Harvard and M.I.T. Are Sued Over Lack of Closed Captions

There are several lines of attack on this argument. The first is against your contention that these institutions enjoy no commercial gain. There are clear PR gains from offering these courses, both through engendering goodwill and increasing prestige. I am not saying these courses are offered only for PR reasons, but it is difficult to deny their effect.

The second line of attack is against your belief that free goods & services should not be subject to accessibility requirements. You use the example of a soup kitchen. Here I will digress for a moment and say I believe analogies are an exceptionally poor form of argument in civil rights contexts, which operate on abstract principles such as the value of equality. Thus an emotional appeal to our intuition about what is mean-spirited is unlikely to be useful. Returning to the argument at hand, we can question what is special about a free good or service which enables its exemption from accessibility requirements while remaining consistent with our principles of equality. So, I pass the ball back to you - what is your answer for this question?

A disservice to society is treating some people who, through no fault of their own, as worth less than everyone else.

> Giving them even a moment's doubt about the value of putting their knowledge in the public is a bad idea.

So you'll allow them to hold their data hostage to get special favors and exceptions from federal law? Where do you draw the line then?

They already provide wheelchair ramps, braille (and low vision) compatible signs, ARIA tags on their websites, door openers, all for free for anybody who comes to their campus; what makes their videos exempt?

That they have gotten away this long is them not paying attention to the laws; these lawsuits are simply an attempt to get them to follow the laws in the country they live and work in.

MIT and Harvard were not following the law; the lawsuit simply attempts to bring them back in line. Free videos or not. MIT and Harvard both provide multiple ADA allowances as part of the cost of doing business; I think the question should be why are they trying to get around this one? The ADA has a history of trying to resolve these issues directly before resorting to lawsuits.

> I see no cites that says Netflix lost another appeal to NAD after April 2015.

My mistake; they were approached with a new lawsuit, and immediately decided to settle; the settlement document from April of this year:

http://www.adatitleiii.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/121/2016...

It's not "clear" at all that there's value to put it up for them. They probably did it out of good-will, in which case the easiest option was to simply record the lecture. I don't think it's fair to imply malice at all.

So the solution is for them to give you a call, and you'll do it for a cut of the profit (i.e. free), right?

It's not a negligible cost to transcribe every single phrase the lecturer utters, for hours and hours and hours of lessons.

Would it be better if the captions were generated by Youtube? Come on, that system is not good enough yet.

It's worth mentioning that captioning services are provided for students with disabilities, but that infrastructure simply isn't a part of what was made public, and is only provided in those classes that have students with disabilities in them.

It's one thing for them to provide public access to exactly the same portal that students used to access the webcasts that are being made anyway, but an entirely different one to also a). Run the risk of expensive lawsuits on the university's dime, and also b). ensure that those videos are up to federal accessibility standards.

Edit: wording and fixing dictation errors.

First, let's examine the virtue of accessibility. We start with the observation that nearly 1 in 5 Americans are disabled[0]. The source provides a breakdown by disability type. 1 in 5 is a high enough ratio to appeal to purely selfish reasons for the virtue of accessibility: there is quite a good chance you yourself will become disabled and require accommodation, so you should advocate for accessibility while you are still fortunate enough to be healthy. Other reasons to support accessibility include improved economic output by including the disabled in the workforce, ensuring a path to success for exceptional disabled people, increased quality of life among the disabled populace (about which you may or may not care), and an appeal to the abstract ideal of equality.

Now that we have established the virtue of accessibility, let's consider the virtue of enshrining accessibility requirements in law with penalty for non-compliance. Clearly, not all services desired by the disabled will implement accessibility (an example is the topic of this thread). Of those services which do not voluntarily implement accessibility, does the government have any interest in compelling implementation? Your answer to this question will depend on your own beliefs about the role of government; to head off an enormous digression, we'll just assume that yes, the government does have such an interest.

If the government has an interest in compelling implementation of accessibility, to what services does this interest extend? Certainly not all; it would be absurd to require every favor or interaction between individuals maintain full access compliance. For our purposes here let's use a classification function unlikely to be controversial (and more restrictive than is practiced): services provided by the government, and services provided by institutions receiving money from the government.

Both MIT ($460m in 2015[1]) and Harvard ($656m in 2012[2]) receive funding from the federal government. Thus they satisfy our restrictive classification, and so services offered should implement accessibility measures subject to penalty. These free online courses are services offered by MIT and Harvard. Thus they should implement accessibility measures. They certainly have the means.

[0] https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/miscellane...

[1] http://web.mit.edu/ir/financial/re.html

[2] http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/12/30/sequestration-r...

It is clearly, unambiguously, discrimination. It might be legal (for the reasons I quoted around practicability), but that legality does not stop it being discriminatory.

To restate my final point: there is nuance here, and people are missing it. I'm commenting for the purpose of interrogating the nuance, because I feel somewhat mixed on the issue. For online course material that is offered to enrolled students and required for the completion of a degree, I do not believe anyone is arguing in opposition. However, the collection and publishing of course material provided to enrolled students, then sharing it for free to non-enrolled students is a different matter entirely. The free part is an important detail in this particular matter and its circumstances, and shouldn't be wholly ignored, or treated as if it isn't part of the equation.

> If the lectures were a dollar would you say that they're obligated to subtitle them then?

Possibly. Most likely, only if paying for the material and following the courses was somehow tied to earning enrolled status and credit toward a degree, though. Because at that point, someone is actually a student looking to obtain something in exchange for studying the material, the university is engaged in the activity for which it receives federal funding, and we would rightly expect the institution to treat them as students according to the law and all its glorious regulations that seek to provide all students with a level playing field. Giving the material to the public at large with no fees or strings attached--meaning no strings attached to either party--isn't something I think we should discourage.

> Or do you have a specific cost threshold before you expect subtitles?

There is no cost threshold on my mind, no. There is only the threshold of whether the parties consuming the materials are enrolled students seeking a degree at the institution.

> ... but they're also depriving disabled people of them ...

I'm not convinced this is true. The internet is full of freely available information from a variety of sources, much of it in video and audio form, and we do not have a longstanding debate centering on how much of the freely available information in video and audio form is depriving the hearing impaired of that information and should be made accessible. What's happening here is singling out a particularly easy target and asserting that they should be held to a different standard than all the other parties producing free, inaccessible content, and calling it "depriving disabled people" of the content. This stirs my something-isn't-quite-right detector, because we are attempting to provide a very narrowly scoped requirement onto a narrowly scoped party, on the basis of taking rules that inarguably apply to their services in one particular set of conditions, and applying them to another, quite different set of conditions.

> Also, are people forgetting that these are Harvard and MIT? The NAD isn't going to be suing your mom and pop website. Harvard and MIT can afford it and should be held to higher standards.

This is an argument from a pretty low set of standards, honestly. The ability of the party to afford increased accessibility sets up a rather disingenuous cash-gate on the issue, and completely debases the argument for accessibility into an argument about money. We're either concerned about establishing a proper set of guidelines and cultural expectations for making information accessible, regardless of its cost, or we're targeting entities with cash who are otherwise doing something we applaud, and saying because they have the means to do more, they should do more, and bringing the force of the state against them to compel them to do so. This is the kind of thinking that inexorably leads to crafting laws that target specific parties, leave open loopholes for other parties, and wind up subverting our intended goals by allowing those who wish to avoid a particular set of regulations and obligations by reorganizing under an uncovered entity type. We'd surely want to avoid such an outcome--even if it would help us better identify truly bad actors.

> I hate to use the word due to the anti-SJW frenzy the internet is in these days, but the ableism in this thread is appalling. No one is trying to see from the side of the NAD, with one user even suggesting that it just wants to line its coffers...

I don't think there is an appalling level of ableism in this thread. I am, and I think others are, trying to interrogate the issue from multiple perspectives, but we are coming to different conclusions (or are withholding conclusions) than you seem to expect. Perhaps that's because we're looking at the nuances of the circumstances.

From the NAD's perspective, I'm questioning and considering the affordances one ought to expect from information being made freely available in its original form, and what limitations can sensibly be agreed to exist--because it is insensible to expect there to be no limitations. This includes interrogating the alleged principles involved, and to what extent and to which parties they apply. When they don't apply equally to all parties, especially when they don't apply equally on the basis of one's ability to pay, I find the alleged principles reveal themselves to be suspect. This perspective, in particular, is the one in which the absence of affordances and obligations on information-releasing parties are felt most acutely. My lacking of a particular ability preventing me from equally enjoying informative and enlightening material is a bitter pill--especially if I can reasonably expect otherwise.

From the university and academia perspective, I am questioning and considering what reasonable thresholds one ought to be able to easily identify when releasing information in is original form freely to the public, or withholding it because additional accessibility affordances cannot reasonably be provided in light of the return on the time invested versus simply releasing the information. This perspective, in particular, is the one in which the force and burden of the obligations we levy as a society are felt most acutely. For instance, if a professor is teaching a course in which no persons enrolled have a disability, is the professor obligated to only use information which is accessible to serve the unknown contingent of internet consumers should the university decide to release the course materials freely on the internet? Are the lines only drawn at choosing videos with accurate captions? What about all the millions of people with other learning disabilities of some sort--what is the university obligated to do to ensure they are not "depriving disabled people" of this information? If other kinds of learning disabilities do not merit such affordances, why not? Why only this one or that one?

From the social and cultural perspective, I am questioning and considering what expectations and obligations we ought to hold in such cases for both parties, and how we should reasonably define these expectations for accessibility to as many people as possible and the obligations of implementation. Do we base our expectations and obligational determination on defining thresholds of sheer number of people who may potentially be affected by the lack of affordances? Do we only care about certain accessibility affordances, while ignoring others? Why or why not? We have, I think, passed the point of solving many of society's issues with hammers and saws. We now need scalpels. Much as medical science drastically improves outcomes by isolating bad things and eradicating them with precision, instead of simply removing a whole appendage, we need to pay attention to the nuances and rationally interrogate them to figure out what we think is best socially and culturally. If that's increasing the reach of federal disability law to cover information that is given away for free for the masses of internet consumers, okay. But we better establish some bulletproof and sane principles for doing so, and hold all information producers equally accountable. If we don't, then let's drop the veneer that we are holding all individual and organizational entities equally responsible and accountable, and admit we are instead targeting specific entities based on their perceived ability to pay for the increased obligation to be universally accessible.

Aside from feeling mixed in sum of all the above perspectives and not jumping to immediate and simplistic conclusions that ignore the nuances of circumstance, I continue to feel mixed because I think, as a principle, an accessible web is a better web. I hold firm to the principle that the more information people have access to, the better off they are, and the better a society is for providing this information as accessibly as possible to as many people as possible. However, I think there is also a somewhat disappointing need to include in our rational calculations when information producers, whomever they may be, are publishing that information as they have it, to put it out there, to share it widely with as many people as they can in the form it exists. Perhaps if we had better tools, we could abstract away the burden, then try taking the route of expecting entities to use certain technologies that alleviate the need to take on making things accessible on their own. If we make accessibility a social and cultural good and goal, how might that change how we produce information?

I agree with your point, however speech recognition likely resulted in the mentioned "inaccurately or unintelligibly captioned" videos ;)