[p49k]

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.

[neoburkian]

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.

[p49k]

> 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.

[neoburkian]

> 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.