[danny_taco]

People with disabilities often struggle to find content they can consume because it's not a11y friendly. Unfortunately in this case lawyers are capitalizing on this law that was made to help people with disabilities to go after websites that are not a11y friendly.

Maybe before shutting down you should consider making your content a11y friendly by adding captions to your videos. It is extra work but consider you may be helping a portion of the population that is often underserved.

[pfortuny]

He has been helping people. Please do not frame this as “not helping”. Frame this as what it is: an excellent example of abuse of the law which is per se wrong and harmful.

[carapace]

This.

I cannot believe the amount of strident anti-accessibility sentiment in this thread, it has to be coming mostly from the young and able-bodied? This has already been discussed and the question is settled, to the point of being actual law: civilized societies make allowances for people with disabilities.

We are not some "Lord of the Flies" barbarians to say "f*ck the deaf" are we?

It's 2022, captioning is a solved problem.

[tluyben2]

Can you give me a French audio file of your comment here; my uncle had a stroke and lost his ability to understand english? He lived in France but is native english and somehow his stroke killed his english comprehension a few years ago.

This is a fact and he is disabled as such; you might be young and able bodied but he wants to listen to your comment in French otherwise he cannot understand it.

Nothing is solved in 2022 unless you are native english and don’t have a disability like some form of speech aphasia.

Even captioning is hard in other languages, like OP has to do it in Hebrew which is so much harder than english as you cannot really do auto caption and then change it around a bit like you can do with english.

Not saying that we shouldn’t do it, but it is not solved at all for many cases; you would basically want to pick the language and if you want subtitles or transcript in that language. We can do english (almost) auto, the rest (at least as far as I can read) is pretty crap.

And sure, you can hire a specialised company for it; we are talking about people providing free content and often making nothing or a few cents from that. Most won’t be companies, but private persons filming their hobbies. There is nothing to spend. Companies should put this in their budget, but there should be a startup/grace period: we don’t all have 100m$ investment (and many of these are violators; Airtable was(is?) a good example).

[bombcar]

Captioning in English may be a solved problem (and admittedly the auto-captioning by YouTube is moderately decent).

Requiring captioning for all content obviously puts more of a burden on someone. Have you close-captioned all videos you've uploaded to various platforms?

[carapace]

I think I'm more sympathetic to people with disabilities because for several years I was close friends with a man who was born quadriplegic. His mom caught a virus while he was gestating and so his arms and legs are gnarled and useless, his spine is curved like the letter "c".

Going around with him in his electric wheelchair was a learning experience for me. Simple things like using the sidewalk or taking the bus could be extremely challenging for him. You want to talk about "burden" to me? Go sleep in a parking lot next to a crippled man for a few months and "then we'll talk" as the dramatic idiots like to say.

Civilized people make allowances for folks who, as we say, are challenged. It's only natural. It's no burden to be a good person, it's its own reward.

> Have you close-captioned all videos you've uploaded to various platforms?

FFS yes. It's not that bleedin' hard, innit?

I'm only bothering to type this because I have a level of basic respect for you bombcar based on some of your other comments. You're on the wrong side of this argument amigo.

[googlryas]

Can you please upload an audio clip of your comment, or edit your comment to be more screen reader friendly?

My screen reader gets tripped up with whatever "f*ck" is supposed to mean, it sounds like a zipper.

[mecha_ghidorah]

I definitely wouldn't describe myself as anti-accessibility: I think physical structures should be handicap accessible (with the caveat that I think private dwellings shouldn't be forced to be), I think government services should be built with accessibility in mind, etc.

I do think the loss of previously recorded course videos (https://reason.com/2017/03/07/berkeley-deletes-200000-free-o...) that had been free in order to prevent being sued is a net loss though, and I think there are most likely much better ways to incentivize accessibility than allowing people to sue "without harm".

Perhaps the most important thing to point out is that if the videos are taken down the deaf will not be able to access them at all; which is worse than them only being able to access them by relying on someone to help them.

Note that I do understand in certain circumstances inequitable access can have knock on effects such that nobody having access is better than creating an unfair playing field: for example in the case of these previously recorded lectures enrolled students would have an unfair playing field in that deaf students wouldn't have access to the same resources students with hearing would. I agree this is a problem as deaf students deserve a level playing field with their peers. However there are options other than removing the videos, such as requiring the university provide accessibility support services to actually enrolled students. Those support services could create captions based on student request.

Additionally (though it would involve higher taxation) providing people with disabilities support they can access as a government service would also help a lot I think in terms of providing access without leading to existing good things being destroyed.

There are a lot of things I do support doing to make sure the deaf can, as much as possible, access these sorts of materials so describing my position as "fuck the deaf" feels.... uncharitable.

[carapace]

God bless you for making a constructive comment. Seriously, thank you.

> I do think the loss of previously recorded course videos (https://reason.com/2017/03/07/berkeley-deletes-200000-free-o...) that had been free in order to prevent being sued is a net loss though, and I think there are most likely much better ways to incentivize accessibility than allowing people to sue "without harm".

I agree completely. I feel compelled to point out that these accessibility laws would never have gained traction if we (speaking generally) had made things accessible in the first place, eh?

The thing that really bothers me about people being anti-accessibility (and there was a lot of strident strident BS in this thread) is the blindingly oblivious argument from "enlightened" self-interest, to wit: you (speaking generally) may well become deaf someday, or blind, or paralyzed or something. It happens, all the time. (And here I would add something about OXO and how making things easier for seniors makes them easier for everybody, etc... but the kettle is about to boil...) :)

In any event, let's remember the end goal: Michael Levin et. al. makes organ regeneration a reality and there are no more handicapped people. Everyone everywhere has everything in good working order. And we live for centuries too, eh?

- - - -

(I get off on irony. That last sentence of yours has me giggling. Cheers, well met.)

[mecha_ghidorah]

> I agree completely. I feel compelled to point out that these accessibility laws would never have gained traction if we (speaking generally) had made things accessible in the first place, eh?

Oh I totally agree that we need accessibility laws of some sort otherwise it would be almost entirely ignored, which is a terrible outcome. It is just think that clearly some places have crafted these laws in such a way as to also lead to some pretty terrible outcomes, and I personally think another approach would be better (I know this is very armchair general of me, I'm not an expert, and if people who work in this space think otherwise I'd be happy to listen).

I do think the enlightened self interest is an obvious argument, but I also would like to think that compassion alone would suffice for wanting to improve the quality of life for those who have been given a raw deal.

I'm glad my turn of phrase at the end was enjoyed.

Well met indeed.

[sparrish]

< captioning is a solved problem

It is! Every deaf person I know has a handy device in their pocket that can 'listen' to the audio going on and output the text on the screen.

[hedora]

Every library I’ve been to has braille and audio versions of books. They are almost always produced by third parties that specialize in such things.

It probably makes more sense to have professional third parties handle accessibility than to try to force it upon the industry that decided to add 25MB of JS animations to their non-legally-compliant cookie popups, etc.

[charcircuit]

If the deaf want to listen to the content I make they can use their own speech to text system. If it's a solved problem like you said there should be no issue with that. Deaf people can gain access to content without having to force everyone else to cater to them.

[fsckboy]

> helping a portion of the population that is often underserved

somebody has a handicap, they are not underserved, that's a political euphemism, they underappreciate the standard servings.

I'm all for helping people, but it needs to be in light of a cost-benefit calculation, including who pays the cost and who-all receives benefits, public and private goods (closed captions do benefit more than the deaf)... I guess I'm saying, this needs to be done in the light of day and judiciously, with more balance than just private aggrievement. If this guy in Israel or Berkeley is sharing material that we-the-people benefit from and think needs to be accessible, this "wound" should be allowed to fester a bit while a reasonable cure is found, rather than shutting the whole things down.

Reminds me of a thought I often have when old laws apply to novel new situations and harsh judgements are passed down, I wish the judge could rule "hey, nobody thought of this before, so we're going to let this one go, but we're gonna rule the opposite way in the future so correct the law, and/or get your act together".