Coding bootcamp broke the law. How to get into tech? | Hacker News Reader

Coding bootcamp broke the law. How to get into tech?

30 pointsthatdeafcoder28 comments

Got accepted to a coding bootcamp. Deaf, asked for ASL interpreters.

“We can’t.” I said, that's illegal. (I live in the US. ADA mandates compliance.)

“OK, we will work on getting you access.” So I paid them.

“lol, kidding! No interpreters - voice-to-text software instead!”

Oh hell no. But I had already paid. & maybe I was wrong?

Nope. First day of class, four hours of this:

"GodzillaYeah crazy Yeah like the class What are you going to Google Good morning Would you park music So I can count fast But just in case Or have an hour and a half two hours I think it's healthy right now near me Safe mode emails or talk to each other on slack make friends you guys help each other out the if you want to talk to me"

Tried two technologies: Google Docs voice-to-text & Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Dragon was a lil better; both were awful for someone relying on them to understand speech.

Other problems:

* Needed to keep window focus on the doc that the software was transcribing into. If tabbed away, software would a. stop transcribing (Google Docs) or b. transcribe into the new window (Dragon). So couldn’t work along w/ exercises.

* The software did not pick up what other students said; they were out of range of the mic. This is a participation-based class.

* Dragon is designed for blind people, so it can execute commands on their behalf. Great for them. Not so great in this situation. Remember how I said we were working in the command line? The instructor was reading out very basic but very dangerous commands such as `rm -rf.` Thankfully, nothing happened, but ugh.

~

tl;dr I had to drop out of bootcamp because no interpreters. Money refunded but I am filing complaints. They’re partnered w/ a university; fairly strict rules around ADA + funding.

Now I'm trying to figure out what to do. Have you ever been in this situation? What did you do? And how the hell can I get into tech?

I'm not deaf, but if you'd like, I'd be happy to do some pair programming with you over a chat client. We could come up with something appropriate for your skill level and see how it goes! I'm more of a back-end developer, but I do know a bit of front-end stuff. If interested, my email is in my profile.

Sounds like you had an unpleasant experience, but there are a few things here that make it seem like the bad experience is clouding your judgement.

1) It isn't the bootcamp's fault that speech to text software sucks. 2) What is the state of affairs that would have made the situation better for you? Either (1) they write their own non-sucky speech to text software or (2) they hire a whole new interpreter just for you and only for the duration of the camp. Neither of these things are financially or logistically reasonable expectations. 3) Bootcamps aren't a golden ticket into tech. Build your own portfolio of projects and you will be just as hirable as fresh bootcamp grads.

UC Berkeley had an online public library of lectures but it wasn't subtitled. When someone used the ADA to sue, Berkeley was faced with the enormous cost to either subtitle their entire library or take it down. Of course, they took it down, and now nobody can access the lectures. Don't be the person who burns down someone else's house just because you don't have one.

As a title III entity serving the public, the bootcamp is obligated to provide an interpreter:

"For people who are deaf, have hearing loss, or are deaf-blind, this includes providing a qualified notetaker; a qualified sign language interpreter, oral interpreter, cued-speech interpreter, or tactile interpreter; real-time captioning; written materials; or a printed script of a stock speech (such as given on a museum or historic house tour). A “qualified” interpreter means someone who is able to interpret effectively, accurately, and impartially, both receptively (i.e., understanding what the person with the disability is saying) and expressively (i.e., having the skill needed to convey information back to that person) using any necessary specialized vocabulary."

Source: https://www.ada.gov/effective-comm.htm

They could have complied by hiring an interpreter or even simply writing captions for the lecture, but they decided to violate the law instead.

Also,

> Don't be the person who burns down someone else's house just because you don't have one.

is absolutely disgusting. The ADA exists because, as a society, we decided to make life accessible for disabled people. One day you'll get hurt, and you'll learn how important reasonable accommodations are.

I'm accepting that the bootcamp is legally required to provide an interpreter. I'm questioning whether or not that requirement is a 'reasonable' accommodation. The bootcamp probably graduates around 60 people per year, this is the first deaf applicant they have likely ever had.

It may be reasonable for large institutions to have dedicated personnel for less than one percent of their customers given that their customer base is so large. That calculation becomes financially unworkable in smaller organizations.

The fact that you resort to ad-hominem without addressing the example is telling. It terrifies me that people endorse the de-facto destruction of a commons just because a tiny fraction of the population can't use it.

EDIT: Some have pointed out that saying an argument is disgusting is not ad-homanim. This is correct, and I was wrong to use it in that way. However, I stand by the second part of the last paragraph.

1) You can hire ASL interpreters by the day

2) "Your argument is disgusting" is not ad hominem

1) This is the best argument I've heard so far and has come the closest to getting me to change my mind. Conditional on ASL interpreters being reasonably priced and getting them to show up requires a minimal amount of bureaucratic rigmarole, then my above sentiment was wrong and ill informed.

If, however, this is prohibitively expensive then things change. E.g. A quick google search led to the hourly cost of an ASL interpreters being between $50-$145 per hour. Assume $100/hr, 5 hr days, 5 days/week, 4wks/month, for a 3 month program and the cost is $30,000 which significantly higher than bootcamp tuition. I don't think it is a trivial thing to force small companies to take customers that create losses in excess of 10K.

Of course, this also depends on how "small" the bootcamp is. If, e.g. it is a huge machine with thousands of students then this could be a reasonable expectation.

2) Yes you are correct. See my above edit.

Take it from someone who graduated with a degree in ASL and worked in the industry for a few years. That price is sticker shock for someone looking to schedule weeks of ongoing work...but hear me out.

90% of appointments booked through interpreting agencies are a two hour minimum. They don't usually have reliable, ongoing, weeks-long, scheduled work for interpreters.

Agencies are businesses. They will wield and deal to lower their price to make the sale. If you go through an agency, you can bet they have interpreters that are qualified. When you have this amount of work, you can strike deals that can lower that rate pretty significantly.

Assume that the median bootcamp price is something like $15K. Can you get an ASL interpreter for 3 months and 5hr days at that rate?

If it turns out that this can be done, I'll concede that the bootcamp was in the wrong and my arguments in this case were incorrect.

I was directly responsible for negotiating prices for ongoing engagements just like this (even more long term). For an engagement like this, we'd probably agree to $40 per hour. At 25 hours per week for 12 weeks, that's a $12k for a single interpreter for that engagement.

The interpreter we'd send would be qualified, but may not be licensed (which is fine and legal under the ADA definition).

You mentioned "reasonable accommodation" earlier, and I think what you're trying to argue is "undue hardship." So, you're the one that gave me numbers...

If a bootcamp charges $15k per student, and they graduate 60 people per year (you mentioned in another comment), that brings a revenue to $900k. Even if the bootcamp needed to pay $30k for one student to have a contracted interpreter, that's only 3% of their yearly revenue. I'm not a tax law expert, but I'd imagine you can also write off the cost of interpreting services as a business expense. It'd be pretty difficult to look at those numbers and see an undue hardship on their business.

Alright, given this argument, I am now convinced that it was in fact reasonable for the bootcamp to hire an interpreter, and the fact that they didn't do that justifiably opens them up for some kind of legal action.

I would like to edit my original post to reflect this, but unfortunately it seems like I can't edit it anymore.

Sorry to be hard on you, but thank you for listening to the debate and changing your view.

I'm not sure what state you performed this in, however it is very well known that ASL interpreters can not interpret for hours on end. ASL interpreters are actually paired at engagements and must swap at very short intervals (20 minutes if I recall). Thus any figures you cited must be doubled.

You are correct, for the most part! We'd always use team interpreting at things like conferences with non-stop speakers and very few breaks. As someone who actually did educational interpreting, there is a lot of downtime/student work time. So, one interpreter is usually appropriate in a setting like a bootcamp.

Keep in mind, profit might be 5% of yearly rev (not crazy for young businesses), in which case that would be more than half of their yearly profit.

The parent did address the issue, and did not make an ad hominem attack. The parent attacked the statement and sentiment where you compared compliance with a law, and making reasonable accommodations with the criminal act of arson.

Universities receive public funds to operate in the public benefit. Our society has laws to ensure that we don’t just leave people with disabilities behind.

If bootcamps can’t “disrupt traditional education” without providing the same social benefits and complying with the law, then that’s a house that (metaphorically) needs burnin’ down.

If society actually wanted to solve this problem, society would have agreed to fairly bear the burden using taxes. Instead we imposed a feel-good gesture that randomly blows up businesses.

The law you cited covers " title II entities (State and local governments) and title III entities (businesses and nonprofit organizations that serve the public)". I wonder what's the definition of a business that serves the public in this case.

IANAL, but I've found that "serves the public" usually means some business that is open to the general public.

UC Berkeley wasn’t forced into either of those two options; many other universities found a way to accommodate students with disabilities, including creating more efficient workflows by which items were only transcribed after being requested. I think it’s lazy and disingenuous for a university with a 4+ billion dollar endowment to make up reasons not to make these materials available to everyone and think it’s absurd to compare those requesting adherence to the law to arsonists.

Is UC Berkeley lazy and disingenuous? Maybe. Annual budgets are finite endowments notwithstanding. What programs would you cut to pay the translators? Did Berkeley make the wrong decision here? Possibly, I'm not a lawyer, and I don't have access to Berkeley's accounts.

I accept that arson metaphor was a hyperbolic in the sense that arson is illegal and requesting ADA compliance is legal. However, if the end result of both things is a net social loss, then the analogy holds in that respect.

> What programs would you cut to pay the translators?

This is a false dilemma. They could have tried any number of solutions tried by other universities, as mentioned earlier. They could have launched an initiative to give students course credit or other bonuses in exchange for volunteering to transcribe material. And they could have spent a tiny slice of endowment money to permanently achieve this goal; after all, that's what it's there for; the transcription of library material is a one-time cost; the upkeep costs would be minimal.

> I accept that arson metaphor was a hyperbolic in the sense that arson is illegal and requesting ADA compliance is legal

It's not hyperbolic, it's invalid. Requesting ADA compliance almost always leads to a net social gain (whereas arson always leads to a loss) and even when it does lead to a loss, that's not the fault of the requester (whereas an arsonist is always at fault for their actions); rather, it's either the fault of the lawmakers or the fault of a business that made up excuses for not fulfilling their obligations.

> They could have tried any number of solutions tried by other universities. > it’s lazy and disingenuous for a university with a 4+ billion dollar endowment to make up reasons not to make these materials available

It strikes me as strange that the administrators would just take down a library given a bevy of cheap and easy solutions and then lie about it. Is it possible? Sure. But unless I get some kind of evidence of that, my prior is to be very suspicious of claims like 'X is possible, cheap and easy, and the only reason someone doesn't do X is because they are bad.'

> Requesting ADA compliance almost always leads to a net social gain and even when it does lead to a loss, that's not the fault of the requester

Not obvious considering the frequency of [predatory ADA lawsuits](https://www.dailynews.com/2017/05/24/ada-lawsuit-abuse-remai...). In the case of large companies that border on public utilities I would agree with you. In the case of smaller companies the cost of compliance could easily be greater than social gain.

Every “don’t ruin it for others” argument ignores that there’s more than one person affected. The reason the ADA exists is because precisely that argument was used to preclude people with a wide array of disabilities from society.

The ADA requires reasonable accommodation by all companies. This means that you create a level playing field where no one company can undercut others simply by excluding a specific group of people.

In your case you’re basically saying that it’s ok for us to exclude deaf people from the tech industry. That’s not hyperbole. If one boot camp doesn’t have to support the deaf, then you cannot require /any/ to support them. That puts any boot camp that does support the deaf (or other disability) at a financial disadvantage to those that don’t. By the wonders of capitalism you either get “deaf people must pay more for the same thing” or “deaf people can’t participate”. This immediately adds an additional penalty to the deaf.

Also, if you’re charging 15k per course you can afford to transcribe lectures. People are talking about how much interpreters cost, but if you just transcribed the lectures, and made good reference material that would probably get you most of the way to compliance. As an added bonus, making those and your slides available would help people who have to use screen readers.

What about a bootcamp is enticing you? Why don’t you do this at a university in which it could provide for your needs? It would also provide for stronger credentials for you in your search for a job.

Have you found an ADA attorney yet? If not, I’d encourage you to do so.

If they’re partnered with a university, you could make a big stink and drag the university through the mud. I’m sure some media outlets would love to write about this. Start with an op-Ed in the university newspaper.

If you put the pressure on right, the university will drop the coding bootcamp partnership as quickly as possible, with a nice letter about how “deeply troubled” they are. Then file suit against the bootcamp and collect your settlement money.

Now, that’s not to say I advocate this approach... but it seems to be the MO of “activists” everywhere nowadays and it clearly works.

Never pay for education (for yourself). OK, for your kids.

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