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.
Please explain to me how it is fair that, by studying a free online uncaptioned lecture, someone gets even more of an advantage over me just because they weren't born deaf.
Its not fair. By the definition that you were born deaf the situation is already unfair. Its also unfair that people are born with such good looks they can breeze through life.
But if the net effect is that good free content will just become unavailable for everyone to achieve a sense of fairness, Then that seems petty and I'm not on board.
I hope they lose this case spectacularly as it would set a terrible precedent.
If you follow the principle behind that logic, everybody should be blinded, deafened and crippled immediately after birth, reduced to the lowest common denominator, because otherwise they get an advantage because they weren't born blind, deafened, or crippled.
If a free lecture provides benefit to someone, but forcing it to be captioned causes it not to be released, would you be happy with that outcome? It's the same principle.
The population of deaf people in the USA is comparable to the population of Asian Americans (ranging from about 1% to 4% by state in both cases). If an organization gave a leg up in life to everyone except Asian Americans (e.g. by covering some share of the education costs), would you be happy with that outcome? Now this really is the same principle.
No, it's not, since it's equivalent covering of cost for Asian-Americans and everyone else. That's an example of straightforward discrimination. This is demanding that an organization put forward additional specialized effort at its own expense for materials it is releasing for free.
Whatever your opinion is here, they are not the same principle.
Please explain how it's fair that organizations who are releasing educational materials for free should be forced to pay extra money (which they possibly can't afford to spare) so that their content is slightly more accessible to a vanishingly small portion of the population.
Please explain how it's fair that the plaintiffs would rather that everyone lose access to this educational material than deal with the fact that maybe not everyone will be able to use it.
Please explain how it's fair to act like a petulant child, screaming that if they can't have it, nobody can.
> Please explain how it's fair that organizations who are releasing educational materials for free should be forced to pay extra money (which they possibly can't afford to spare) so that their content is slightly more accessible to a vanishingly small portion of the population.
Because they agreed to follow said laws: the ADA. They have options if they choose not to follow the laws.
> Please explain how it's fair that the plaintiffs would rather that everyone lose access to this educational material than deal with the fact that maybe not everyone will be able to use it.
They do not want everyone to lose access. Instead, what they want, is for everyone to be able to use the content. Regardless, they do not want everyone to lose access. Your question is merely based on ignorance of the desires of the plaintiffs.
> Please explain how it's fair to act like a petulant child, screaming that if they can't have it, nobody can.
Because when someone breaks the law and it harms you, you have the right to seek redress in our system.
I've answered your questions. Now, please answer mine, which are written with the same care that you wrote yours.
Please explain why you feel it's okay that organizations should be able to ignore and back out of laws they don't agree with.
Please explain why you feel you have more right to the material than others.
Please explain what it's like being a petulant, self-entitled child?
>Because they agreed to follow said laws: the ADA.
Something being the law doesn't mean that it's fair. I shouldn't have to explain that. Also, it hasn't been established that these universities are actually breaking the ADA.
>They have options if they choose not to follow the laws.
What do you mean by this?
>They do not want everyone to lose access.
Well, that's the likely outcome of suing a university trying to offer a free service.
>Please explain why you feel it's okay that organizations should be able to ignore and back out of laws they don't agree with.
Again, it's not established that they were breaking the law.
I see nothing wrong with breaking immoral laws. If the ADA forbids disseminating educational material for free unless it follows a certain format, the ADA is immoral.
>Please explain why you feel you have more right to the material than others.
I don't feel that I have this right. I feel that deaf people don't have the right to demand that educational organizations curate information in a way that suits their fancy. How would you feel if the swahili speakers of America sued MIT for not translating their free educational videos to swahili?
>Please explain what it's like being a petulant, self-entitled child?
Nice ad hominem. You aren't even explaining why you're calling me that; you're literally just name-calling.
Strictly speaking it's not ad hominem. A careful reader will see that nowhere has (s)he called you a "spoiled petulant, self entitled child". You're merely being asked to explain your understanding of the meaning of a highly pejorative term which you introduced into the discourse.
> Something being the law doesn't mean that it's fair. I shouldn't have to explain that.
So if someone or a company feels they shouldn't have to follow a law, you are okay with them not having to answer for breaking the law?
> Also, it hasn't been established that these universities are actually breaking the ADA.
This is why they are being sued. Some think they are. Considering your swahili statement, you disagree with the American
legal system and the way it works.
> What do you mean by this?
I'm not sure what you don't understand. It's English, and it says exactly what I wanted it to say. Are you suggesting they were forced to break the law?
> Well, that's the likely outcome of suing a university trying to offer a free service.
Considering the other provisions of the ADA and their non-impact on free services offered by countless other business both big and small all across the country, you'd need to back this up with real, hard evidence. Please do.
> I see nothing wrong with breaking immoral laws.
In your opinion immoral laws. Clearly others do not agree with you.
Would you support someone breaking a law they considered immoral and you considered moral if breaking the law harmed you?
> If the ADA forbids disseminating educational material for free unless it follows a certain format, the ADA is immoral.
It does not forbid this. If you think this is what the case is about, you are ignorant.
> How would you feel if the swahili speakers of America sued MIT for not translating their free educational videos to swahili?
People are allowed to sue others they feel have wronged them.
Why do you think people shouldn't be allowed to sue others they feel have broken the law or wronged them?
> Nice ad hominem.
So you can dish it out but can't take it yourself. So you really are a petulant, self-entitled child.
Fine. You win. I am happy that even if you were a tenth of the programmer that I am[1], you would still be an employer's top pick over me. I am grateful to the two organizations (with $11B and $32B endowments) for the fact that, on top of the above, they provide you with a free way[2] to make yourself even more employable over me.
Oh, and right, the endowments are earmarked for other purposes as has been pointed out elsewhere in this thread, so I am also glad that none of the donors cared about making the educational material accessible to people with disabilities, and that the staff of those two organizations catered to the donors.
On an even more tangential note, let's not forget to praise the lack of social stigma against the use of expressions like "petulant children" in a thread discussing people who are trying to use legal means to prevent discrimination and giving even more advantage to the already advantaged. The comment of yours would have been unimaginable if it had been about racial minorities expressing the same sentiment. But feel free to dismiss my reply as being from a throwaway account, which I am using because I have time and time again encountered the sentiment "Oh... You are deaf. I thought you were smart" or words to that effect when people learned that I am deaf from my main Web identity.
[1] Looking at your GitHub page, you probably aren't. But, for just one example, consider that you have most likely run some of my code when using Python (I have contributed to the base CPython implementation). I am not employed, and hearing people right out of school who are seeing Python for the first time in their lives are employed by the dozen..
[2] Watching lectures and learning from them — a way that is completely inaccessible to me since I can't even pay for someone to transcribe the lectures.
I would message you directly, but you don't have any contact info listed in your account. I think you may have some major self esteem issues, and you're taking it out on other people. I really think you should talk to a professional.
I mean, look at this. You're blaming your situation (which at least includes being unemployed) on your disability, while simultaneously trying to convince yourself that you're better than random people on the internet. You literally clicked through some random person's profile so that you could find some piece of evidence that they're inferior to you, in the hopes of convincing yourself that it can't be your fault; it's everyone else's.
Life isn't fair. You have access to a computer. Please explain to me how it is fair that you can view free online uncaptioned lectures, when someone in the jungles of the Philippines has never even seen a keyboard?
[1]: http://ocw.mit.edu/resources/res-6-008-digital-signal-proces...
[2]: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/8-851-effective-field-the...