The communication needs to be made accessible by the person or group who produces it. Not by some outside organization that goes around cleaning up other people's accessibility messes.

Fair enough. So you're saying that deaf people ARE a charity case, you just want them to be a charity case for the original content producer rather than a third party?

Yeah, that could have been clearer. Deaf people are 100% as deserving of this content as non-deaf people. They should not be treated as a separate group. Captions are a required part of the distribution, not an optional add-on. There is not "the real message" and then "the message for deaf people".

So would you rather they don't distribute it at all, if they can't (or won't) caption it? (Not a rhetorical question, I'm actually asking you.)

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?

this is a false choice; no one would credibly make that sort of claim about audio-only courses in podcast form or video recordings without audio. you're focusing on the economics, and that's fine, but the court is focusing on whether it complies with the law.

In their vicious PR http://nad.org/news/2015/2/nad-sues-harvard-and-mit-discrimi... they specifically call out a particular Harvard podcast.

No, it is not a false choice.

This makes no sense. What's wrong with outsourcing something you're not very good at?

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?

Outsource if you like, but at least pay for it. Don't make deaf people pay for something you gave for free to everyone else.

Should they also have to pay for translation to all languages?

All languages in the target society, I guess. If e.g. Harvard doesn't have much presence in Swahili-speaking societies, there's not much damage in not having the video translated to Swahili. But if you are giving an advantage to some members of a society over others, you're treating the others as second-class citizens. They might even feel separated, because they can't participate in something that everyone else has access to.

I'm kind of blown away by the down votes you're getting. I would be curious to hear why people are down voting?

If you want to give away something for free, why should you be forced to spend time and effort (and possibly money) to increase the value of your free offering?

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.