Posted on 03/11/2017 11:33:23 AM PST by Behind Liberal Lines
Berkeley previously housed an online library consisting of more than 20,000 videos of lectures. These videos were free and accessible to the public. But they are free no longer: next week, administrators will withdraw access to anyone who isn't a Berkeley student or professor.
Two employees of Gallaudet University—a school for the deaf in Washington, D.C.—filed a complaint with DOJ alleging that Berkeley's online content was inaccessible to the hearing-disabled community. After looking into the matter, DOJ determined that Berkeley had indeed violated the Americans with Disabilities Act
Berkeley had two choices: spend a fortune adding closed captioning to the videos, or remove them from public view. Cost-conscious administrators chose the latter option.
(Excerpt) Read more at reason.com ...
George Bush Sr gave us the ADAThe ADA is possibly the worst regulation(s) a small business has to comply with.
It's administered by the Justice Dept. and they can take/close your business faster than you can say EPA.
The tiniest infraction could cost an existing or even a new small business tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars to comply with for wheel chair access alone.
“It is the essence of Socialism and Communism when you get right down to it - everyone except the elite is equally mired in poverty and lack of opportunity.”
This is why socialism/communism will never succeed in America because the commies are bogged down with so many rules that can never be enforced.
FYI, I was a member of Free Republic under another name. I am not new to lurking and posting. So, don’t send the Viking kitties after me or Zot me.
Just remember that being hard of hearing or deaf is not easy. Hearing aids don’t solve the problem and cochlear implants are exaggerated hearing aids.
Who might you have been in an earlier lifetime?
No; they did not.
This 'ruling' is soon to be overturned.
https://www.lowes.com/cd_Welcome+Lowe's+Speaks+Your+Language_830973134_
“Berkeley had two choices: spend a fortune adding closed captioning to the videos, or remove them from public view. Cost-conscious administrators chose the latter option.”
Not that I want to watch a Berkley Lecture but WTF? The courts are out of control.
It's horribly isolating & normal-hearing people don't have a clue how to deal with it, and they don't make an effort to do a work-around on communicating.
I'm in the middle, born with hearing loss that has slowly gotten worse; am not quite a candidate for cochlear implants, so am in a race against time w.r.t. retirement... will my hearing last another 2 to 5 years?
I don't have a social life; all the chitchat and small talk and jokes go right over my head.
One of the freshman students at UC-Irvine, whom I advise, doesn’t understand his Linear Alegbra prof, so he has been listening to the Linear Algebra courses at MIT and says that they are much better. These classes are the MOOCs that have been so popular. They are a GREAT use of the internet. If you checked closely, you would see that Not all of them are just basic courses.
Whups, the rest of my post went missing! Anyway, someone else correctly posted that the cost would be > $1,200,000.
Please don’t take this the wrong way: Sound & hearing is a BIG part of my life, and while I have experimented with sensory deprivation (sound and vision, years ago), it is still hard to imagine that as a permanent condition.
However... It almost appears as if you are handicapping yourself. I’ve been around a decent while, and have had the blessing of, well, “so-so” sight, and good hearing over that time. But when it comes to, not enjoyment, but real learning, I’d have to say that 80-90% of what I have learned since I was a young child was learned by reading. (This excludes transitory stuff such as the daily traffic report, or physical learning, such as how to shoot basketball, not that I’m any expert at the latter!) I sat here after reading your post and thought about it a while: I truly believe that at least 95% of what I have learned in some sort of academic sense I could have learned if I was deaf. In fact, without the often distraction of sound (particularly music) I surely would have learned even more in some areas.
Now, that doesn’t mean I’d want to give up music(!!!). But, humans are adaptable, and most real “knowledge” out there doesn’t require sound to be communicated. I doubt there was much in the Berkley lectures that cannot be accessed in other ways.
OTOH, the Berkley free online lectures are (or were) a convenience. So, I’d also ask, how can this outcome, at least as it presently stands, be viewed as a positive? Or is spite your goal?
Would it not have been better for the plaintiffs to have spent their time and money working WITH Berkley and Gallaudet University to approach charitable organizations to fund and organize the addition of closed captioning to the videos?
More specifically Bob Dole shepherded it through.
More specifically Bob Dole shepherded it through.
As I recall, that was something Bush got criticism for right off the bat.
I wonder if every lecture given next Monday at Berkley will have a deaf interpreter alongside each speaker?
I wonder if people who speak only Afghan will sue because Berkley non-existence CC was not in THEIR language!
Not sure why this is, but that's the way it is.
I wish I was deaf so I couldn’t hear you come on a conservative web site and whine about how life isn’t fair.
DU might be a better fit for you.
Why should everyone be punished because you are deaf?
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