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If ramps are not available, does shutting down the building's access to the general public justify it? Does this benefit everyone/anyone in any way? I think that's the point the parent comment is trying to make.

I'm not from USA so I don't know how the law works there. I feel that the law should enable/empower/assist institutes like OCW/UCB to incentivise or help them to create captions for the groups that the law is campaigning for. What good is going to come out of punishing access to general public is something I don't understand. When someone does something out of their goodwill using their time and money you should at least help them to enhance their goodwill for your cause, in this case, the govt or NAD employing people who can transcribe the videos for a fee.

I feel the law is doing more harm than good to the general public.

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> I feel the law is doing more harm than good to the general public.

Seems like you don’t know how the law works (see below).

In terms of “good to the general public”: there are meant developers whose code you depend on who have various sensory restrictions. Since this is an Internet site, I’ll give an example of Vint Cerf. Aren’t you glad he was able to be productive, attend university etc?

> If ramps are not available, does shutting down the building's access to the general public justify it?

The ADA does not work that way. Nobody has to make prospective changes. But if you build a new building, or do significant renovation, then you must do that work up the the modern code, which includes ADA accommodation. If you rebuild the building entrance you must include ramps, modern crash bars etc. That doesn’t also mean you must add elevators, to other floors, etc. This is common in other countries I’ve lived in as well.

There’s an additional wrinkle: unlike MIT (the original OCW), the UCs are government institutions (specifically of California) and that adds more stringent requirements. A private business (like MIT) have more nuance: they both has to serve anyone yet can refuse service “for any reason” (modulo some constraints). Taxpayer dollars are supposed to be spent on things that benefit everyone. There are limits (ballots don’t have to be printed in Aramaic; speed limit signs don’t have to be printed in Braille) but it’s a good fundamental assumption. And all the UCs can afford to support their mission; it’s their choice to make a petulant point by withdrawing the OCW site.

The upshot is I don't like the ADA and hope it gets repealed or otherwise destroyed.

I've seen it do damage to both OCW content, and small restaurants, so I no longer support it.

I'm not from USA so yes I don't know how the law works in USA.

> The ADA does not work that way. Nobody has to make prospective changes. But if you build a new building, or do significant renovation, then you must do that work up the the modern code, which includes ADA accommodation.

But this didn't apply for the existing MIT/UCB courses did it? For any new courses, I might agree that the mandate might be necessary. But imposing this on older courses does not seem right to me.

Someone is doing something for free out of their own money and time. Someone else comes along, who has the power to sue and win, says that the service that was provided for free didn't include them and hence the rest of the folks who were beneficiaries of the free service should not benefit from it unless they were also benefited. It's one thing to ask for and mandate accommodations for things you pay for, it's another to ask for accommodations for a free service. I wholeheartedly disagree with this opinion and idea. Because of ADA's law thousands if not millions across the world are losing out on wonderful resources for education which might not be available.

On the one hand I can see some people do not get the benefit without captions while many people benefit from the free service. What the law has done is to accommodate the some, now no one will receive the free service. The intention behind the law seems noble, but the outcome does not remotely justify it. Neither party wins. Is there any benefit of robbing someone else's education because you're not able to get it?

> Taxpayer dollars are supposed to be spent on things that benefit everyone.

Again, not from USA. But if i'm in such a position, my questions would be why aren't there closed captions for which I paid tax for? Is the tax dollars actually budgeted for creating captions? What and where is the budget being allocated for govt institutions like UCs? From the univ's perspective, captions might be available for the students, but should/is there budget for accommodating the general public? Is there a budget split up of taxpayer dollars which mandates that univ's should allocate some amount for captions for the public (note- for the public, not the students who pay for the education)? Is there difficulty in hiring? And so on. But the way I see it as a general outsider is that a "law" has been put forth saying it should accommodate deaf people too. I'm sure UCs and other universities are doing everything they can to accommodate for disabled students, I believe they have zero obligation to do anything out their goodwill for people who don't pay for their services.

I believe the law pretty much backfired for whatever intentions it had.

> I’ll give an example of Vint Cerf. Aren’t you glad he was able to be productive, attend university

IMO this is the wrong example to give. Vint Cerf went to university which he paid for which would have probably accommodated for his disabilities. It'd help me see a better viewpoint of your side if you can cite examples of people who were deaf and benefited from the captions and significantly moved forward in life in comparison to Vint Cerf.

> Someone is doing something for free out of their own money and time. Someone else comes along, who has the power to sue and win, says that the service that was provided for free didn't include them and hence the rest of the folks who were beneficiaries of the free service should not benefit from it unless they were also benefited

You are wrong to say "and hence the rest of the folks who were beneficiaries of the free service should not benefit from it unless they were also benefited". That is not how it goes. It is simply "people with disabilities should receive reasonable accommodations to access the content that is provided".

> Because of ADA's law thousands if not millions across the world are losing out on wonderful resources for education which might not be available.

For you, it's a simple case of "it's the ADA's fault". Is it so difficult to think that it's {the UC, MIT, ...}'s fault for not captioning their material? Between providing captions and removing their videos, they chose removing their videos.

> Is there any benefit of robbing someone else's education because you're not able to get it?

It is terrible of you to make disabled people the villain in this story [1]. You say "you're not able to get it" as if that is inherent to the situation.

No. Deaf people can access the lecture if it is captioned. They are able to get it. The point of the ADA is to generate legal pressure to improve accessibility and create justice. I cannot say this is the best outcome, but it is an improvement on the previous situation where you (and countless others) were not even thinking about accessibility. Now you are.

[1] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EvilCripple

> "people with disabilities should receive reasonable accommodations to access the content that is provided".

I would agree with this if this is something that they paid for or is for govt services. Govt libraries/buildings/hospitals, definitely not for private services. And they do accommodate in majority of universities. I disagree that whatever is available for free should also have accommodations made for people with disabilities for which it costs extra for the person providing the free service.

> For you, it's a simple case of "it's the ADA's fault". Is it so difficult to think that it's {the UC, MIT, ...}'s fault for not captioning their material?

Yes I find it difficult it's their fault since they are doing this for free. CC is available for deaf students of those universities, where they do help them out. But I don't see why they should help out for a free service.

> Between providing captions and removing their videos, they chose removing their videos.

I'd wager that's the more economically easier route (and likelier outcome from a cost standpoint) considering that they don't get anything in return out of this goodwill in the first place and that it would cost them more either battling the ADA in lawsuits or creating the CC.

> It is terrible of you to make disabled people the villain in this story

Why not? I'm all for campaigning for equal opportunity/accommodations for everyone, for services we pay for, for services we are entitled to. For any free service, there is no obligation for the service provider to do anything to accommodate anyone unless they want to. The argument feels like someone who has peanut allergy suing someone who hands out free cookies/biscuits.

Also, the ADA's lawsuit and approach is the reason disabled people are being portrayed badly here, I'm not saying that the people are bad.

> The point of the ADA is to generate legal pressure to improve accessibility and create justice. I cannot say this is the best outcome, but it is an improvement on the previous situation where you (and countless others) were not even thinking about accessibility. Now you are.

What was the outcome? Restriction of access to all the courses available. Was that beneficial to the disabled people? I don't think so. Was that beneficial to the non disabled people? I definitely don't think so.

My disagreements and questions stand. Can you please answer my questions? Why is the ADA targeting a free service ? Who will/should bear the costs of the CC to be created for the free service that's provided and why? Why isn't the ADA collaborating with the govt/univs to enhance the free service provided? If you feel that disabled people do not have the opportunity to use materials because of lack of CC, don't you think that the actions of ADA has now resulted in opportunities being lost to everyone instead of a few? How is that a good outcome or even a win for the disabled people from the eyes of the general society?

I repeat again, the approach and the outcome of this is bad and unfavorable to all parties involved and has accomplished nothing for free services, in this case OCW.

> I would agree with this if this is something that they paid for or is for govt services. Govt libraries/buildings/hospitals, definitely not for private services. And they do accommodate in majority of universities. I disagree that whatever is available for free should also have accommodations made for people with disabilities for which it costs extra for the person providing the free service.

For the sake of your argument, it doesn't appear to matter whether the service is "free" or whether the service provider is charging. You reason that if it's not the government, then there should not be a requirement to provide "reasonable accommodation". Can you explain why it matters whether the service is free or not?

> I'd wager that's the more economically easier route

Well, of course. It's almost always cheaper to not build ramps, provide captions, hire interpreters, ...

> For any free service, there is no obligation for the service provider to do anything to accommodate anyone unless they want to. The argument feels like someone who has peanut allergy suing someone who hands out free cookies/biscuits.

What if someone is handing out free hand grenades? Again, why does it matter whether it's free?

For a better analogy, consider a local company that provides nice restrooms available for public use for "white people only". Along comes a piece of legislation that says you cannot discriminate on the basis of skin color. To remain compliant, the company has two options

1. destroy the bathroom 2. remove the discrimination

Suppose the company destroys the bathroom. You want to sit here and talk about how it is a free service and how does it help anyone if the company destroys the bathroom? Are you going to ask why this anti-racial discrimination bill is targeting a _free service_? If non-white people do not have the opportunity to use the bathroom, don't I think the actions of this civil rights act now resulted in opportunities being lost to everyone instead of a few? How is that a good outcome or even a win for non-white people from the eyes of general society?

I'm banking on the expectation that those questions sound absurd to you. If they don't we have too fundamental of a disagreement to carry on.

If the questions sound absurd, and you object to my analogy because there is no "real" basis for a bathroom being only for white people, then we can continue. You might think there is no additional effort required to make a bathroom more broadly accessible, and it's just a blatant display of racial discrimination. I hold to the analogy because you can be sure that a business will try to argue that it is more expensive to manage such a bathroom (perhaps claiming that white people are more economical with water, or whatever). We don't even have to go through such contortions if you consider that the bathroom has an automatic soap dispenser that is not reliable with darker skin colors.

The ADA is 100% a piece of anti-discrimination legislation. It exist because of advocacy effort foremost by disabled people, along with allies.

> Can you explain why it matters whether the service is free or not?

I think it matters since the service is being provided out of the person's goodwill and it will cost x amount of money for them in some way which would have already been factored into their finances which does not affect their budget. I also think its unfair and unethical to ask for the free stuff to be made accessible to <any sect> of people when the cost is not borne by the people asking for it (or the govt), when the cost is being asked to be borne by the person who's giving it out for free. I also feel free matters because you are entitled to a service you pay for, not for something you get as a handout. You can merely request to accommodate you, but if you order the person, the most likely outcome is everybody loses except the person providing the resource/service.

I find your questions absurd, but not for the reasons you cite. I find your analogy does not give an equal comparison to what we're discussing. If you would be open to rephrase your analogy to - two companies giving you access to the bathrooms, but no ramps have been provided for disabled people - then that makes better sense to me. There is a difference between allowing only white people (where you are actively gatekeeping the consumption of the bathrooms) vs having an open door policy to allow anyone, as long as you can go into the bathroom somehow. (The only white part seems a stretch since you can't change your color, but you can ask someone to carry you to the bathroom) This is how I see it, the disabled people aren't prevented from consuming the materials provided by the universities, they can still hire interpreters at their own expense to help them. The univs didn't say "hey i'm gonna provide only video lectures". They said "hey, here's a collection of video/audio/text lectures that you can have access to, go nuts". They didn't say "hey if you come to our univ as a deaf/blind/etc student, we won't help you".

I can think of another analogy. Lectures with just (text) notes and resources, would be discriminating against blind people but not deaf people, because the univs are supposed to provide text to speech software which can convert the text correctly to speech, similar to how the deaf people expect that the univs should be giving CC for the videos. But they are not actively discriminating against the blind, it's just the resources that they feel they can share out of goodwill. Now if the blind campaign against this as discrimination, the likely outcome is the univs paywall the lecture notes as well. Wouldn't this affect the deaf community? What would be the response in this case? IMO (might be wrong), the deaf community would feel bad for the actions of the blind community, where they could have used the opportunity to read the notes, but now have lost access to it. Conversely if the video lectures get paywalled, the blind community would feel bad for the actions of the deaf community since they could have listened to the lectures by themselves. Note that these are resources don't belong to the public/either community, they are merely accessible by the public/either community. Thus I feel we can't/shouldn't ask for accessibility help from the entities providing it for free. And if at all we do require help, I feel we should ask the govt to enable us to access the resources, rather than ask the govt to force the institutions to accommodate us (the institutions do accommodate when you are part of the institution itself). If anything, it is the responsibility of the govt to enable the communities to access the resources. Mandating it on the institutions to bear the extra cost for no return whatsoever does not seem to have the right outcome in any way for anyone.

I still feel the ADA is barking up the wrong tree for the wrong/mismatched outcomes or expectations. The intentions are right, the actions and the outcome of the actions seem wrong to me.

Another question I have is did the univs settle with ADA with money for the lawsuits? If yes, then ADA use that money to do something good out of it, say hire interpreters to transcribe the lectures? If yes, then great (also please do cite it). If no, then what did the lawsuit accomplish other than paywalling the content from the general public and ADA making good amount of money? The least I would expect is ADA using that money for the cause they are campaigning for. If you say/feel that ADA is not obligated to provide the service to help the deaf community, but only campaign for it, then the same logic applies to univs who do not have obligation to cater to the disabled community for resources they provide for free.

> I think it matters since the service is being provided out of the person's goodwill and it will cost x amount of money for them in some way which would have already been factored into their finances which does not affect their budget.

This also may be true if someone charges for a service. They may offer a service at a loss, for example.

As for the rest of your comment, I'm sorry, it's too long. If you can write less verbosely and ask specific questions, then I can answer it. If you just want to keep making the point that civil rights legislation targeting the civil rights of people with disabilities is bad, I'm not interested in continuing the conversation.

I admit I stopped reading when you suggested that ramps are not strictly necessary since a wheelchair user always ask someone to carry them. I cannot believe you are having a discussion in good faith.

I'm not interested continuing the discussion any further. Somehow you are making me sound like I'm the villain here unable to see the perspective from your side, when the least you could do is have a saner discussion than coming up with contorted examples.

I'm sorry, I don't get the feeling that you are having the discussion in good faith when the least you could do is read through my reply and answer my questions.

Re: being verbose, english is not my first language, if I'm not articulating things in a way that is comfortable for you, I apologize, I don't know how else to communicate it to you.

> For a better analogy, consider a local company that provides nice restrooms available for public use for "white people only". Along comes a piece of legislation that says you cannot discriminate on the basis of skin color. To remain compliant, the company has two options

This is a horrible analogy, and you could have done much more here to discuss in good faith. This is hacker news, open your mind and do better.

Provide a better analogy! Or at least articulate the fundamental flaw with the one I provided. This is hacker news, after all. If all people said was "you're wrong, open your mind", it wouldn't be a place with interesting discussion.

The ADA is civil rights legislation. I used a civil rights analogy. In good faith.

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