from
The Verge: (Pictured is an example of incorrect auto-captioning on a Harvard YouTube channel.)
The National Association of the Deaf (NAD) is filing lawsuits against both Harvard and MIT
for failing to provide adequate captions for their online educational
material. The complaints allege that both universities have "denied
access to this content to the approximately 48 million — nearly one out
of five — Americans who are deaf or hard of hearing," and that in doing
so have violated federal law.
"If you are a hearing person, you are welcomed into a world of
lifelong learning through access to a community offering videos on
virtually any topic imaginable, from climate change to world history or
the arts," said Arlene Mayerson,
one of the lawyers taking the case against MIT. "No captions is like no
ramp for people in wheelchairs or signs stating ‘people with
disabilities are not welcome.'"
Both suits cover material including podcasts and online lectures,
with the complaints stating that the content is "either not captioned or
is inaccurately or unintelligibly captioned, making it inaccessible for
individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing." However, some of the
lawsuits' accusations may be misguided. Examples of bad captioning cited by the NAD are actually produced by YouTube's automatic captioning system, not by Harvard or MIT.
Christine Griffin, a co-counsel on the case and a director of the Disability Law Center in Boston, tells The Verge that
this was immaterial. Harvard and MIT were both contacted multiple times
about these and other problems, says Griffin, and that even if YouTube
was directly responsible for these particular examples, it is the
universities themselves that "have the ability and authority to make
sure what gets posted is captioned and captioned accurately."
A spokesperson for Harvard told The New York Times
that the university would not comment on the case but that it was
waiting for the Justice Department this year to "provide much-needed
guidance in this area." A spokesperson for MIT meanwhile said that the
university was committed to making its online material accessible and
would be providing captioning in all its most popular courses and new
material.
If the lawsuits are successful, however, the outcome wouldn't just
affect Americans, but deaf people around the world. Harvard and MIT are
both founding members of edX,
a nonprofit and open source platform for massive open online courses
(MOOCs). Courses hosted on edX are available anywhere with internet
access — and the same is true for the material that Harvard and MIT have
posted to YouTube and iTunesU.
"The main issue here is simply equal access," said Griffin. "The laws
we're saying these universities violate are not recent laws. They were
passed twenty to forty years go. [Harvard and MIT] take millions and
millions and millions of dollars of federal money and deaf people pay
those taxes too."
