Our society is better when the things that are available are available to everyone, not just the privileged. I don't see why accommodations for the disabled are considered some unnecessary burden; they should be considered a cost of doing business, for everyone who does business.
This wasn't business. There were no profits to divert into making better subtitles.
And the ratio of effort between making a recording versus making a recording and then manually subtitling it is completely out of whack compared to the ratio you have in full produced works. There's a reasonable level of accommodation, and the reasonable level is below a doubling in costs.
I'm someone that would significantly raise the subtitling requirements on youtube if I could. But in this case I just don't feel it.
I shouldn't have used the term "business," because that made people think that I was referring more to economics instead of "doing the right thing even when the right thing is slightly more expensive." Look, UC Berkeley is a public university and they have to adhere to certain rules around disabilities and accommodations. It's well established law at this point; the ADA is 35 years old. They should know this, and they should be able to comply. To take down the videos suggests laziness and ignorance on Berkeley's part.
> doing the right thing even when the right thing is slightly more expensive
And that's why I made the argument that it wasn't slightly more expensive. It's possible it would have cost more to add subtitles than the entire rest of the project combined.
I think it's fair to mandate subtitles when there's a certain level of budget. I don't think it's a good idea to unconditionally mandate subtitles.
> UC Berkeley is a public university and they have to adhere to certain rules
In their normal course of action. I don't think this side project was plugged in to the core tasks of the university.
Shutting it down counts as lazy but what do you want a project with minimal budget to do?
We're not shaming other universities for not putting courses online. We're only shaming one that did it "badly" and then gave up. That's unfair. Every other university that doesn't fund similar subtitles and uploads should get the same reaction.
And by "badly" I mean it still had okay subtitles, just not particularly good ones.
