universities removing (!) freely-available lecture videos as there were no subtitles (even those published on YouTube, I don't know why generated subtitles wouldn't qualify).

> who cares about what do they speak in porn, really? The article says one of the videos in the complaint was "hot step aunt" If you remove the audio from incest porn, doesn't that turn it into regular vanilla porn?

Yes, thankfully.

Re: Deaf man sues Pornhub over lack of closed captions in violation of the ADA

#49

Post by PudgePacket »

pyr0hu wrote: post #14
Beltiras wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It must be because I have worked with advocates for disabled people. I don't see the funny aspect. I'm glad for the laws. Either they apply or they do not. Either our hearing-disabled brothers and sisters are equal or they are not. It's juvenile to somehow factor porn out and say it shouldn't count there.

Yeah, but what about the case that @threatofrain mentioned? If a company has no resources to auto-generate CCs for every video uploaded, then it should be punished and sued? (Of course this case does not apply to PH)

I think in real life these things are on a sliding scale, similar to business obligations as the business grows in $ and employee count.

So if the mum & pop corner store has a video on their site without captions it'll slide, but if a bank doesn't have captions they're in trouble.

Re: Deaf man sues Pornhub over lack of closed captions in violation of the ADA

#50

Post by dbetteridge »

Honest question here If you are building a system that is focused on a specific audience, i.e you're building a video site not intended for those with disabilities, how does that work?

Can you be forced to provide additional content outside of your systems intended use case?

We build sites to meet WCAG standards when doing Government work, but for other sites that are personal/startup projects do these same rules apply and if so why do they apply?

As a somewhat contrived example, are Spotify required to provide captions/lyrics with each song they stream?

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