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University of California, Berkeley, To Delete Publicly Available Educational Content (insidehighered.com)

In response to a U.S. Justice Department order that requires colleges and universities make website content accessible for citizens with disabilities and impairments, the University of California, Berkeley, will cut off public access to tens of thousands of video lectures and podcasts. Officials said making the videos and audio more accessible would have proven too costly in comparison to removing them. Inside Higher Ed reports: Today, the content is available to the public on YouTube, iTunes U and the university's webcast.berkeley site. On March 15, the university will begin removing the more than 20,000 audio and video files from those platforms -- a process that will take three to five months -- and require users sign in with University of California credentials to view or listen to them. The university will continue to offer massive open online courses on edX and said it plans to create new public content that is accessible to listeners or viewers with disabilities. The Justice Department, following an investigation in August, determined that the university was violating the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990. The department reached that conclusion after receiving complaints from two employees of Gallaudet University, saying Berkeley's free online educational content was inaccessible to blind and deaf people because of a lack of captions, screen reader compatibility and other issues. Cathy Koshland, vice chancellor for undergraduate education, made the announcement in a March 1 statement: "This move will also partially address recent findings by the Department of Justice, which suggests that the YouTube and iTunes U content meet higher accessibility standards as a condition of remaining publicly available. Finally, moving our content behind authentication allows us to better protect instructor intellectual property from 'pirates' who have reused content for personal profit without consent."

2 of 337 comments (clear)

  1. Re:False Flag on Education Moment by ZippyTheChicken · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    How the fuck are you blaming this on Republicans... Its not Republicans that force people to comply with things like this its the democrats.. the democrats that are trained in schools like Berkley... and then Berkley won't comply with those laws.. you are so far off base here just because your head is up your ass so far that everything has to be a republican's fault.. HA.. you voted for people that made these laws.. NOW YOU WON'T COMPLY TO THE LAWS YOU WANTED ENACTED..

  2. Re:ugh by haruchai · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Because elected officials were willing to be known as "that guy who hates people in wheelchairs and expects them to drag their bodies up the steps of a building with just their hands"...?

    Lots of elected officials have no problem opposing any restriction on gun rights, even to the faces of those who lost their young children to deranged shooters.

    --
    Pain is merely failure leaving the body