Hacker News Reader

Comment by jdreaver | Hacker News Reader

I don't like this type of precedent.

If I make a video wherein I teach some concept, but don't provide closed captions, and then distribute the video for free, am I discriminating against the deaf? If I knew I had to create closed captions, and then make a braille transcript, or maybe even make my video colorblind friendly, I just wouldn't make the video in the first place. I sympathize with folks with disabilities, and I applaud those who go the extra mile to accommodate them, but making it mandatory under the law seems ridiculous to me.

View on HN

When it comes to individual works, I don't see how this would have any bearing on your product. You're not beholden to the ADA in your creative works, from what I understand. Double the exemption for making something for free.

It's the institutionalization of education that is being called out here, in that Harvard et al receive compensation (advertisement is a form of compensation - see: radio airplay) for these products and do not maintain quality standards respective of existing laws. No musician has to include a print out of their lyrics in the liner notes, it's a completely voluntary transaction without stipulation of such ADA compliance, in that the terms of the relationship are different than this case where Harvard is a 'service provider' of sorts (the service being the transmission of knowledge).

This is different than the occasional lawsuit trolling where a person in a wheelchair finds small businesses not in compliance with the ADA and brings a case...this is...well, an educational institution with the resources and capability for compliance, but they aren't complying. Seems pretty workable from a high-level standpoint to me.

I understand that the law may not strictly apply to me. I am making a statement on the principle of the situation. I don't think MIT or Harvard should be forced to provide captions for their videos either.

Well, I think you're misapplying your principle in this instance. I think Harvard or MIT should have to provide captions in the spirit of the law that exists. It's not like the ADA was passed last year, so to think that the physical Harvard/MIT facilities would be ADA compliant but online facilities would not strikes me as a necessary coming to grips with the law as it's written. Hence the lawyers will fight this out and we'll probably get an answer.

For the purposes of armchair moralizing, who cares about the law as written? Pretend we're making the law, instead of deferring to the law as written. Should we in fact tell them "it is illegal for you to put out this material to benefit much of humanity, without also expending additional effort to benefit the deaf part of humanity?"

> For the purposes of armchair moralizing, who cares about the law as written?

Because the law embodies certain moral conclusions. The ADA is premised on the idea that businesses have an obligation to make reasonable accommodations for the disabled. At least in 1990, this moral conclusion was compelling enough that the ADA carried a 377-28 margin in the House, and a 91-6 margin in the Senate.

As an aside, to me, laws like the ADA are one of the things that make America great. It is a virtuous people that decides that the lucky among them should take on the burden of enabling the unlucky among them to live life as normally as their disabilities allow.

My understanding of the law is that a reasonable accommodation must be made when requested, not that everything must always be ADA compliant for all disabilities. One may conceive of different disabilities for which two reasonable accommodations might be mutually exclusive, so requiring two or more mutually exclusive accommodations to always be present is by definition unreasonable. Of course, it isn't impossible or unreasonable to caption a video; but it might be so expensive to caption all videos as to have the result that some just won't bother to post them. That would be unfortunate.

Take your stand to other disabilities.

Should we in fact thell them "is it illegal to build a sidewalk to benefit much of humanity, without also expending additional effort to benefit the part of humanity that requires of wheelchairs"?

I think we should, because I think people with disability have the same right to move or to learn than I do. And accommodating to them is important.

Do you know a disabled parent who says their non-disabled child shouldn't be provided an education unless they themselves also have access?

All those countless millions living in near poverty in Africa and Asia and in that dingy corner of your city you never drive through... do you deprive them of a leg up in life just because you don't get closed captions?

Sidewalks are infrastructure. Free online courses from MIT are not. They're a luxury.

so access to knowledge--most of which, it's worth noting, is massively subsidized by taxpayers in the form of grants and related overhead--is a luxury good?

that's not a world i want to live in; access to knowledge is foundational infrastructure.

If you want widespread knowledge, don't make it impossible to give knowledge away for free.

Nobody is making it impossible. People are asking (by means of the public courts, as is their right) for equal access to that knowledge.

>People are asking (by means of the public courts, as is their right) for equal access to that knowledge.

"Equal access" is not free. If universities are given the choice of not providing free educational resources and paying shit-tons of money to provide free educational resources accessible to every random group that sues the university over the way these free materials are presented, universities will obviously choose not to offer free educational resources.

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.

for equal access to that knowledge

That's according to a narrow view of "equal access."

Many people (if not a majority) have an entirely different definition "equal access." On this view, simply putting text or a video up on the Internet without captions is providing equal access: everyone is equally free to download and make use of that information, to the best of their ability.

If I am free to publish a video on my own accord without captions, shouldn't I be free to do the same with a video I've made with a group of my friends? And if this is the case, why not a group of my colleagues? Present law aside, I don't see why should I lose my right to do something just because I'm doing it as part of a group.

>"I don't see why should I lose my right to do something just because I'm doing it as part of a group" (maxharris) //

Just taking this and doing an analysis ...

A) The initial premise is that: one should make reasonable allowances, eg of low cost, to accommodate those who might otherwise be excluded from society in some way due to accident, genetics, medical conditions and such.

B) The subsidiary premise is that: this allowance should be provided as a legal right to those who would otherwise be disproportionately excluded from society.

I don't think that argument holds water against this initial premise. A group has more resources. Making multimedia content accessible isn't required of individuals because it's proportionally excessive. In the same way a small store might not be expected to fit a wheelchair ramp but a supermarket would be expected to (indeed floor level access would probably be stipulated at the planning stage if it weren't already by the supermarket corp).

To put it a different way: if one child comes up to you and asks for food out of a genuine need, you've got a truck full of food. You're probably going to feel morally obligated to feed them. Now suppose a whole country comes to you and says they need food. With that same amount of food you're not going to feel morally obligated.

So, it seems there is some cut off at which the available resources compared to the size of the problem make a difference. I think that is enshrined in the ADA in USA and certainly is in the DDA in UK law.

The final element then in the OP is that (C) Harvard and MIT have the resources and so should also carry the obligation.

I think this is actually where I don't agree. That whilst as a whole they have the resources, for this project they do not. The allocated resources for this project mean that if the obligation were applied to make release of videos require captions and braille transcripts and such that the means available would not be sufficient to continue the project.

An analogue question might be: Does a chain of tiny convenience stores have an obligation to put in wheelchair ramps in some stores even though for the specific store it would be an excessive cost relative to their income.

tl;dr I think it comes down to compartmentalisation of the institutions.

[Perhaps maxharris you're right but just need to present your argument differently?]

Why don't they simply set up a wiki for creating subtitles collaboratively?

Considering that the course materials in question used to only be accessible to a very small subset of very smart people who happen to have a very large money to afford tuition at MIT/Harvard, yes, that particular material is a luxury good.

The legal implications go to many schools, so I don't think we're talking about luxury in the context of two elite schools. I think we're talking about the inclusion of minority populations in publicly funded institutions of education, and just how much we want them in our society. Perhaps we do, perhaps we don't, perhaps it's somewhere midway.

Neither MIT nor Harvard are public schools, they are both private.

Yes, but they accept federal and state money, just like when the UC's accepted federal money and decided to submit on the issue of military recruiters on campus, because getting federal funds is voluntary and to the nearly arbitrary discretion of the executive branch.

However, I do think that there should be more mechanism than the purse to persuade institutions to make material accessible to disabled populations -- but for major institutions only, since I'm not sure smaller organizations can cope with the burden. Perhaps organizations above some revenue?

They both takes tons of government money (admittedly, for research, rather than teaching.)

Doesn't that parenthetical comment destroy the rest of the [small sub-]argument: because you paid someone for doing research doesn't mean that if they decide to make something else free to access that you have a right to make further demands of them.

If central government just gave them a stipend and didn't specify the projects it was to be used on then the argument you're supporting would perhaps have some mileage; but it's payment for a specific service. If the schools aren't making their research centres accessible or are unnecessarily excluding disabled people [from research related tasks/benefits/etc.] then, yes, this argument would be valid.

There are different levels of accessibility. The courses are still there, there isn't an audio captcha making sure deaf people can't read the notes, read the book (when available) or do the problem sets. This is nothing like an inaccessible sidewalk keeping somebody in a wheelchair from getting to the grocery store.

And I'm only talking about MIT's OCW here, their edX courses are all captioned. OCW was scheduled to run out of funding last year[0] and they apparently don't even have the funds to update their FAQ. I'm just saying you have to pick your battles.

[0] - http://ocw.mit.edu/donate/why-donate/#q5

As a longtime OCW donor myself, I definitely hear you but would still say we still have miles to go until we've made OCW accessible to all. I could see how OCW might not feel very open to the blind and deaf.

I never said I supported the lawsuit or even its goals; but ignoring accessibility shortcomings for certain groups because of financial or other barriers sort of misses the point of aiming to make knowledge accessible to all.

edit: just noticed sensory references in first paragraph

One problem is that, unless you're a deaf teacher, it was not in OCW's remit to make it's offering accessible to you.

Now that OCW has run out of its original block of money and is passing around its hat, that could of course change, then again it shows every sign of being only a step away from maintenance mode right now (all the mojo is presumably with edX, which OCW obviously helped to blaze a path to).

So it this "ignoring", or simply a trade-off in the face of limited resources? If you want the properly captioned option, what are you willing to give up to achieve that?

What I want OCW to be and what OCW set out to accomplish are not necessarily the same things, so in a bunch of ways it's unfair for me to have expectations that don't comport with theirs.

But for me personally, accessibility seems like something worth raising separate streams of funding for if it weren't terribly popular. In sort of the same way, I would've been thrilled if my donations to EFF could've been earmarked for their WIPO Treaty for the Blind work.

I understand the need to make trade-offs and don't begrudge OCW for the ones they've made, but I don't really see having to spend extra money for captioning, etc. as having to give stuff up. To me, it's more that the job isn't really finished until we've done it for everyone.

Some of these courses have "certificates" awarded for fees; and said certificates are the entry point to some businesses; just like the steep steps in front of the building.

And if you read the PR release carefully, no where does it specifically say one of those courses isn't properly captioned. The examples it gives of non- or poorly captioned items aren't even courses at all (http://nad.org/news/2015/2/nad-sues-harvard-and-mit-discrimi... which is a really nasty piece of work).

Without looking at the lawsuit (waiting for lawyers like the Instapundit to tear into it, he's big on non-traditional learning like this), I suspect the mention of MOOCs is bullshit, confounding perhaps a MIT Open CourseWare (OCW) offering with the edX ones you're talking about, which others in this discussion have ensured us are properly treated.

I am deaf and I specifically remember about MIT OCW from a couple years ago that, whenever I found something that seemed interesting and had video lectures available, the lectures didn't even have a transcript, much less captions. I went to their website again and literally the first course I picked lacked captions,[1] unless you count the YouTube-generated "love with a system age to have an with a system" as captions. It wasn't very hard to find another seemingly interesting course that doesn't have captions either.[2] Admittedly, after further inspection, more courses seem to have captions than before.

[1]: http://ocw.mit.edu/resources/res-6-008-digital-signal-proces...

[2]: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/8-851-effective-field-the...

For better or worse, OCW's remit was to publish materials about MIT's courses that would be useful to other teachers. Anything beyond that, like what you tried to do, is gravy.

Now if edX, contrary to everything we've heard in this discussion, doesn't do the right thing, they have a much stronger case. But that's not the case they're making in the PR thuggery, and I thank you for confirming one part of what I suspected.

And just to be crystal clear, OCW is pretty much out of money and mandate, it's mostly in maintenance mode (already past its budgeted life, now begging for cash). The best outcome of this is that such lectures will be picked up by edX and properly captioned. The more likely one is that they'll be pulled altogether, although we hope copies will be captured before that happens.

Is a dog in the manger outcome one you favor?

I took a look at the press release. At the top it I found: "Sorry, you need to install flash to see this content."

I understand how that happens, but, given the subject of the lawsuit, it's still very ironic.

>Should we in fact thell them "is it illegal to build a sidewalk to benefit much of humanity, without also expending additional effort to benefit the part of humanity that requires of wheelchairs"?

If it makes it easier to have a sidewalk that would still benefit the vast majority built, sure.

For the second time today, I can't resist pointing out that Harvard would, in any other circumstance, be rushing to tell everybody else about how important it is to be inclusive and scrupulously comply with not just the letter "as written", but the spirit of the law.

Whatever slack I might be inclined to give to others, I am not inclined to give to Harvard. This is Harvard. If the brand "Harvard" means anything, shouldn't it mean going above and beyond the call of duty in providing educational services like this?

In light of Harvard's rhetoric, it is reasonable to expect excellence of this sort. However, with respect to rhetoric about the spirit of a law, it seems to be that they ought to receive charges of hypocrisy.

The civil lawsuit is a step above and beyond this, and I for one don't know that "poetic justice" is the best foundation for a legal regime...

>Should we in fact tell them "it is illegal for you to put out this material to benefit much of humanity, without also expending additional effort to benefit the deaf part of humanity?"

Yes.

To prevent this exact line of thinking, laws exist. Not just to protect the majority, but to protect EVERYONE as equals, under the rule of law.

I think your comment is thoughtful and well-intentioned, but I find myself wondering about the seemingly egalitarian nature of it.

May I ask if are you saying that if I wanted to feed poor people, you would want to see me thwarted, unless I could feed every poor person?

In other words, if an organization only has the resources to do a little bit of good in the world, unless they can treat everyone as equals, they shouldn't be allowed to act at all?

> May I ask if are you saying that if I wanted to feed poor people, you would want to see me thwarted, unless I could feed every poor person?

In your scenario, you only have fixed set of resources and wanted to do as much good as you can.

I would imagine in that situation, to make things "fair" you would have some set of criteria in which a poor person could qualify for assistance.

As long as those criteria were objective (geographic, income based, etc) I would support your organization.

If you only wanted to help poor whites, or poor men, or otherwise discriminated against protected classes, then I wouldn't be okay with that.

To put this back to MIT and Harvard: They made learning accessible to everyone except for people who are deaf and those without internet access. The law protects the first group, and not the second.

Thank you – I genuinely appreciate the clarification.

Yes, I'm assuming an individual who has finite (but possibly significant) resources. Let's assume s/he wants to do as much good as s/he can.

Who determines whether some proposed action is sufficiently good, so as to allow them to take that action?

In your view, should it be left up to the individual, who wishes to give, or should the decision be someone else's?

For example, if Bill & Melinda Gates wanted to donate a great deal of money to help the poor, would you say that someone other than Bill and Melinda had a right to say how their resources may be distributed?

> In your view, should it be left up to the individual, who wishes to give, or should the decision be someone else's?

As a private citizen, wishing to donate their money-or other resources, I believe it should be left up to the individual to decide. There are edge cases, such as donating money to support illegal activity--such as "terrorism", or if the donation will be counted towards tax benefits.

If you can only do a little bit of good, you should do it for the underprivileged position and not for people who are already privileged.

With that attitude, MIT would never exist in the first place!!!

Every undergraduate who's ever attended has been rather "privileged" in being able to do serious math (although in the post-Civil War beginning a common track had seniors ending with the calculus). Nowadays you must at minimum be ready to learn the calculus and do calculus based mechanics and E&M ... at the MIT pace.

MIT (and CalTech) undergraduates have to learn at a much faster pace than is the norm, a lot of material in a fairly compressed schedule of 13 weeks of instruction if I remember correctly as of the '80s. That's not believed to be good for most STEM students, but we at least believe there's a place in the world for institutions like MIT and CalTech. One meme is that a fair amount of what you learn will be obsolete before your career is over, but there's merit in learning how to learn difficult stuff quickly.

If MIT is all about giving more privilege to the privileged, why did they start the OCW project in the first place? I submit that MIT actually wants these videos to be as accessible as possible, including captions. This is supported by the fast the many of the videos already have captions.

Indeed, and one of its initial and still strong missions is to bring the benefits of rapidly developing science and engineering to the world. As far as I know, the single biggest boost to health and material well being in the US occurred in the post-Civil War period, not much later when we got "modern medicine" as in antibiotics (although what they could often pull off with antiseptics and infection control was amazing, read a history of the Mayo brothers if you're interested).

But we're talking about gross ingratitude here. That OCW is not perfect in this is a crime (literally, unless you think they can get away with ignoring a civil legal settlement or judgement), with a punishment requiring either removing the videos or spending a lot of money it and MIT doesn't have to perfect them under an inflexible legal mandate.

I again repeat, this is not going to end well. Especially for the truly deaf people this is ostensibly being done for.

So, do good, but only to those whom I approve, or else don't do it?

Just writing this comment to approve (and follow discussion). I also would like to know parent's point of view.

What about the right to free speech? Do I have the right to write a book that might be hard or impossible to read in braille or not? Do I have a right to make a video without captions or not?

I can't see how the right to individual free speech could be compatible with your view.

By the way, equality before the law means that the same law applies to everyone equally, regardless of social standing, race, etc. It does not make anyone equal in any other sense. Equality before the law does not mean that the law should make everyone equally good at hearing, doing math, playing basketball, dating, or anything else. Human beings are inherently unequal in every other sense but the law, and this is a fundamental fact of existence that can never be eliminated! Examples: none of us will ever have the exact same genetic makeup as any other (and it is monstrous to attempt to force people to attempt to do this). Nor will any of us have the exact same opportunities as any other (a man that lives in Kansas can't also live in Idaho at the same time; the people he meets and interacts with are determined in part by geography!)

>"it is illegal for you to put out this material to benefit much of humanity, without also expending additional effort to benefit the deaf part of humanity?"

You're forgetting the part where these Universities are taking public funds as well

Nobody is telling them it's illegal to do so. Merely that they must pay for excluding the 'deaf part of humanity'.

> I think Harvard or MIT should have to provide captions in the spirit of the law that exists.

As long as you're willing to pay for it, you can take this stance.

Harvard and MIT receive (accept) grants from the federal government for producing their content. It's reasonable to expect that in making this content available, they will accommodate all taxpayers. IOW, I'm not sure you understand the principle of the situation.

I agree with you and find it immoral to compel MIT and Harvard to close caption their courses. This is because I embrace a deontological ethic.

If I were to be the devil's advocate however, I would say that the difference between you putting a video out there, and MIT doing it is one of elasticity.

The effort of putting closed captions on your informal video would be much too great and would be very likely to prevent you from releasing the video. However, for large, well endowed organisations like MIT and Harvard, mandating close captioning of their videos is much more likely to result in them incurring the cost of closed captioning than in them not releasing the video.

By focusing on businesses, the law attempts to target those inelastic actors.

> The effort of putting closed captions on your informal video would be much too great.

$1 per minute (if you farm it out) or even less if you do it yourself. In exchange you get 7-15% more views - is that really an unbearable deal?

Wikipedia suggests that it costs more like $40 per minute. For movies anyway.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rear_Window_Captioning_System

I have no idea why it would be "even less if you do it yourself", unless you do not value your own labour.

Captioning celluloid film is a wholly different thing to transcribing an online video - the prices are in no way comparable.

I create captions for hundreds of hours of video every year - I know exactly how much work it can be, and, at the same time, exactly how easy it can be.

As I understand it, Rear Window Captioning Systems specifically don't modify the actual film of the movie. That's their advantage over baked-in captions.

True, but nevertheless, I assure you that almost nobody pays $40 per minute for captioning, no matter what it says on Wikipedia.

For a whole lot of people, I think it's safe to say that the answer is yes: the deal is unbearable. I personally would not bother putting videos online if I had to go through some closed captioning hassle, and I doubt I'm particularly special here.

You can argue that people ought to be okay with the extra effort of closed captioning, but don't mistake that for an argument that they will be.

How do you defend that attitude to all the deaf people out there who want to know what you put in your video and can't?

How do you defend not paying from your own pocket to caption all the non captioned content out there?

The creator of a video has no more of an obligation towards the deaf than anyone else.

Not OP, but I would defend it with something similar to his statement above. Basically, I want to get the content out, and the extra effort (if required) would be enough for me to say basically "forget it". I'd rather get the content out and have a small subset of people not be able to access it, than not get it out at all. Certainly, there are other ways to make content available to specific user groups that requiring the original content creator to build it in from the beginning.

I don't defend it. Why would I? I have taken on no obligation here.

It totally depends on your means, your audience, your goals, etc.

So lobby to change the law?

Perhaps a good first step would be to have a discussion "For the purposes of armchair moralizing", not about the law as it is written, but how it should be.

Why? To discuss the law 'as it should be' invites nothing but a cacophony of opinion. On what basis could such a conversation proceed?

If I were uncharitable, I would suggest that such a discussion would serve only one function: that is , to create a distraction from the law 'as is'.

I'd prefer to assume your intent is to understand or construct a notion of morality. In that spirit, I offer the following question:

What is just?

Once you learn how to do these things, they become second nature. That's the problem though. People don't think twice about learning a new programming language. But learning how to caption videos, choose colorblind friendly colors, or turn transcripts of a video into something that's braile-display or screen-reader friendly are skills that are relatively simple to acquire and will definitely outlast whatever new framework comes out this year.

I am visually impaired. And I have been helping people make the web accessible since 2001. If you plan it from the beginning, it's only a few extra yards, not an extra mile.

It's not a matter of "thinking about it"; captioning is difficult and expensive, and if we force universities to caption educational materials they release * for free *, we're incentivizing them to never release these materials again.

HN is a community where people solve difficult problems for a living. So someone using "difficult" as a reason for something doesn't really fly with me.

As for expensive? I'll agree. Going cost is about $1 per minute minimum. And they're not releasing that material "for free." Make no mistake - it's either because they got a grant (that's what we face) or part of some marketing thing.

I apologize if it sounds like I'm frustrated and angry, but I run into all sorts of inaccessible things created for the web by people who use "difficult and expensive" as the go-to excuse.

If you are preparing a video for something online, you should be planning it and writing a script, which you can easily turn into a transcript. If it's a lecture recording, well, workstudy students can transcribe it for you and caption it.

These are all things responsible educators do. Proudly.

I'm curious, is it just as expensive to have someone produce a transcript of a video, vs. captioning it? Because I'm having a hard time coming up with the 60 dollars per hour or more figure. Lets say you slow down the video (using one of the techniques that doesn't alter the audio pitch), so that it matches your typing speed. Then you can transcribe it in "real time" (i.e., without having to stop, back up, and restart the audio). And it would easy to have the software record timing information (if the transcription is done real time).

So slowing down the video to half speed, means a half hour video takes an hour to transcribe. At a labor cost of $15.00 per hour, that is 25 cents/minute of video. Much less if it is off shored.

Edit: Would it be helpful if Google added a captioning interface to YouTube? That is, an adjustable playback speed (which they have now, but I'd like to see more speed levels), and a capture window where users (volunteers) could provide captioning of any video, including educational ones.

In practice, professional transcription requires 5-10 times longer than the source material, depending on its content.

Slowing down to half speed and listening to it once isn't enough. You need a first pass to write all of it down which is usually not done with simple playback at half speed (which isn't that easy to understand) but instead with foot pedal switch for pausing and rewinding. It takes much longer than the video (well, depends on the video - different speakers speak at very different speeds), and at least a full pass re-listening everything for proofreading.

Technical videos take extra time - you often need to take minute or two to clarify a single term that you don't know, verify that you're not confusing it with another word and that it's spelled properly; and during an hour-long video such terms and the required time add up The same goes up for surnames - it takes a second to blurt out "paper by Mumblemumble et al", and it takes much longer to transcribe that even if the paper can be looked up in other related documents (and not always it can). A single neccessary clarification + a few related emails to solve it already can taka half an hour.

Captioning is some extra work in getting sure that the written segments align with the speech - it basically means that you have to note the start/end information, usually it's done at the initial transcript stage by the play/pause switches (the software packages apply the previously played segment start/end timestamps) and then you need to adjust many of them in proofreading. Not really an extra stage, but takes more work and care.

Transcribing at double speed, as you propose, is not really practical. People speak at 130-180wpm. Decent typists usually type at 65-75wpm. At that rate you would barely manage to 'type what you think you hear right now', which is usable for some purposes not really a transcript.

You are way off. Standard charge for transcription (without timing) is 1 hour work for 15 minutes audio. You can try subtitling yourself and see how difficult your real-time idea is in practice.

http://www.universalsubtitles.org/en/

$60 per hour audio is in the low end.

http://www.transcriptionlive.com/pricing.html http://www.transcriptionwing.com/price.html http://www.transcriptionwave.com/pricing.html

>If you are preparing a video for something online, you should be planning it and writing a script, which you can easily turn into a transcript.

Please don't presume to tell content providers how they should produce content, or presume to tell them that a part of the process is easy. That's not up to you to decide for anyone but yourself.

>These are all things responsible educators do. Proudly.

Nice; insult the awesome folks over at MIT and Harvard who are giving us this material for free because they are "not responsible".

I'd be a hell of a lot more proud releasing content that happens to be inaccessible to deaf people than never releasing anything at all because I'm afraid of getting sued under the ADA.

You seem angry and you are constructing a false dichotomy. No one is arguing that content should not be released, just that content, produced in institutions which are recipients of federal grants, should be made available to the widest possible audience.

What is the standard by which we define 'widest possible audience'? Reasonable accommodation.

Your argument reduces to a statement that it is better for Harvard and MIT to offer this content without making an accommodation for certain individuals (of class D), because:

a/it is unreasonable for them to do so

b/certain individuals (of class A) benefit

It's an interesting argument, but one you've introduced no facts in support of.

>No one is arguing that content should not be released, just that content, produced in institutions which are recipients of federal grants, should be made available to the widest possible audience.

Take a step back and look at the potential side effects of what the plaintiff is asking. If a university, with all their money already earmarked, is told that if they want to keep distributing free educational materials then they must pay to transcribe them, what are they going to do? A very likely outcome is that they're going to scrap their free educational materials program. It doesn't take a lot of foresight to see this.

Also, how do you define "widest possible audience"? Should the universities be legally compelled to translate all videos into Chinese as well? There are a lot more Chinese speakers than deaf people.

No good deed goes unpunished...

This just makes it that much more likely that institutions will hesitate before offering free access to materials online.

Based on the breath of the demands per http://nad.org/news/2015/2/nad-sues-harvard-and-mit-discrimi... it sounds like just about anything that's vaguely formal, way beyond instructional video and audio. And since they highlight quality problems, albeit bad ones but of mostly silly/very limited utility content....

Nothing good will come of this.

Disclaimer, I'm MIT Class of '83, donate to OCW, and am beyond annoyed.

It appears that they're at least partially misunderstanding where the captains on youtube videos come from.... they're entirely automated voice recognition.

Aaah. But if those are official university Youtube "channels" or whatever they're called as they appear to be, does that matter?

Doesn't matter if "MIT goes dark" if the servers are Google's or MIT's.

> This just makes it that much more likely that institutions will hesitate before offering free access to materials online.

No, it doesn't "just" do that.

I share a similar viewpoint. Wouldn't it be a better usage of funds to donate to these projects for caption support instead of using those funds to pay attorneys? Why is it so hard to be constructive?

Agreed. Really, I do applaud people going out of their way to accommodate others. If I had just one personal, direct request to create closed captions along with a "please," you bet I would try to help someone out. But making it illegal not to do so puts a sour taste in my mouth.

To play devil's advocate, if you fund the captioning, fewer people will do it for free. But yes, the current option is distasteful.

> To play devil's advocate, if you fund the captioning, fewer people will do it for free.

Not necessarily. They still aren't obligated to close-caption any materials for free — they just have to not provide any materials.

Then how would the attorneys keep their job and fund their lavish lifestyle?

Deaf people aren't a charity case. The content needs to be accessible from the beginning, not as an afterthought.

That's a confusing sentiment. So deaf people shouldn't be given something for free, but they should get something for free "from the beginning?" Which is it?

The communication needs to be made accessible by the person or group who produces it. Not by some outside organization that goes around cleaning up other people's accessibility messes.

Fair enough. So you're saying that deaf people ARE a charity case, you just want them to be a charity case for the original content producer rather than a third party?

Yeah, that could have been clearer. Deaf people are 100% as deserving of this content as non-deaf people. They should not be treated as a separate group. Captions are a required part of the distribution, not an optional add-on. There is not "the real message" and then "the message for deaf people".

So would you rather they don't distribute it at all, if they can't (or won't) caption it? (Not a rhetorical question, I'm actually asking you.)

Keep in mind that these are recordings of a professor talking - there is no script, no captions exist already.

The choice is paying for captioning, or not releasing at all.

If they are unwilling to pay, which should, in your opinion, they pick: Not release, or release without captions?

this is a false choice; no one would credibly make that sort of claim about audio-only courses in podcast form or video recordings without audio. you're focusing on the economics, and that's fine, but the court is focusing on whether it complies with the law.

In their vicious PR http://nad.org/news/2015/2/nad-sues-harvard-and-mit-discrimi... they specifically call out a particular Harvard podcast.

No, it is not a false choice.

This makes no sense. What's wrong with outsourcing something you're not very good at?

I don't speak Hindi, I'll happoly outsource the translation of video to an agency that can do this for me.

Same with sign language, I don't know it. I'll happily outsource to an agency that can do the sign language translation.

Care to explain why you think I should have the skills inhouse to suport multiple types of accessibility when those skills can be hired in via a third party?

Outsource if you like, but at least pay for it. Don't make deaf people pay for something you gave for free to everyone else.

Should they also have to pay for translation to all languages?

All languages in the target society, I guess. If e.g. Harvard doesn't have much presence in Swahili-speaking societies, there's not much damage in not having the video translated to Swahili. But if you are giving an advantage to some members of a society over others, you're treating the others as second-class citizens. They might even feel separated, because they can't participate in something that everyone else has access to.

I'm kind of blown away by the down votes you're getting. I would be curious to hear why people are down voting?

If you want to give away something for free, why should you be forced to spend time and effort (and possibly money) to increase the value of your free offering?

Can you see why this would have a stifling effect on giving things away for free?

What would be the net gain to the world - is it better to have only a few free things that are accessible, or have many free things, only a fraction of which are accessible?

Making things accessible isn't free. Somebody has to pay. Forcing the producer to pay will reduce production. It's that simple.

Alright, then who will pay for it, either in time or money? You are free to go caption videos all you want, but why should people be forced to caption videos they make in their spare time?

No-one is saying that anyone should be forced to do anything.

Personally, I caption the hobby videos that I put on YouTube, because doing so brings in far more views, both domestically and from around the world.

>No-one is saying that anyone should be forced to do anything.

This lawsuit is literally about forcing the universities to pay to caption the educational materials they release for free.

The message I commented to was about the idea that suddenly "people" would be forced to caption videos that they had made in their spare time.

> No-one is saying that anyone should be forced to do anything.

That's actually exactly what they are saying...

Actually, all consumers of free online courses are charity cases. Deaf people are suing because MIT's and Harvard's largesse doesn't always include them.

MIT and Harvard's "largess" is funded in part by tax money collected from deaf people. Anyway, donating to a a discriminatory cause is still discrimination even if it is generous or well-intentioned.

What's the "discriminatory cause" you're talking about here?

It was hypothetical, but I guess you could say that donating courses only to non-deaf people is a cause.

So what about any charitable effort that discriminates on the basis of a protected class. If you can't do something for free to help one group without excluding some others no charity would be possible. Should MIT/Harvard intentionally avoid captioning? No. Should the government force them to use CCing? Hell no.

Your charitable cause is putting some people at a disadvantage then. If your charitable effort somehow must discriminate, it should do it in favor of the less-privileged group.

So, I should only help the bottom 1% and not help the bottom 2% - 5%?

I agree. There goes free online courses from MIT and Harvard due to the impending legal fees implied. Thank you National Association of the Deaf.

On EdX.org, where Harvard and MIT put many online courses for free, all course videos already are professionally captioned and accessible. The cited videos in the lawsuit aren't even course videos, they're promotional videos or streaming versions of conferences. Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, President Obama and Lady Gaga visiting campus for an event. - see http://creeclaw.org/online-content-lawsuit-harvard-mit/

This will just change all of it though.

Most of these videos are already being captioned. What's needed in large part is just higher quality captions. Nobody is shutting anything down for the mere lack of a better captioning system.

Which means you'll have just as much access to the knowledge as deaf people. Accessibility should never be an add-on.

Deaf people's problems are not my problems (except insofar as I choose to act on empathy I may feel), and making something accessible is a choice, and not something deaf people have any right to, nor I any obligation to provide. They are entitled to nothing (from me) I do not freely choose to give. They may have achieved sufficient political power to force others to do what they want, whether or not the other person wants to - but that is just coercion and nothing more than thuggery, and should be treated as such. To destroy other people's access to a good because you have the power to, in order to coerce them into acting so that you receive such a good yourself, is wrong.

(If I have the resources to make something accessible, and if I value making something accessible to deaf people over other uses of those resources, then of course it's a good thing to make it accessible. Personally, I think making these videos accessible would be a very good thing; I also think that, as long as it's reasonably feasible, the universities should . But the existence of deaf people does not represent any kind of a claim on my (or anyone else's) resources, nor a shackle on my behaviour; and if it does under current, it damn well shouldn't, and that law is unjust and oppressive.)

How does that even square? According to your initial premise, your problems are not deaf people's problems (except insofar as they choose to act on empathy they may feel), and they should do everything in their power to maximize their access, even if it costs you. If you want to live in the state of nature, everyone has the right to trample on everyone else. Mercifully, our social structure still is more in line with Rawls than Rand.

I consider Rand's political theories misguided, but it's certainly not "the state of nature", nor is that aneeshm's position. Claiming so is just flamebait, not having an honest discussion.

"Flamebait" was certainly not my intention. I may be naive, but what is the difference between a society comprised of people with no obligations toward each other and the state of nature?

Edit: For instance, for Hobbes, that pretty much is the definition of the state of nature, in which everyone has the natural right to their own self-preservation and goals. The rise of sovereign power is often conceived of as the enforcement of obligations that override natural rights to complete liberty (through something that is probably even more properly called "thuggery" than deaf advocacy groups' political actions).

Objectivism (Rand's philosophy) didn't defend a society comprised of people with no obligations toward each other. Like most libertarians/classical liberal philosophies, it supports the NAP[1], as well as defending the necessity of an impartial law system.

It just defends negative rights, instead of positives ones, not a lack of rights and obligations. See Isaiah Berlin's Two Concepts of Liberty[2].

EDIT to your EDIT: in Hobbes' state of nature, everyone has the right do to whatever one thinks is necessary for one's own preservation (including, say, killing others). For Rand, one has the right to not be attacked by others, even if that goes reduces the others' chances of self-preservation. The two are very different, and the latter does impose (negative) obligations on individuals towards others.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-aggression_principle

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Concepts_of_Liberty

Ah, those links refreshed my memory- I was incorrect in my edit- that approach more closely resembles Locke's state of nature. But thank you for showing me that Rand gets there from another angle.

Equally, you have no more right to Harvard's free videos than a deaf person, and Harvard has no right to government funding. Turtles all the way down, with that argument.

> To destroy other people's access to a good because you have the power to, in order to coerce them into acting so that you receive such a good yourself, is wrong.

Sorry, Ms Parks, but you can't sit in that seat...

That's not actually true, since a deaf person (or community) could pay to get them captioned. That doesn't mean they should have to, but it's not the same as not having the video in the first place.

I believe the point is that if a barrier to produce 'a thing' is raised, people will be less likely to produce more of 'a thing'.

You have a good point, but I would point out that deaf people watching a silent un-captioned video is more access to knowledge than watching no video at all.

Watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ei8fyGwsy1o without looking at the captions and see how much you get from it. You're not going to get much if anything from the video. Now, add a professor who will be turning to write on a blackboard, doesn't move their lips enough for you to read them, etc, and you can start to see how this is a real problem.

A precedent that big institutions aren't allowed to shut out disabled people? Sounds like a pretty reasonable precedent to me.

Wow to the downvotes on this. Leaving aside their toxic personal politics, they don't even know how to use the site. (This one can be correctly downvoted as meta)

I don't mind the downvotes really, it's kinda interesting to see how the wind blows. But damn, must it be frustrating to be deaf and see how how little thought goes in that direction, compared to the tears shed for Harvard ($32B endowment 2013) and MIT ($11B endowment 2013).

Not everyone stands by the side they consider more sympathetic; some people actually try to be impartial and apply judgment based on their principles, whether they benefit a big institution or a poor person.

That doesn't mean we must agree with those principles, of course.

The article doesn't specify who is suing them, whether it's a MOOC user or an enrolled student, and what lectures they're suing over. There's a big difference between a MOOC lecture lacking captions and required online lecture for an undergraduate course lacking caption.

All public online videos published by Harvard and MIT, including such gems as "video of students welcoming Lady Gaga to the Harvard campus".

[1]: http://nad.org/news/2015/2/nad-sues-harvard-and-mit-discrimi...

None of the plaintiffs are enrolled students, the suit is only about videos offered for free to the public. Enrolled students with disabilities (not just in degree programs but also those in single continuing ed. courses) do receive accommodations like captioning for course videos.

It sounds like it's talking about their MOOC offerings but it very ambiguous and could really be either.

I can see the requirement for actually matriculated students. (I wonder if they have to provide ASL signers in-class for deaf students and braille books for the blind.)

What I don't see is a requirement for free courses. That would be ridiculous. Why would anyone want to make anything available if someone is going to come around and sue?

Instead of suing, why not start a project to automatically CC the videos, something like audio-recaptcha?

The suit is not about access for students enrolled in Harvard or MIT college credit courses, they do indeed have accommodations: ASL interpreters, CART service (a person, similar to a court stenographer, types what's said where the student can read it), digitized text for the vision impaired, etc. Printing Braille is slow and the output cumbersome so providing digital text that can be read by text to speech software or displayed on a refreshable Braille display are much more common.

As a for instance of this, in the very early '80s MIT's EECS department put together its first really big computer lab. In the machine room there was a DECSYSTEM-20/60 (repackaged PDP-10 with a fast ECL KL-10 processor) and later 3 CADR Lisp Machines, across the hall a big open space with terminals for these machines. And in one small room off of that, a station with a keyboard and a Braille hard copy printer, which I remember being used by a blind student.

At least in that community, people went to a lot of effort to accommodate the blind and deaf. It was a bit before my time, but there was an ITS etc. wizard (who later was hired to do the TCP/IP stack for ITS) who was deaf, and a lot of the people in my social group learned a sign language to better communicate with him.

YouTube will already automatically transcribe and add subtitles to some videos, I can't comment on the quality though:

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/3038280?hl=en-GB

But it appears the people suing most certainly can comment on the quality http://nad.org/news/2015/2/nad-sues-harvard-and-mit-discrimi...

They find it unacceptable (which in the cherry picked examples is unarguable), and have made that a very significant part of their PR campaign.

Yes, this is exactly the thing they should pursue. This antagonistic tactic is disheartening. I mean, WTF, yes, contribute and provide CC, fansubs, whatever, but this kind of sue-happiness is a total turn-off.

Persuade people to help you, don't force people to help you, you'll get better results.

As a graduate from RIT, colleges definitely provide ASL interpreters in class for Deaf students.

Yes, of course that is discrimination. But it's only illegal in certain circumstances.

Well, I don't agree [1]. Neither does Wikipedia:

  "Discrimination is action that denies social participation or human rights to categories of people based on prejudice." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrimination)

Note the prejudice part.

[1] Not in this context; of course a visual communication discriminates among those who can and can not receive it, but what prejudice is there in just recording yourself talking?

Well it's wrong. Wikipedia's source for that definition is listed as https://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/discri... but it says: "The unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people, especially on the grounds of race, age, or sex."

The wiki article then contradicts itself right in the next paragraph:

Not all discrimination is based on prejudice, however.

Is this because they offer certification or degrees through these programs? I think you create something on your own with no measurable achievement it wouldn't matter. That's the only reason I can see this being a suit.

I generally agree with you, but the counter argument would be something like, If you opened a soup kitchen downtown to provide food for the homeless, should you be required to install accessibility facilities (ramps, elevator, bathroom, etc.)?

I know the law says yes, but is it what we want? Have the extra building codes discouraged potential altruists?

I wonder if there's a government subsidy for that part of it, and if so could a similar provision be allowed for educational institutions opening their courseware.

Absolutely, people will not buy / old buildings in buildings older than ADA passage date because there is so much money that needs to be spent to retrofit it to code. Building a new building is cheaper long term, but how can you start a soup kitchen to gauge demand.

The standard is reasonable accommodation. Having someone walk the soup to people unable to climb the steps might perhaps constitute reasonable accommodation and not be an undue burden on the soup kitchen (which we'll assume for the sake of argument to be the recipient of a federal grant).

The law is not as black and white as you make it out to be.

I agree. Perhaps someone should step in and make the closed captions, braille transcript -- a third party.

This is why we can't have nice things.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com