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.
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.