
A statement on online course content and accessibility - wfunction
http://news.berkeley.edu/2016/09/13/a-statement-on-online-course-content-and-accessibility/
======
jasode
Fyi ... a related (not duplicate) HN discussion from Feb 2015:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9039798](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9039798)

In both this case about UC Berkeley and the lawsuit against Harvard & MIT, the
legal attacks seem very wrong.

What I see is:

\- Scenario A: spend $X to release free courses that benefits most of humanity

\- Scenario B: spend $X+$Y to release free courses that also benefits the
disabled population

(The $Y is extra costs to close-caption, transcribe to braille, etc.)

That these lawsuits are obstinate in that you _must spend_ that extra $Y to
fulfill Scenario B or humanity can't have the knowledge at all is nonsensical
to me.

E.g. The school budget has _finite_ money. Let's say It can release 15 free
courses by spending just $X but to avoid a lawsuits, it can only release 10
courses by spending $X+$Y ... or release none at all because it's not worth
the legal minefield. Why is the 2nd scenario more optimized for humanity?

Sure, we should _encourage_ the universal accessibility of the video courses
but to formalize it into the nastiness of lawsuits? It doesn't seem right.

~~~
eqmvii
What you wrote is logical, but applicable to any instance of accommodation to
those with impairments. The Americans with Disabilities Act and related
actions/legislation/policies explicitly bind society to inefficient resource
allocation.

The actual letter from the Department of Justice (linked at the bottom of
Berkeley's response) goes into more detail. The DoJ is not demanding current
materials be removed, nor are they expecting changes to happen overnight. But
the ADA isn't new, nor is its mandate that "no qualified individual with a
disability shall, by reason of such disability, be excluded from participation
in or be denied the benefits of services, programs, or activities of a public
entity, or be subjected to discrimination by a public entity," nor are the web
standards for ensuring that content is accessible.

Importantly, this is NOT a lawsuit. It's a DoJ investigation under the ADA
focused on enforcing existing laws and regulations. It's not about
"formalizing it into the nastiness of a lawsuit" or certain private parties
trying to take grievances to the court system for a pay day. Individuals
brought a complaint to the DoJ, and now it's doing its job by investigating.

Berkeley and other public institutions have been complying with the ADA since
it was passed in 1990. Compliance tends to be expensive and unintuitive -
that's the entire point! Applying the ADA to online course content really
shouldn't be much more of a burden than it already was to comply with it in
other respects.

~~~
jasode
_> The Americans with Disabilities Act [...] explicitly bind society to
inefficient resource allocation._

Sure, that seems justifiable for _commercial_ businesses but many find the ADA
to be an ugly legal weapon for attacking _free_ donations. The spiritual
intentions of "free" should be exempted.

If UC Berkeley used the viewing of those videos as a _mandatory requirement_
to qualify for admissions into the school or required viewing for the students
to pass a class, then I think most of us could see the fairness of forcing
them to caption it -- regardless of costs.

However, the goodwill act of making them _free_ for humanity's knowledge-
seeking causes the DOJ to threaten lawsuit? That does not seem right.

 _> Importantly, this is NOT a lawsuit. It's a DoJ investigation under the ADA
focused on enforcing existing laws and regulations. It's not about
"formalizing it into the nastiness of a lawsuit" _

In the last page of the cited PDF, the DOJ explicitly writes _" lawsuit"_:

 _> "In the event that we are unable to reach such a resolution, the Attorney
General may initiate a lawsuit pursuant to the ADA"_

That this particular DOJ letter is one or a few steps removed from a "formal
lawsuit" doesn't detract from my overall point. The DOJ _threatening a
lawsuit_ is the tool of choice we're using instead of other options ... such
as raising a crowdsourced fund to pay for captioning or recruiting volunteers
to transcribe them into braille.

If there is an effort of _goodwill_ to make something available, I think
society should pay that back with _reciprocal goodwill_ in finding a way to
make the material accessible to the disabled.

The donation and the litigation response to that donation is asymmetrical. It
gives the ADA bad press.

~~~
shanusmagnus
I came back to make a comment just like this, but you already did it better
than I would have.

The metaphor I had in mind was restaurants that make too much food, and
(sometimes; some restaurants) they donate it to foodshelves (when appropriate)
or sometimes just to some homeless guys who happen to be nearby. The extra
food is an externality of their real purpose as a business, which is to take
money in exchange for feeding people. They could throw the food away, but
instead they're doing something nice with it. Almost nobody would say they
should throw the food away because the homeless guys who happen to be the
recipients of their largesse are benefiting, while other, further-away
homeless guys are not. Such an argument would be idiotic.

In just this way these videos and course materials are an externality of the
'real' business of Berkeley, which is educating the people who are admitted to
Berkeley and enrolled in the classes. Berkeley, and others like them, are
going above and beyond to be nice to the rest of humanity, to our great
collective benefit. This ADA thing is just a kick in the face, and it pisses
me off.

~~~
bonaldi
No but people would say they food they give away should still comply with
health regulations.

Just because you're making a gift doesn't mean the law doesn't apply to you.

~~~
crazy2be
That's not a good comparison, not complying with health regulations
substantially devalues the food given away, because of the significantly
increased risk of illness resulting from consumption of said food.

Your second statement is irrelevant, we are not talking about what the law
_does_ , but what the law _should do_. And I absolutely think that gifts (and
good samaritan acts in general) should be held to a much lower standard than
commercial enterprises.

This is not at all unprecedented in US law (or in many places in the world),
every state has some form of good samaritan law[1], which protects (to some
extent) individuals who act in good faith to aid strangers in need of
immediate medical assistance. There is also a federal law indemnifying donors
of properly labeled foods, except in the case of gross negligence or
intentional misconduct.

These laws are important, because donations result in no benefit for the
bearer, so making them cost money is a significant deterrence to charity.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Samaritan_law#United_Stat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Samaritan_law#United_States)

~~~
bonaldi
What does it matter in your scheme if the food being given away is
substantially devalued? It's a gift, it should be held to a lower standard,
right? Or are you saying that the gift must be of an equal value to that sold?
Do they have to also serve it on fine china to the homeless? How low should
the lowered standard be, then?

My second statement is disagreeing with yours. The law does _and should_
absolutely hold organisational gifts to the same standard as commercial
transactions. Not least because otherwise you create a massive loophole ripe
for exploitation, at all levels.

"Hey, don't tax my import, it was a gift!".

"Hey, my formula milk shouldn't be subject to marketing laws, it's a gift to
new [and ill-educated] mothers!"

"Hey, I shouldn't be subject to your weird license restrictions, my source
code was a gift to the community!"

Now, sure, good samaritan laws are important things. But so is equality
legislation, and disability rights legislation, and much of the other
legislation that defines the standards society expects of its participants.

------
malloryerik
U.C. Berkeley has some fantastic classes online. It would truly be a shame to
lose them. Many were clearly produced on shoestring budgets.

The Department of Justice seems to have received complaints mainly regarding
absence of transcripts for audio or video content. Can't speech-to-text tech
help?

Other complaints include poor formatting of pdf's. If the courses are indeed
taken down, I can only hope that at least this starts a conversation about how
to create smarter regulations -- regulations that cause less collateral
damage.

~~~
blackoil
Would it be legal to have community created transcripts for all courses? Would
not mind to spend some time doing so in lieu of free content.

~~~
mkolodny
Khan Academy gets help dubbing and translating videos from volunteers around
the world [0]. I would also be happy to help.

[0] [https://khanacademy.zendesk.com/hc/en-
us/categories/20018602...](https://khanacademy.zendesk.com/hc/en-
us/categories/200186020-Translators)

------
DanielBMarkham
_"...the Department of Justice has recently asserted that the University is in
violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act because, in its view, not all
of the free course and lecture content UC Berkeley makes available on certain
online platforms is fully accessible to individuals with hearing, visual or
manual disabilities..."_

Wow. Talk about harming hundreds of people for no reason at all.

IANAL, but I believe the ADA would be applicable for students of the college,
not necessarily online content consumers viewing the college's courses.

Of course, the problem here is that you have to start playing expensive lawyer
games to get that clarified -- and it might take years. So even if Berkeley
has done nothing wrong, they still might end up having to pull the courses.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> Wow. Talk about harming hundreds of people for no reason at all.

To be fair, the whole point of the ADA is to harm millions of people for the
benefit of very few people.

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
About five years ago I was on crutches for several months and I can highly
recommend the experience to anybody who is against the ADA as an eye-opener.

~~~
Houshalter
You can be against ADA without being against disability access entirely. The
main complaints are that it's enforced through lawsuits which bankrupt small
businesses. Often over trivial issues, like their mirror being 1 inch too
high, or the parking sign not having the correct sticker on it, etc. That's a
very different thing than not having a wheelchair ramp.

------
hacker314159
Thanks DOJ for the Kafka-esque move that will most likely deprive everyone of
free educational materials. Glad to know justice was served.

~~~
posterboy
What if the proposition to take down the content is rather a threat to
instigate the public, than a real concern.

------
anotheryou
I feel like it's about time to ditch all that accessibility stuff and join
forces to create a more human screen reader.

Though sadly it will be a while until we will hear: "You are visiting Hacker
News, in a simple look and without any images, it features a list of links to
articles and a menu at the top. Do you want me to read the articles titles,
continue with accessing the menu or a more detailed description of the page?"

~~~
bramd
> Though sadly it will be a while until we will hear: "You are visiting Hacker
> News, in a simple look and without any images, it features a list of links
> to articles and a menu at the top. Do you want me to read the articles
> titles, continue with accessing the menu or a more detailed description of
> the page?"

Sadly? I strongly disagree. If all my human-computer interaction would be like
communicating with Siri/Google Now (e.g. conversational), I would have ditched
computers years ago. It's all about giving semantic information to
screenreaders so the user can eficiently navigate that content. In the rare
case that I need some kind of human description, I just share my screen with
someone that has working eyeballs.

FYI, I'm totally blind.

~~~
anotheryou
oh, great to hear from someone actually needing this. But than I'd still
argue, that semantics should be possible to parse from the style of the site.
Big letters? Must be a headline.

Well actually I would love html to be more to be like latex/markdown, I just
thought, that if I recognize it as a list, it should be parsed by a screen
reader as such too.

May I ask you which screen reader you use and at what speeds? (or do you use
some braille screen?)

------
arieskg
Classic lobbying. The Department of Justice is filing the complaints against
the institutions offering free online courses with an illogical argument
masked with virtuous intent. The DOJ is okay with the paid online courses
because the levying cost on consumers provides immunity to such violations.
Depriving everyone's access to the free content because it did not accommodate
those with disabilities sets dangerous precedent for the future. You can't
design a system that accommodate everybody from the beginning. Progress
requires time and the rational reason for DOJ to begin this investigation is
corporate lobbying. What businesses or markets would benefit from this?

The carefully worded letter appears reasonable, except what purpose was
conveyed other than forcing the universities to incur high litigation fees?
Using ADA as a weapon to purge free sharing of collective intelligence is
despicable. I understand universities have limited resources and priorities
for their enrolled students, but they should retaliate out of principles.

The community can help with providing captions. Charing $1 fee. Routing the
money to a charity. Anything is better than removing the content because that
is the complaint's end goal.

~~~
extra88
You have no idea what you're talking about. Paid online courses are also
required to make their courses accessible to students, what's different for
them is they can make a course accessible to each specific student which can
be easier (e.g. if a student is deaf, they need captions but not written
descriptions of visuals). Most cases involved brick 'n mortar businesses and
institutions and in many online cases they've been extensions of the physical
world (Target, UC Berkeley). More recent cases (Netflix) have made it clear
that online-only entities are also considered places of public accommodation.

Why UC Berkeley this time? I don't know, other than the complainants came to
the DoJ about them, and not some other school.

The purpose of the letter is _not_ to cost the University or to stop them
making the materials available. The DoJ never suggests that, it's Berkeley
that raised the idea on their own. The purpose is to explain how the
University has been violating the law and what they can to correct it so
ultimately what is offered can also be used by people with disabilities.

~~~
arieskg
I respect several points you made, but there's no reason for me to rebuttal
since the argument became unintelligible with your first sentence.

If you care, please read the 10-page letter. The statistics used were out of
proportion backed by limited user stories, and why is UC Berkeley considering
removing the content? Page 4-7 may have some clues. But I wouln't really know
since I have no idea what I am talking about.

FYI, Harvard and MIT were received with the same letters few months ago. It
was on the New York Times, but I could still be wrong since I have no idea
what I'm talking about.

~~~
extra88
Harvard and MIT did not receive the same letter, they've actually been sued by
the National Association for the Deaf. The DoJ and I think the DoEd. have also
been involved. That case is also about freely offered online educational
material but specifically video lacking quality captions.

------
Normal_gaussian
Are any of these courses paid?

Do any of these courses or the means through which they are made available
advertise paid options, paid alternatives, or other paid courses?

If both of those are 'no' then this is disgraceful. If either is 'yes' then it
is completely justified.

~~~
Houshalter
Even if they made advertising money on it, it may not have been very much.

~~~
Normal_gaussian
When providing a paid for service you have significantly different obligations
to if the service is charitable.

~~~
Houshalter
It is charitable. It's provided freely by a nonprofit organization.

------
tomohawk
Follow the money.

[http://www.wendel.com/knowledge-
center/publications/older/no...](http://www.wendel.com/knowledge-
center/publications/older/notorious-disabled-litigant-entitled-to-pursue-
access-lawsuits)

~~~
extra88
This is a slur. Almost all accessibility cases seek only correction of the
problem and reimbursement for the costs of the lawsuit.

~~~
tomohawk
Just because most are not, does not mean that this is not being monetized by
some unscrupulous people. In the city where I live, there are law firms where
this is their business model. They'll go into a bathroom and carefully measure
it. Any reasonable person would say it is accessible, but because it doesn't
100% correspond to the ada standards that came out later they get to sue and
make money.

------
tlb
The same forces caused Andrej Karpathy to have to take down his YouTube videos
of his Stanford CS231n course on convolutional neural nets.
[[https://twitter.com/karpathy/status/727618058471112704](https://twitter.com/karpathy/status/727618058471112704)]
Fortunately, unofficial mirrors have surfaced.

It's not very expensive to do the basics of adding transcripts (for the deaf)
and verbal descriptions of diagrams (for the blind). The reason the university
didn't just do it seemed to combine departmental politics with ambivalence
about undercutting their main product (in-person education) with a free online
version in the first place.

------
cheriot
A lot of this sounds like there's an engineering solution that edX and
Coursera can offer as a service. Course creators would have SOME work to do,
but limited to uploading the charts and files used in their video.

From the DOJ letter:

> 1\. Some videos did not have captions.

> 2a. many videos did not provide an alternative way to access images or
> visual information (e.g., graphs, charts, animations, or urls on slides)

> 2b. videos containing text sometimes had poor color contrast, which made the
> text unreadable for those with low vision

> 3\. Many documents were inaccessible ... [HTML and PDF stuff]

> 4\. Some links were not keyboard accessible

> 5\. Websites and materials that were integrated into the course material
> were not fully accessible

Before we jump to debating the ADA, let's see if there's a sensible solution!

~~~
mavhc
If you're going to crowd source education, crowd source this. Ask people to
correct computer generated captioning, annotate slides.

2b, 3, 4 should be fixed at the CMS level.

5 Can't you blame those website creators?

------
reustle
Sorry for sounding naive but isn't UCB a private company? I hate to say but
"this is why we can't have nice things". We are trying to move into an age of
more digital education, but if there are a bunch of hoops to jump through in
order to even attempt it, won't the barrier to trying be too high for some
institutions?

~~~
thaumasiotes
> Sorry for sounding naive but isn't UCB a private company?

No. University of California, Berkeley is a part of the University of
California system, not a private company.

~~~
vizeroth
To expand on this, the government of California requires the University of
California (UC) and California State University (CSU) systems to comply with
the ADA and the Rehabilitation Act of 1974 (if you've ever heard of 508
compliance, it's a reference to section 508 of the latter Act). In recent
years, both systems have been expanding their efforts to comply with this
requirement, especially in regards to technology. (The CSU system includes not
only the schools with CSU or Cal State prefixes, but also most of the schools
with State or SU suffixes, including SFSU, SJSU, and SDSU.)

For more information: \- UC Policy: [http://www.ucop.edu/electronic-
accessibility/initiative/poli...](http://www.ucop.edu/electronic-
accessibility/initiative/policy.html) \- CSU Policy:
[http://teachingcommons.cdl.edu/access/](http://teachingcommons.cdl.edu/access/)

------
Mao_Zedang
Berkeley should just incorporate a non profit in another country, transfer the
IP and serve it via there. Outside the jurisdiction of the DOJ.

~~~
SwellJoe
Why would they do that? UCB is a public insitution, with a mandate to serve
the public. They're not a torrent site trying to skirt the law.

While there are discussions to be had about how to move forward; I would hope
the end result would be continuing to offer the free courses, while solving
the accessibility problems, perhaps with the help of the communities they
serve. I would be happy to contribute transcription and captioning to the
courses that I take online; I transcribe and caption all of my videos on
YouTube, religiously. It's not that big of a time cost, and I take notes when
I'm taking a class, anyway.

I hope this will be viewed as an opportunity to (not necessarily in this
order):

1\. Improve accessibility tooling for these courses, particularly captioning
videos.

2\. Improve awareness of accessibility guidelines for websites and online
materials.

3\. Make all of these fantastic learning resources available to people with
disabilities.

------
wtbob
This simply doesn't make sense.

Yes, certainly, content should be made accessibly available. Yes, certainly,
Berkeley's responsibility is to its enrolled students.

But _removing_ content from public access serves neither of those needs. It
doesn't help the blind, deaf or otherwise handicapped; it doesn't help
tuition-paying students.

It makes everyone equal, in the same sense that an eye for an eye makes
everyone equal.

------
Houshalter
The biggest concern is not even that the lectures get taken down. It's that
other universities see this and don't put their content up in the future. Many
organizations are extremely risk averse when it comes to lawsuits, and our
crazy legal system has trained them to be that way.

------
jimiz
Unfortunate to see this free content be lost. In the same line of thinking it
is also sad that in this day and age there are not easy tools / systems to
help transcode and make content ADA approved. (At least cost effective)

~~~
vizeroth
One of the things pointed out in the findings is that Berkeley makes
people/tools/systems readily available to the people producing these
resources, but does not require them to be used. Generally, the costs may be
prohibitive after the fact if the people producing the material did not take
them into consideration. However, they can usually be factored into the costs
of production up front, and steps can be taken to make it easier to make the
material accessible.

In most cases, it is probably simply a lack of awareness on the part of the
people making the material available. The difficult part is educating the
faculty and staff of the University about the legal requirements they must
meet and the resources available to them to make compliance easier, and,
perhaps more importantly, an integral part of the process.

~~~
extra88
Yes, Berkeley has quite a few resources available, more than most schools.
It's probably because of a settlement in a separate case about not serving the
needs of their enrolled students. The costs may be prohibitive to an
instructor or their academic department but they shouldn't be for the
institution as a whole. Not cheap, but not prohibitive.

------
josinalvo
Can someone provide an estimate of how much it would cost to make one course
accessible.

Or rather:

1\. What would be the cost to transcribe a one hour video?

Does the transcriber need any knowledge apart from English? (and presumably a
one week course so that when the teacher points at something, it goes into the
transcription)

2\. What would be the cost to take an unformatted text, and format it in
accord to guidelines?

3\. What would be the cost to make a one-page website accessible? What kind of
change does it entail?

4\. In the matter of 'poor contrast', would a color transformation applied to
the video be enough to comply (to the letter of the law)? Would it be enough
to make it accessible (i.e.: comply to the spirit of the law)? AFAIK, the
requirement that "[no] chart or graph [should] differentiate information only
by color" seems to make sure that at least some manual video editing is
necessary.

5\. Is it the case that, in any part of the process, the
transcriber/developer/editor/worker involved needs (by law) a certain
qualification, or can anyone (in principle) do the work?

6\. Are there any other measures necessary?

~~~
josinalvo
having written that list of questions, I am left _quite_ sure that the cost of
making a course accessible is above 1000$ per course, and my best guess is
5000-10000$.

1\. Do you disagree?

2\. How many courses does UCB make available to the public for free? (on edX,
this number seems to be around 50)

------
thr0waway1239
Perhaps add a login and get people (crowdsource) to contribute
transcripts/accessibility features until it is deemed OK for public release? I
don't know how to incentivize people to contribute though - maybe add their
names as credits in the video description?

~~~
SwellJoe
Seems like early access could potentially be incentive enough, perhaps? I
mean, it's a public service that I would think/hope many people would be
willing to chip in their time for free (I mean, you take notes when you're in
a class, anyway...the very act of writing down what you've heard is an
important part of learning for many people). So, sign up for a class, get
access while it happens if you agree to help with the transcription and
captioning. Progressing to the next video requires either contributing to the
transcription or signing off on it. YouTube has incredibly good tools for
captioning; perhaps they can be convinced to work with UCB to enable this kind
of system.

It would need some kind of percent complete count, or something, along with
maybe a rating system where visitors who need those captions can report poor
or confusing transcription.

Braille is harder; but, I would think most courses already have written course
notes and materials, which can be read by screen readers. I'm not sure what to
make of the mention of braille, here, actually. Are they expecting UCB to send
out printed materials? That doesn't make sense, and goes beyond what websites
are required to do by the ADA.

------
bluetwo
For anyone working on federal training, this has been a thing for a long time.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_508_Amendment_to_the_R...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_508_Amendment_to_the_Rehabilitation_Act_of_1973)

------
bluesign
can someone explain how they can keep the same material for access by enrolled
students but not to public considering ADA requirements?

~~~
vizeroth
More than likely, the material released to the public is not the material used
for enrolled students. At the same time, they most likely have funding to make
material accessible to enrolled students on an as-needed basis. If a person
with a particular disability is enrolled at the University, the University
will work with the student to discover their requirements and how they can
best meet their needs. At that point, they can go through the list of courses
the student has enrolled in for each quarter or semester and ensure that all
of the course materials are accessible to that student.

Once they've completed that process, it usually has the side benefit of making
those specific materials accessible to all future students with similar needs.
The whole process is also getting better over time, especially for textbooks
and similar material. However, video and audio are especially problematic
areas when they are produced by individuals who don't understand (or aren't
aware of) these requirements. If you just setup a camera and/or microphone to
capture a lecture, public release and captioning may not be on your mind at
the time.

~~~
extra88
Yes. There are more options for providing accommodations to individual
students taking a short list of classes in person. Out of all the classes,
relatively few will have a student enrolled who requires the most elaborate
accommodations. Some books will be used for many years so making an accessible
version will likely get reused but quite a lot of course content can have a
short shelf life so an accessible version made for a student today may never
be reused.

