The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) will provide captions for more of its online videos available to the public, according to an Associated Press (AP) article on the ABC News website.
The settlement is part of a a case brought against the school that alleged it discriminated against deaf and hard-of-hearing people, according to the AP. The outcome follows a similar suit that was filed in 2015 against Harvard University by the National Association of the Deaf (NAD).
According to AP, both schools attempted to dismiss the lawsuits, “arguing that the law doesn’t require them to provide captioning for all their online content,” but a judge determined that content produced and posted by the schools was subject to federal civil rights law.
MIT must now caption any audio or video content it creates and/or posts on its website and the school’s pages on YouTube and SoundCloud; some live events streamed online must be captioned as well.
Further, “anything posted before Jan. 1, 2019, must be captioned or removed from public view only if someone requests it, according to the consent decree.”
To read the story in its entirety on the ABC News website, please click here.
Source: AP, ABC News
