"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You're only escape is "private", which suggests it should not be published at all.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.
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.
that's not a world i want to live in; access to knowledge is foundational infrastructure.