The idea that in 2007 anyone thought that all the videos your school would post online would have to be accessible to hearing-impaired users is simply inaccurate.
Among the problems that go beyond simple captioning of voice:
"many videos did not provide an alternative way to access images or visual information (e.g., graphs, charts, animations, or urls on slides)"
"videos containing text sometimes had poor color contrast"
"information was sometimes conveyed using color alone"
"some documents were not formatted properly for use with screen readers"
"page structural elements were not always defined"
"some tables did not have row and column headers defined"
"math equations were not always defined in a comprehendible way" (Not sure if any math classes, texts, articles, etc at all pass are capable of passing this new court defined test for everyone.)
"Many PDFs either did not have a tag structure defined or the tag structure was incorrect."
"Some links were not keyboard accessible and did not indicate whether they were expandable or collapsible"
So the court set a very high bar schools and perhaps others must pass in order to be legally allowed to post content on line. Content must not be merely accessible but must be what the government now calls "entirely accessible". By this decision this can be seen to cover a comprehensive set of ideals that go far beyond voice transcriptions, and which by the standards of the court seem to be required to be implemented perfectly without any errors or omissions to pass the standard required by their reading of the ADA.
Second, why do you deny that anyone had thought of deaf accessibility when the videos were first uploaded? Subtitling and sign language accommodation are not new things, it was entirely foreseeable that there would be both demand for such accommodations and that standards for adding caption data to online video would emerge.
There may not have been litigation or guidance on ADA implementation in place at that time, but you shouldn't need a rule to be in place before you spend money on doing the right thing when the spirit of the law (maximizing accessibility) is clear and the demand and technical requirements of the task are obvious.
It should have been on UCB's to-do list from the day after the videos were uploaded in the first place. To have it otherwise is to say that deaf people don't matter.
I don't think anyone believes that meeting ADA regulations is cheap; the fact that Berkeley (and Harvard and MIT [0]) are in this predicament shows that the cost of producing accessible video is non-trivial. But it's the law, and advocacy groups would argue that the burden shouldn't be on the individual professor, but on the institution, or rather, the federal agencies to provide adequate funding to meet the burden imposed by law.
If institutions aren't forced to realize the costs, then they aren't incentivized to pressure government budget/policymakers to make ADA funding a priority, which neuters the protections that ADA was created for in the first place.
Again, it's costly, but that's the monetary price our civic society pays when it decides to extend protections to those who are disabled. Presumably, the ADA was passed because legislators and constituents thought that the price was worth it.
[0] http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2016/2/25/harvard-lawsuit-...
That over burdened professor was offered help, and s/he had to sign a declaration to say s/he was aware of the help provided by Berkeley, and that the content was accessible.
https://news.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/2016-08...
Pages 3 and 4:
> UC Berkeley’s faculty creates and publishes courses for the public on UC BerkeleyX. Faculty developing UC BerkeleyX courses can, but are not required to, develop courses in collaboration with the Berkeley Resource Center for Online Education (BRCOE). BRCOE follows best practices in design for accessibility and also has a quality assurance process that includes deploying various accessibility evaluators; remediating layout, page structure, downloadable or styling accessibility barriers; and obtaining transcripts of all audio and video files associated with a course.
> Prior to July 1, 2015, UC Berkeley also allowed faculty and instructors to design, develop and publish courses through a self-service model, which did not include support from BRCOE. Beginning July 1, 2015, UC Berkeley advised the Department that all faculty using the selfservice model will be asked to sign off on a list of accessibility resource reviews prior to publishing the course. The sign-off statements include:
i) I build a building and then someone passes a law and I have to modify my building to make it accessible.
ii) A law is passed. A decade later I build a building, and I see the law and think it's a good thing and tell my architects and builders to make sure they comply with the law and I offer them support to understand the law, and they sign a document to say "Yep, we complied with that law", and it turns out that they lied and my new building is not compliant with the law and I have to add a ramp anyway.
The Berkeley situation is more like ii than i.
Why did Berkeley require those declarations to be signed if they didn't care about accessibility?
looks around who said that they didn't?
So expecting such affordances for ADA purposes in 2007 seems reasonable.