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U.S. NEWS Wednesday 19 February 2020

MIT to caption online videos after discrimination lawsuit

By ALANNA DURKIN RICHER against MIT and Harvard in to the consent decree. The consent decree says The two settlements follow
BOSTON (AP) — The Mas- 2015 said people who were The agreement must be MIT "has and continues to a U.S. Justice Department
sachusetts Institute of Tech- deaf or hard or hearing approved by a judge be- deny that it violated any finding in 2015 that edX, an
nology has agreed to pro- couldn't benefit from the fore it goes into effect. laws related to persons online platform created by
vide captions for more of schools' wealth of online A spokeswoman for MIT with disabilities or otherwise the two universities, failed
its publicly available online educational resources be- didn't immediately return through posting or making to make its courses acces-
videos as part of a settle- cause they had inaccurate messages seeking com- available any online con- sible to those with vision or
ment announced Tuesday captions or none at all. ment Tuesday. tent." hearing disabilities. q

In this July 16, 2019, file photo people walk past the Ray and
Maria Stata Center building on the campus of Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, in Cambridge, Mass.

in a case that accused the Harvard and MIT both tried
school of discriminating to dismiss the cases, argu-
against people who are ing that the law doesn't re-
deaf or hard of hearing. quire them to provide cap-
The settlement comes tioning for all their online
months after a similar deal content. But a judge ruled
was reached in a lawsuit last year that content pro-
brought against Harvard duced by and posted by
University by the National the universities was subject
Association of the Deaf, to federal civil rights law.
which said the schools Under the settlement, MIT
were discriminating against has agreed to provide
people with hearing dis- captions for any audio or
abilities by not adequately video content it creates
or accurately captioning and posts on its website, as
videos of lectures and oth- well as the school's pages
er programs it posts online. on outlets like YouTube
"Why would you not make and SoundCloud. It must
your content accessible to also provide live captions
everyone?" said Howard for certain events that are
Rosenblum, CEO of the streamed online, accord-
association. "We want to ing to the settlement.
make sure that moving for- Anything posted before
ward all the universities and Jan. 1, 2019, must be cap-
colleges make themselves tioned or removed from
aware." public view only if some-
The lawsuits brought one requests it, according