It's the institutionalization of education that is being called out here, in that Harvard et al receive compensation (advertisement is a form of compensation - see: radio airplay) for these products and do not maintain quality standards respective of existing laws. No musician has to include a print out of their lyrics in the liner notes, it's a completely voluntary transaction without stipulation of such ADA compliance, in that the terms of the relationship are different than this case where Harvard is a 'service provider' of sorts (the service being the transmission of knowledge).

This is different than the occasional lawsuit trolling where a person in a wheelchair finds small businesses not in compliance with the ADA and brings a case...this is...well, an educational institution with the resources and capability for compliance, but they aren't complying. Seems pretty workable from a high-level standpoint to me.

Because the law embodies certain moral conclusions. The ADA is premised on the idea that businesses have an obligation to make reasonable accommodations for the disabled. At least in 1990, this moral conclusion was compelling enough that the ADA carried a 377-28 margin in the House, and a 91-6 margin in the Senate.

As an aside, to me, laws like the ADA are one of the things that make America great. It is a virtuous people that decides that the lucky among them should take on the burden of enabling the unlucky among them to live life as normally as their disabilities allow.

Should we in fact thell them "is it illegal to build a sidewalk to benefit much of humanity, without also expending additional effort to benefit the part of humanity that requires of wheelchairs"?

I think we should, because I think people with disability have the same right to move or to learn than I do. And accommodating to them is important.

All those countless millions living in near poverty in Africa and Asia and in that dingy corner of your city you never drive through... do you deprive them of a leg up in life just because you don't get closed captions?

that's not a world i want to live in; access to knowledge is foundational infrastructure.

"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.

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?"

I suppose it rests on the definition of reasonable accommodation which could range anywhere from "making the material available for transcription" to "full professional subtitles should be made available".

It sure was applied to buildings that were built before the ADA was passed.

And what videos of interest would those be? Ableson and Sussman's SICP/6.001 lectures come to mind, and some Feynman lectures I assume are that old.

"Or a private conversation that was published."

Well, aren't we about to find that out in the legal arena?

You're only escape is "private", which suggests it should not be published at all. Especially in a two-party consent state like Massachusetts.

That's according to a narrow view of "equal access."

Many people (if not a majority) have an entirely different definition "equal access." On this view, simply putting text or a video up on the Internet without captions is providing equal access: everyone is equally free to download and make use of that information, to the best of their ability.

If I am free to publish a video on my own accord without captions, shouldn't I be free to do the same with a video I've made with a group of my friends? And if this is the case, why not a group of my colleagues? Present law aside, I don't see why should I lose my right to do something just because I'm doing it as part of a group.

Just taking this and doing an analysis ...

A) The initial premise is that: one should make reasonable allowances, eg of low cost, to accommodate those who might otherwise be excluded from society in some way due to accident, genetics, medical conditions and such.

B) The subsidiary premise is that: this allowance should be provided as a legal right to those who would otherwise be disproportionately excluded from society.

I don't think that argument holds water against this initial premise. A group has more resources. Making multimedia content accessible isn't required of individuals because it's proportionally excessive. In the same way a small store might not be expected to fit a wheelchair ramp but a supermarket would be expected to (indeed floor level access would probably be stipulated at the planning stage if it weren't already by the supermarket corp).

To put it a different way: if one child comes up to you and asks for food out of a genuine need, you've got a truck full of food. You're probably going to feel morally obligated to feed them. Now suppose a whole country comes to you and says they need food. With that same amount of food you're not going to feel morally obligated.

So, it seems there is some cut off at which the available resources compared to the size of the problem make a difference. I think that is enshrined in the ADA in USA and certainly is in the DDA in UK law.

The final element then in the OP is that (C) Harvard and MIT have the resources and so should also carry the obligation.

I think this is actually where I don't agree. That whilst as a whole they have the resources, for this project they do not. The allocated resources for this project mean that if the obligation were applied to make release of videos require captions and braille transcripts and such that the means available would not be sufficient to continue the project.

An analogue question might be: Does a chain of tiny convenience stores have an obligation to put in wheelchair ramps in some stores even though for the specific store it would be an excessive cost relative to their income.

tl;dr I think it comes down to compartmentalisation of the institutions.

[Perhaps maxharris you're right but just need to present your argument differently?]

However, I do think that there should be more mechanism than the purse to persuade institutions to make material accessible to disabled populations -- but for major institutions only, since I'm not sure smaller organizations can cope with the burden. Perhaps organizations above some revenue?

If central government just gave them a stipend and didn't specify the projects it was to be used on then the argument you're supporting would perhaps have some mileage; but it's payment for a specific service. If the schools aren't making their research centres accessible or are unnecessarily excluding disabled people [from research related tasks/benefits/etc.] then, yes, this argument would be valid.

And I'm only talking about MIT's OCW here, their edX courses are all captioned. OCW was scheduled to run out of funding last year[0] and they apparently don't even have the funds to update their FAQ. I'm just saying you have to pick your battles.

[0] - http://ocw.mit.edu/donate/why-donate/#q5

I never said I supported the lawsuit or even its goals; but ignoring accessibility shortcomings for certain groups because of financial or other barriers sort of misses the point of aiming to make knowledge accessible to all.

edit: just noticed sensory references in first paragraph

Now that OCW has run out of its original block of money and is passing around its hat, that could of course change, then again it shows every sign of being only a step away from maintenance mode right now (all the mojo is presumably with edX, which OCW obviously helped to blaze a path to).

So it this "ignoring", or simply a trade-off in the face of limited resources? If you want the properly captioned option, what are you willing to give up to achieve that?

But for me personally, accessibility seems like something worth raising separate streams of funding for if it weren't terribly popular. In sort of the same way, I would've been thrilled if my donations to EFF could've been earmarked for their WIPO Treaty for the Blind work.

I understand the need to make trade-offs and don't begrudge OCW for the ones they've made, but I don't really see having to spend extra money for captioning, etc. as having to give stuff up. To me, it's more that the job isn't really finished until we've done it for everyone.

Without looking at the lawsuit (waiting for lawyers like the Instapundit to tear into it, he's big on non-traditional learning like this), I suspect the mention of MOOCs is bullshit, confounding perhaps a MIT Open CourseWare (OCW) offering with the edX ones you're talking about, which others in this discussion have ensured us are properly treated.

[1]: http://ocw.mit.edu/resources/res-6-008-digital-signal-proces...

[2]: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/8-851-effective-field-the...

Now if edX, contrary to everything we've heard in this discussion, doesn't do the right thing, they have a much stronger case. But that's not the case they're making in the PR thuggery, and I thank you for confirming one part of what I suspected.

And just to be crystal clear, OCW is pretty much out of money and mandate, it's mostly in maintenance mode (already past its budgeted life, now begging for cash). The best outcome of this is that such lectures will be picked up by edX and properly captioned. The more likely one is that they'll be pulled altogether, although we hope copies will be captured before that happens.

Is a dog in the manger outcome one you favor?

I understand how that happens, but, given the subject of the lawsuit, it's still very ironic.

If it makes it easier to have a sidewalk that would still benefit the vast majority built, sure.

Whatever slack I might be inclined to give to others, I am not inclined to give to Harvard. This is Harvard. If the brand "Harvard" means anything, shouldn't it mean going above and beyond the call of duty in providing educational services like this?

The civil lawsuit is a step above and beyond this, and I for one don't know that "poetic justice" is the best foundation for a legal regime...

Yes.

To prevent this exact line of thinking, laws exist. Not just to protect the majority, but to protect EVERYONE as equals, under the rule of law.

May I ask if are you saying that if I wanted to feed poor people, you would want to see me thwarted, unless I could feed every poor person?

In other words, if an organization only has the resources to do a little bit of good in the world, unless they can treat everyone as equals, they shouldn't be allowed to act at all?

In your scenario, you only have fixed set of resources and wanted to do as much good as you can.

I would imagine in that situation, to make things "fair" you would have some set of criteria in which a poor person could qualify for assistance.

As long as those criteria were objective (geographic, income based, etc) I would support your organization.

If you only wanted to help poor whites, or poor men, or otherwise discriminated against protected classes, then I wouldn't be okay with that.

To put this back to MIT and Harvard: They made learning accessible to everyone except for people who are deaf and those without internet access. The law protects the first group, and not the second.

Yes, I'm assuming an individual who has finite (but possibly significant) resources. Let's assume s/he wants to do as much good as s/he can.

Who determines whether some proposed action is sufficiently good, so as to allow them to take that action?

In your view, should it be left up to the individual, who wishes to give, or should the decision be someone else's?

For example, if Bill & Melinda Gates wanted to donate a great deal of money to help the poor, would you say that someone other than Bill and Melinda had a right to say how their resources may be distributed?

As a private citizen, wishing to donate their money-or other resources, I believe it should be left up to the individual to decide. There are edge cases, such as donating money to support illegal activity--such as "terrorism", or if the donation will be counted towards tax benefits.

Every undergraduate who's ever attended has been rather "privileged" in being able to do serious math (although in the post-Civil War beginning a common track had seniors ending with the calculus). Nowadays you must at minimum be ready to learn the calculus and do calculus based mechanics and E&M ... at the MIT pace.

MIT (and CalTech) undergraduates have to learn at a much faster pace than is the norm, a lot of material in a fairly compressed schedule of 13 weeks of instruction if I remember correctly as of the '80s. That's not believed to be good for most STEM students, but we at least believe there's a place in the world for institutions like MIT and CalTech. One meme is that a fair amount of what you learn will be obsolete before your career is over, but there's merit in learning how to learn difficult stuff quickly.

But we're talking about gross ingratitude here. That OCW is not perfect in this is a crime (literally, unless you think they can get away with ignoring a civil legal settlement or judgement), with a punishment requiring either removing the videos or spending a lot of money it and MIT doesn't have to perfect them under an inflexible legal mandate.

I again repeat, this is not going to end well. Especially for the truly deaf people this is ostensibly being done for.

I can't see how the right to individual free speech could be compatible with your view.

By the way, equality before the law means that the same law applies to everyone equally, regardless of social standing, race, etc. It does not make anyone equal in any other sense. Equality before the law does not mean that the law should make everyone equally good at hearing, doing math, playing basketball, dating, or anything else. Human beings are inherently unequal in every other sense but the law, and this is a fundamental fact of existence that can never be eliminated! Examples: none of us will ever have the exact same genetic makeup as any other (and it is monstrous to attempt to force people to attempt to do this). Nor will any of us have the exact same opportunities as any other (a man that lives in Kansas can't also live in Idaho at the same time; the people he meets and interacts with are determined in part by geography!)

You're forgetting the part where these Universities are taking public funds as well

As long as you're willing to pay for it, you can take this stance.

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 you from releasing the video. However, for large, well endowed organisations like MIT and Harvard, mandating close captioning of their videos is much more likely to result in them incurring the cost of closed captioning than in them not releasing the video.

By focusing on businesses, the law attempts to target those inelastic actors.

$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?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rear_Window_Captioning_System

I have no idea why it would be "even less if you do it yourself", unless you do not value your own labour.

I create captions for hundreds of hours of video every year - I know exactly how much work it can be, and, at the same time, exactly how easy it can be.

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.

The creator of a video has no more of an obligation towards the deaf than anyone else.

If I were uncharitable, I would suggest that such a discussion would serve only one function: that is , to create a distraction from the law 'as is'.

I'd prefer to assume your intent is to understand or construct a notion of morality. In that spirit, I offer the following question:

What is just?

I am visually impaired. And I have been helping people make the web accessible since 2001. If you plan it from the beginning, it's only a few extra yards, not an extra mile.

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'm frustrated and angry, but I run into all sorts of inaccessible things created for the web by people who use "difficult and expensive" as the go-to excuse.

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. If it's a lecture recording, well, workstudy students can transcribe it for you and caption it.

These are all things responsible educators do. Proudly.

So slowing down the video to half speed, means a half hour video takes an hour to transcribe. At a labor cost of $15.00 per hour, that is 25 cents/minute of video. Much less if it is off shored.

Edit: Would it be helpful if Google added a captioning interface to YouTube? That is, an adjustable playback speed (which they have now, but I'd like to see more speed levels), and a capture window where users (volunteers) could provide captioning of any video, including educational ones.

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.

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

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 awesome folks over at MIT and Harvard who are giving us this material for free because they are "not responsible".

I'd be a hell of a lot more proud releasing content that happens to be inaccessible to deaf people than never releasing anything at all because I'm afraid of getting sued under the ADA.

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.

Take a step back and look at the potential side effects of what the plaintiff is asking. If a university, with all their money already earmarked, is told that if they want to keep distributing free educational materials then they must pay to transcribe them, what are they going to do? A very likely outcome is that they're going to scrap their free educational materials program. It doesn't take a lot of foresight to see this.

Also, how do you define "widest possible audience"? Should the universities be legally compelled to translate all videos into Chinese as well? There are a lot more Chinese speakers than deaf people.

This just makes it that much more likely that institutions will hesitate before offering free access to materials online.

Nothing good will come of this.

Disclaimer, I'm MIT Class of '83, donate to OCW, and am beyond annoyed.

Doesn't matter if "MIT goes dark" if the servers are Google's or MIT's.

No, it doesn't "just" do that.

Not necessarily. They still aren't obligated to close-caption any materials for free — they just have to not provide any materials.

Keep in mind that these are recordings of a professor talking - there is no script, no captions exist already.

The choice is paying for captioning, or not releasing at all.

If they are unwilling to pay, which should, in your opinion, they pick: Not release, or release without captions?

I don't speak Hindi, I'll happoly outsource the translation of video to an agency that can do this for me.

Same with sign language, I don't know it. I'll happily outsource to an agency that can do the sign language translation.

Care to explain why you think I should have the skills inhouse to suport multiple types of accessibility when those skills can be hired in via a third party?

Can you see why this would have a stifling effect on giving things away for free?

What would be the net gain to the world - is it better to have only a few free things that are accessible, or have many free things, only a fraction of which are accessible?

Making things accessible isn't free. Somebody has to pay. Forcing the producer to pay will reduce production. It's that simple.

Personally, I caption the hobby videos that I put on YouTube, because doing so brings in far more views, both domestically and from around the world.

This lawsuit is literally about forcing the universities to pay to caption the educational materials they release for free.

That's actually exactly what they are saying...

(If I have the resources to make something accessible, and if I value making something accessible to deaf people over other uses of those resources, then of course it's a good thing to make it accessible. Personally, I think making these videos accessible would be a very good thing; I also think that, as long as it's reasonably feasible, the universities should . But the existence of deaf people does not represent any kind of a claim on my (or anyone else's) resources, nor a shackle on my behaviour; and if it does under current, it damn well shouldn't, and that law is unjust and oppressive.)

Edit: For instance, for Hobbes, that pretty much is the definition of the state of nature, in which everyone has the natural right to their own self-preservation and goals. The rise of sovereign power is often conceived of as the enforcement of obligations that override natural rights to complete liberty (through something that is probably even more properly called "thuggery" than deaf advocacy groups' political actions).

It just defends negative rights, instead of positives ones, not a lack of rights and obligations. See Isaiah Berlin's Two Concepts of Liberty[2].

EDIT to your EDIT: in Hobbes' state of nature, everyone has the right do to whatever one thinks is necessary for one's own preservation (including, say, killing others). For Rand, one has the right to not be attacked by others, even if that goes reduces the others' chances of self-preservation. The two are very different, and the latter does impose (negative) obligations on individuals towards others.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-aggression_principle

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Concepts_of_Liberty

> To destroy other people's access to a good because you have the power to, in order to coerce them into acting so that you receive such a good yourself, is wrong.

Sorry, Ms Parks, but you can't sit in that seat...

That doesn't mean we must agree with those principles, of course.

[1]: http://nad.org/news/2015/2/nad-sues-harvard-and-mit-discrimi...

What I don't see is a requirement for free courses. That would be ridiculous. Why would anyone want to make anything available if someone is going to come around and sue?

Instead of suing, why not start a project to automatically CC the videos, something like audio-recaptcha?

At least in that community, people went to a lot of effort to accommodate the blind and deaf. It was a bit before my time, but there was an ITS etc. wizard (who later was hired to do the TCP/IP stack for ITS) who was deaf, and a lot of the people in my social group learned a sign language to better communicate with him.

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/3038280?hl=en-GB

They find it unacceptable (which in the cherry picked examples is unarguable), and have made that a very significant part of their PR campaign.

Persuade people to help you, don't force people to help you, you'll get better results.

  "Discrimination is action that denies social participation or human rights to categories of people based on prejudice." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrimination)

[1] Not in this context; of course a visual communication discriminates among those who can and can not receive it, but what prejudice is there in just recording yourself talking?

Not all discrimination is based on prejudice, however.

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, and if so could a similar provision be allowed for educational institutions opening their courseware.

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

This is why we can't have nice things.