The University of California, Berkeley, will cut off public access to tens of thousands of video lectures and podcasts in response to a U.S. Justice Department order that it make the educational content accessible to people with disabilities.
Tuesday, March 07, 2017
Calling Harrison Bergeron
Because if you can't educate everybody, it's bad to educate anybody:
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5 comments:
Further proof that Empires die from within...
To some extent, I can sort of, kind of, get Gallaudet's objection: these lectures give unfair advantage to people who can access them. It is a variant of the entirely valid objection to separate but equal. Separate, yes. Equal, no.
That I get it, though, doesn't mean I agree with it. The fundamental flaw is the unexamined presumption that fair means equal. It doesn't, not by a long shot. I have an equal opportunity to be starting quarterback for the Patriots. It isn't fair that I don't have the talent to take Tom Brady's job away from him. Equal and fair are different concepts. I am deeply sorry that deaf people can't access those lectures. I am also deeply sorry that deaf people can't access my job, because they can't hear audible alarms.
Therefore, we shut down air travel?
If that doesn't wash, then neither does pulling the lectures.
If I was Berkeley's Head Dudx What's In Charge, the first thing I'd do is expel every single arschloch that saw fit to tyrannize other's thoughts. Then, having done that, I'd first foresake copyright on all the lectures, releasing them into the wild, thereby succumbing to the court's diktat with two fingers raised.
Forgot.
The last time this particular strain of Why We Can't Have Nice Things raised its ugly unshaven head was with regard to hotel swimming pools.
They aren't accessible to the (dammit, forgot what's this year's word for crippled). Therefore, hotels must spend thousands on poolside cranes so that those who can't swim can use the pool.
Result: most pools become gardens, the rest have unused cranes.
Can't bear to read any more drivel about fairness and equality. Why aren't the lectures transcribed so deaf people can read them?
Perhaps because no one has ponied up the money to do so? I'm not sure why the deaf fell they are entitled to transcriptions others have to pay for.
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