Comments on: Berkeley, facing accessibility demands, may take down free online course content

By: Wilbur

Wilbur — Wed, 21 Sep 2016 21:01:05 +0000

I’d like thank conservative Bob Dole for shoving this monstrosity down our throats.

By: Cecil

Cecil — Wed, 21 Sep 2016 16:13:39 +0000

Blind, b.s. computer science East Carolina University, 5/1990. Courses included statistics, calculus, discreet mathematical structures, logic. Equations can be represented both electronically and in braille… As for colors, there’s more to art than painting/drawing and maybe a physics course would be helpful in explaining some of the concepts if an art teacher can’t manage it. This isn’t Wesleyan, but UC Berkley. If you suck at the government teat, then you get to play by government rules. So explain to me exactly why a state supported school can provide free to the public courses (that I as a taxpayer in part pay for) that aren’t accessible? Am I not part of the public? I realize that this is not an accepted premise here, but you will admit that there is no such thing as free of cost, and my taxes go toward their production costs just like yours.

By: ras

ras — Wed, 21 Sep 2016 04:20:03 +0000

Free educational content? Can’t have that. The excuse is irrelevant.

By: Rxc

Rxc — Wed, 21 Sep 2016 00:17:02 +0000

How will they teach subjects like math, which are heavily dependent on reading equations? What about art courses where they analyze different colors and the positions of diffy rent elements in a composition? What about music for the deaf? Or feminist logic for engineers who have no idea about how women think?

(I would actually pay good money for an explanation of the last subject)

By: CarLitGuy

CarLitGuy — Tue, 20 Sep 2016 16:17:45 +0000

They don’t teach Vonnegut in school anymore? I thought “Harrison Bergeron” was succinct (it’s what, 3 pages?) enough that it was still taught in middle school – or has it been replaced with a trigger warning?

This is why we can’t have nice things. School is “too expensive”, unless the college makes it free, apparently. Then no one can be allowed to have it, unless everyone can…

By: Wfjag

Wfjag — Tue, 20 Sep 2016 10:39:00 +0000

A proposal:
Each Department which posts free online courses should replace Diversity Administrators and personnel with Accessibility Administrators and personnel. The function of the latter would be to prepare and insert Closed Captioning, accurate descriptions of visual materials and reading of texts, and ensuring that prompts and control functions can be manipulated by persons with physical limitations. That would actually promote diversity by making the information available to groups otherwise excluded, and without regard to race, ethnic background, gender, etc. (Oh, and the University would employ administrative support staff who actually aided its educational mission. Or, is that too radical an idea?)