You are arguing from an abstract position. The universities in question have already chosen to provide free educational resources and are now being sued to provide a reasonable accommodation to allow a subset of the population access to those resources under the aegis of the law.

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?"

Just to clarify the position you're arguing for. A university has a bunch of existing videos that have been taken of lectures. Someone asks "can I put these online for free?". The answer should be no you can't unless you're willing to have them all transcribed.

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".

I think the law applies to new videos that are created for distribution online. I don't think it applies to videos created before the ADA was passed that are put online now. Or a private conversation that was published.

"I don't think it applies to videos created before the ADA was passed that are put online now."

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You're only escape is "private", which suggests it should not be published at all.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.

A building is not a video. An older private residence does not have to be upgraded to be ADA-compliant. A video which is intended for mass distribution should have some effort put into accessibility.