[idiot_stick]

>How is society improved by taking them down?

First of all, I agree with you. I think most others do as well.

The problem is, we can look at a case like this and say, "Obviously we shouldn't lose access to this." Then there's a next time, and a next time, and a next time. And eventually the deaf are at a measurable informational disadvantage to those who can hear. That's why these laws exist.

So, everyone should take a step back and figure out a reasonable solution. I hope that's the reason for the judgment.

[naasking]

> Then there's a next time, and a next time, and a next time. And eventually the deaf are at a measurable informational disadvantage to those who can hear. That's why these laws exist.

While I can sympathize, I'm not sure holding back the progress of an entire society just to not disadvantage a subset of it is as reasonable as you seem to think. I agree that a better solution would be ideal though.

Perhaps they should just fund a machine learning program for closed captioning, instead of punishing people who are advancing social interests.

[lohi]

"I'm not sure holding back the progress of an entire society just to not disadvantage a subset of it is as reasonable as you seem to think."

I think that's a hard argument to make when Encarta 95 was more advanced than this. I'm all for making information public, but a video of the presentation that's not searchable, can't skip from slide to slide, doesn't show the presenter, doesn't have an index, can't click on links etc. isn't exactly the future. And with all the information available these days the standard should really be higher.

[naasking]

> I'm all for making information public, but a video of the presentation that's not searchable, can't skip from slide to slide, doesn't show the presenter, doesn't have an index, can't click on links etc. isn't exactly the future.

Are you so sure that the learning style you seem to prefer is really ideal for all people? Because you sound really sure, but I'm not sure how that could be.

[lohi]

I have no idea what you are talking about. Exposing the data, that is already there, is what gives people the choice how to learn. If you just have a blob of video there's no practical way to e.g. search for something.

[naasking]

You can't search lectures you attend in person either, yet that format has endured for quite some time. This video format provides a certain kind of structure that may be suited to some, but not to others. For those others there are alternatives.

[lohi]

"You can't search lectures you attend in person either, yet that format has endured for quite some time."

There weren't really an alternative, so whether the format has endured or not isn't really relevant. Many other schools are doing this differently. At this point your statement about "holding back the progress of an entire society" seems rather hollow. I can't convince you data exposing data is more useful, but I also shouldn't have to. It's one of the fundamentals of computer systems if not the Internet.

[Mithaldu]

Until society as a whole recognizes the imperative to uplift all its members it does not deserve to move on.

In this case a reasonable response from society, for example, may have been "ok UCB how much will it cost you to sub those? alright, we'll give you the funds from tax money." Lacking such a response all UCB could do was go "oh society, you don't want to help? then you don't get to keep this."

Keep in mind that only a short-sighted person would say UCB messed up here. They didn't. The USA as a whole messed up, so the USA as a whole gets the stick.

[naasking]

> Until society as a whole recognizes the imperative to uplift all its members it does not deserve to move on.

That's a hard argument to make too. Some of the people that may have learned from these lectures might go on to champion disability rights, or may go on to invent tech that may address some of those disabilities. We simply can't all progress in lockstep, and trying to force that is probably harmful to all.

[weddpros]

Next: how will they make their content easy enough to grasp for the guy with an IQ of 60? He's disabled too, after all...

...says the guy who's partially blind after a stroke

If it feels insane, it's because it is insane

[lohi]

"how will they make their content easy enough to grasp for the guy with an IQ of 60? He's disabled too, after all..."

Not only is it false equivalence, it's also addressed in the first (and second) paragraph in the letter from the DoJ: "The ADA prohibits discrimination against qualified individuals with disabilities by public entities. [0]".

"If it feels insane, it's because it is insane"

It only "feels insane" because they violated the law in so many instances. If we consider all the effort, time and cost that went in to making the content in the first place, the cost of compliance is marginal.

[0] https://news.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/2016-08...

[Myrmornis]

> If we consider all the effort, time and cost that went in to making the content in the first place, the cost of compliance is marginal.

Nonsense. The content is normal undergrad lectures recorded using no special techniques, with YouTube/Google providing automated captioning. The DOJ letter states specifically that the automated captioning is non-compliant (at least it was in March 2015) and that additionally, the videos would need to be edited such that all relevant visible content is described by the lecturer, and poor color contrast is avoided etc. For 20,000 hours of video the cost of doing that manually is huge relative to the funds available to such a project in a public university struggling with a budget deficit and generally with the difficult financial climate for public higher education.

[lohi]

I would still say it's small compared to the size of the activity. But let's not argue that and take another approach.

Someone below said that they assessed it would cost (at least) $1,000,000. There are 20,000 lectures so that's $50 per lecture, which seems reasonable. With a $3 CPM on youtube, that's ~16,000 views per video. I'm sure there's some hurdle in the way to enable ads, but the point still stands. The costs here per video is small enough that it's hard to at claim that the videos are both very valuable and at the same time impossible to make compliant.

[Myrmornis]

Wouldn't you say that something on the internet can be valuable without attracting page impressions at a rate high enough to generate advertising revenue?

[lohi]

Many things are valuable. The problem here is that the school don't want to, or can't, pay the full price that it costs to legally distribute the videos. Maybe it's actually fair that the people who want the videos contribute to the cost in some way. Whether that is donations, ads or labor in the form of transcription.

[darawk]

The deaf are already at a measurable disadvantage. They're deaf. We should take steps to mitigate that. We should make their lives easier in whatever ways are practical. This is obviously not one of them.

We can't make being deaf the same as not being deaf. Disabled people will always be at some disadvantage to their abled counterparts. All we can do is make reasonable compromises. And it should be utterly obvious to everyone involved that this is not a reasonable compromise.

[lyqwyd]

It's unfortunate that this is the sort of means by which these issues are addressed, but it's more unfortunate that are society does not take action on issues like these until these sort of means are used.

It's horrible that these were taken down, but it's far more horrible that disadvantaged populations are ignored, and put at further disadvantage.

And ultimately the files are still available in a more egalitarian way than they were before. The outcome is arguably better than the way things were before!

[VarFarYonder]

> It's horrible that these were taken down, but it's far more horrible that disadvantaged populations are ignored, and put at further disadvantage.

What about blind people? Or people who cannot afford internet access? Or people who don't speak English?

If you take your reasoning to its ultimate conclusion, nobody can give anything away for free, because there will always be some minority that is put at a disadvantage.

[idiot_stick]

>The deaf are already at a measurable disadvantage. They're deaf. We should take steps to mitigate that.

Which is why we're not trying to cure their deafness. Instead, we're trying to ensure that the deaf have access to the same information those who aren't deaf have.

[darawk]

By taking information away from those who can hear.

[sbarre]

No, by passing laws that require institutions to provide their content in an accessible manner.

The law didn't force UCB to take the videos down, they chose to take them down rather than comply with the law.

Not the same thing..

[Sir_Substance]

>The law didn't force UCB to take the videos down

It totally did, it's an unreasonable cost, and thus a fake choice.

[darawk]

That doesn't change the fact that the outcome here is illogical. If you want to make things accessible, you need to penalize the institutions that don't make things accessible. Instead, we gave them the option to take it down. So the general public got penalized and UC Berkeley's incentives didn't change at all. Now they just won't make their lectures public.

[Myrmornis]

And indeed they already stopped making them public, in 2015. This latest thing is them being forced to remove public access to their historical collection.

[uremog]

Really the right answer was to be taken way back when they decided to put their courses online. They should have budgeted the right amount not only to record and serve these courses, but to also observe this applicable law.

Having come this far without doing so, this situation becomes a reasonable response. And I think everyone knows that it is not ideal.

What would be even better is if the new host would make them ADA accessible, or ask someone to do so for them (or other solution).

[tzs]

My understanding is that most of this material was made for use in UCB classes. If a UCB class that used it had a disabled student they would spend the money to accommodate that student. It was not intended at the time for release to the general public.

Now, years later, they released it for free to the general public as is.

[Sir_Substance]

>Then there's a next time, and a next time, and a next time. And eventually the deaf are at a measurable informational disadvantage to those who can hear. That's why these laws exist.

Maybe the laws should specify a tax-funded department to go around close-captioning everything then.

The fact that that people writing the law had good intentions doesn't change the fact that they're morons who wrote a demonstrably terrible law. With due apology due all deaf people, I'd rather repeal the law and leave deaf people at a disadvantage than leave it in place and throw the baby out with the bathwater.

[DanBC]

> Maybe the laws should specify a tax-funded department to go around close-captioning everything then.

Berkeley had one. It was called BRCOE. People creating content before 2015 had the option, or not, of using BRCOE, but had to "self certify" that the content was accessible.

https://news.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/2016-08...

> UC Berkeley’s faculty creates and publishes courses for the public on UC BerkeleyX. Faculty developing UC BerkeleyX courses can, but are not required to, develop courses in collaboration with the Berkeley Resource Center for Online Education (BRCOE). BRCOE follows best practices in design for accessibility and also has a quality assurance process that includes deploying various accessibility evaluators; remediating layout, page structure, downloadable or styling accessibility barriers; and obtaining transcripts of all audio and video files associated with a course.

> Prior to July 1, 2015, UC Berkeley also allowed faculty and instructors to design, develop and publish courses through a self-service model, which did not include support from BRCOE. Beginning July 1, 2015, UC Berkeley advised the Department that all faculty using the selfservice model will be asked to sign off on a list of accessibility resource reviews prior to publishing the course. The sign-off statements include:

> 1. I have reviewed and implemented edX’s “Guidelines for Creating Accessible Content.”2

> 2. All PDFs attached to my course follow the University of California Office of the President recommendations.3

> 3. I have reviewed and implemented applicable guidelines into my course from the Web Accessibility team’s resource “Top 10 Tips for Making your Website Accessible.”4

> 4. All mp3 and mp4 files in my course have been submitted for transcripts for SubRip Text (SRT) files.

> 5. All video and audio in my course have accurate captioning available to users through the edX HTML5 player.

[st3v3r]

UC Berkley is tax funded. They're a public university.

[sterex]

Could we not crowd source the captioning? I know I would help.

[kbutler]

The deaf are at a measurable informational disadvantage whenever I speak.

Does this mean I should have to provide a text annotation?

C.f. Harrison Bergeron

[HarryHirsch]

We don't need no stinking wheelchair ramp for my store. We never have no wheelchair riders coming in here to shop.