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A comment on A statement on online course content and accessibility.

Re:A statement on online course content and accessibility by malloryerik on Saturday September 17, 2016 @05:45AM (#12519864)
U.C. Berkeley has some fantastic classes online. It would truly be a shame to lose them. Many were clearly produced on shoestring budgets.

The Department of Justice seems to have received complaints mainly regarding absence of transcripts for audio or video content. Can't speech-to-text tech help?

Other complaints include poor formatting of pdf's. If the courses are indeed taken down, I can only hope that at least this starts a conversation about how to create smarter regulations -- regulations that cause less collateral damage.

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Re:A statement on online course content and accessibility by blackoil on Saturday September 17, 2016 @07:16AM (#12520060)
Would it be legal to have community created transcripts for all courses? Would not mind to spend some time doing so in lieu of free content.
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Re:A statement on online course content and accessibility by mkolodny on Saturday September 17, 2016 @10:11AM (#12520542)
Khan Academy gets help dubbing and translating videos from volunteers around the world [0]. I would also be happy to help.

[0] https://khanacademy.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/categories/20018602...

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Re:A statement on online course content and accessibility by xmlblog on Saturday September 17, 2016 @07:46AM (#12520123)
Would you want to be legally liable for content someone else may or may not produce when the best of intentions inevitably rub up against real-world time constraints?
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Re:A statement on online course content and accessibility by daenney on Saturday September 17, 2016 @06:18AM (#12519915)
Agreed. I've had access to a few of their courses, they're pretty awesome.

I know it sucks for people with disabilities and Berkeley should invest into making it accessible to everyone, but it would be a loss for everyone if the consequence of this is that their courses become entirely unavailable :(.

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Re:A statement on online course content and accessibility by SapphireSun on Saturday September 17, 2016 @07:16PM (#12523033)
I think your reaction is the law working as intended. Without the ADA, there is little will to go above and beyond. With the ADA, everyone is outraged that they have to go above and beyond and somehow find the resources to do it.
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Re:A statement on online course content and accessibility by extra88 on Saturday September 17, 2016 @10:21AM (#12520576)
Speech to text software alone isn't good enough, it makes too many errors, the DoJ discusses the evidence of that. Captioning video is basically a solved problem, through outsourcing.
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