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.
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?
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.
>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.
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.
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?]
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
>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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.