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Berkeley Removes 20,000 Free Online Videos to Comply with DOJ Ruling

reason.com

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Re: Berkeley Removes 20,000 Free Online Videos to Comply with DOJ Ruling

#3

Post by cm2187 »

I have seen the same thing happening in construction. An old building was being refurbished into some social housing units, and this building had a lot of storage space in the basement. But because the lift couldn't reach the basement, the contractors were forced to build a brick wall to block access to the basement otherwise it would violate disabled access laws. So no one can benefit from the storage space...

Re: Berkeley Removes 20,000 Free Online Videos to Comply with DOJ Ruling

#5

Post by velodrome »

The complaint was put forward by two employees of Gallaudet University - not students.

Gallaudet University is a private university for the deaf. I would like to point out that their videos are not friendly to those with visual impairments and they should have their videos removed for the same reason UC Berkeley has to remove theirs. Here are a few such examples:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffqU3mT4k1o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWdF7G1SrzA

Re: Berkeley Removes 20,000 Free Online Videos to Comply with DOJ Ruling

#6

Post by vorotato »

I'm sure if they asked the american public, or their students, or youtube, or anyone if they were willing to help transcribe educational videos they would have gotten the help they needed. It sounds more like a petty way for administrators to get back at people who just wanted to be treated equitably.

Re: Berkeley Removes 20,000 Free Online Videos to Comply with DOJ Ruling

#7

Post by skywhopper »

Assuming that Reason.com presented the facts of this case fairly (a rather generous assumption), rather than framing it as the DOJ forcing Berkeley to take the videos down, I think the fairer way is to say that Berkeley is refusing to make the videos accessible to the hearing impaired. Captioning the videos would be hugely beneficial to all users of the videos, not just those with hearing problems. I am skeptical that the DOJ would not accept a good-faith active project to caption the videos to allow them to stay online.

But the facts as presented don't make much sense anyway. I'm not sure I understand how withdrawing access to just Berkeley students and professors changes the ADA implications. Curious if anyone knows something about this.

Edit, here's the actual statement from Berkeley: http://news.berkeley.edu/2017/03/01/course-capture/

    we have determined that instead of focusing on
    legacy content that is 3-10 years old, much of
    which sees very limited use, we will work to
    create new public content that includes accessible
    features.... moving our content behind
    authentication allows us to better protect
    instructor intellectual property from “pirates”
    who have reused content for personal profit
    without consent.
Ah, so this is actually just an opportunity to reset some decisions made 10 years ago about how open they wanted to be with their content.

Re: Berkeley Removes 20,000 Free Online Videos to Comply with DOJ Ruling

#9

Post by Ar-Curunir »

skywhopper wrote: post #7

Assuming that Reason.com presented the facts of this case fairly (a rather generous assumption), rather than framing it as the DOJ forcing Berkeley to take the videos down, I think the fairer way is to say that Berkeley is refusing to make the videos accessible to the hearing impaired. Captioning the videos would be hugely beneficial to all users of the videos, not just those with hearing problems. I am skeptical tha…

Berkeley students have accessibility accomodations for each class.

I do think understand why all of the US should expect such accomodations. That's not a feasible thing for most universities to do (caption historical catalogue of videos).

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