On: Harvard and M.I.T. Sued Over Failing to Caption Online Courses

[justcommenting]

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

[hga → justcommenting]

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?

[justcommenting → hga]

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.