"The US Department of Justice's (DOJ) Civil Rights Division is doing everything that it can to make the web and information technology (IT) more accessible to people with disabilities. One of the most effective ways to achieve this goal is by following up on complaints submitted by citizens who feel their rights to use the internet are being denied by an organization's inaccessible technology. A landscape portrait featuring Berkeley's Campanile tower in the foreground and a rainy San Francisco Bay in the background That's exactly what happened when, in October 2014, the DOJ began investigating the free, public MOOC (Massive open online course) system offered by University of California, Berkeley when deaf and hard of hearing individuals complained they could not access the audio and video content on the site. On August 30, 2016, the DOJ submitted a 10-page letter to the administration at UC Berkeley stating that they had found the university's MOOC content to be in violation of Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) which protects disabled people from discrimination. Legal Context: How Are MOOCs Subject to Accessibility Laws? The laws surrounding free online course content accessibility are not explicit."

L'articolo descrive il contesto e gli aspetti giuridici del confronto sull'accessibilità tra Dipartimento della Giustizia US e l'Università di Berkeley.

"UC Berkeley announced Wednesday that it would restrict public access to existing educational content after a Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation concluded that many of the video captions did not meet standards of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Campus will instead invest in developing new online content with necessary accessibility features, according to campus spokesperson Roqua Montez. Montez said that because of limited viewership of more than 20,000 course capture videos and a projected cost of at least $1 million for captioning, campus decided not to revamp the videos deemed inaccessible. "On average, the older videos were watched for less than 8 minutes," Montez said. "(It) doesn't make sense to go back and do that, given the budget climate we are in. We had to weigh that as a factor.""

Articolo sull'annuncio di Berkeley del ritiro dalla visibilità pubblica dei video non conformi ai requisiti di accessibilità

" We look forward to continued dialog with the Department of Justice regarding the requirements of the ADA and options for compliance. Yet we do so with the realization that, due to our current financial constraints, we might not be able to continue to provide free public content under the conditions laid out by the Department of Justice to the extent we have in the past. In many cases the requirements proposed by the department would require the university to implement extremely expensive measures to continue to make these resources available to the public for free. We believe that in a time of substantial budget deficits and shrinking state financial support, our first obligation is to use our limited resources to support our enrolled students. Therefore, we must strongly consider the unenviable option of whether to remove content from public access. Please know that we fully intend to exhaust every available option to retain or restore free public availability of online content. It is our hope that we will find an appropriate resolution with the Department of Justice that allows us to serve the extended seeing- and hearing-impaired community and continue to provide free online content."

Risposta di Berkeley alla lettera del Dipartimento di Giustizia US sulla non conformità dei materiali di corso con i requisiti della legge.

"Re: The United States' Findings and Conclusions Based on its Investigation Under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act of the University of California at Berkeley, DJ No. 204"

Lettera del Dipartimento della Giustizia US in merito al procedimento per violazione della Americans with Disabilities Act (Legge sugli americani con disabilità, +/- equivalente della Legge Stanca italiana)

Video della NASA dell'atterraggio di Apollo 11 sulla luna, con trascrizione interattiva degli scambi tra astronauti e operatori di controllo a Houston.

"What is artificial intelligence, and why do so many smart people warn about it? Does it pose an existential threat to humanity? Transcript ------------------- In 2015, an open letter was signed by Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking, Steve Wozniak and hundreds of artificial intelligence experts. It discussed the growing impact AI will have over our lives, and the importance of safety research in this field. In addition, Elon Musk called it "summoning the demon" and bill gates said he "doesn't understand why some people are not concerned". And yet others like Paul Alan expressed some skepticism. what is all the fuss about? (...)"

Published on Jun 2, 2012 on YouTube Since Tony Blair's New Labour government came to power in 1997, the UK civil liberties landscape has changed dramatically. ASBOs were introduced by Section 1 of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and first used in 1999. The right to remain silent is no longer universal. Our right to privacy, free from interception of communications has been severely curtailed. The ability to travel without surveillance (or those details of our journeys being retained) has disappeared. Indeed, as Henry Porter (the Observer journalist famous for his recent email clash with Tony Blair over the paring down of civil liberties) reveals in this unsettling film, our movements are being watched, and recorded, more than ever before. (narrato da Henry Porter, realizzato da Neil Ferguson, trasmesso originalmente nel 2006)

"We need our smartphones, notifications screens and web browsers to be exoskeletons for our minds and interpersonal relationships that put our values, not our impulses, first. People's time is valuable. And we should protect it with the same rigor as privacy and other digital rights. "

"88 results for "vouchers" Help Articles Course Certificate Refund Policies -390 ... need to reach out to Apple. Course Certificate Vouchers You may receive a Course Certificate voucher as part of a special... Forum Discussions..."

"If you notice a serious mistake in a course, please contact us. Include information about the mistake, including links to supporting evidence that it is a mistake. Serious mistakes might include: An assignment deadline set before the course start date A broken link to a resource required for an assignment A video that has no subtitles If you notice a typo or minor error in a course, please do not report it. Typos do not affect the course experience significantly for most users, and reporting them makes it more difficult for instructional staff to address real issues in course content."

Strano concetto della qualità.

January 19, 2016 "Starting today, when you enroll in certain courses, you'll be asked to pay a fee (or apply for Coursera's financial aid program) if you'd like to submit required graded assignments and earn a Course Certificate. You can also choose to explore the course for free, in which case you'll have full access to videos, discussions, and practice assignments, and view-only access to graded assignments. You'll see the options for each individual course when you click "enroll" on the course information page; courses that aren't part of this change will continue to show the options to enroll in the course either with or without a Certificate. Most courses that are part of Specializations will begin offering this new experience this week, and certain other courses will follow later this year."

Ironia: quando ho fatto questo segnalibro, il solo tag raccomandato (dal blog Coursera) che è apparso era "mooc"...

"by Lauren Lindstrom, The Blade/TNS | February 5, 2016 TIFFIN, Ohio - A judge has ordered Seneca Re-ad Industries Inc. to pay more than $54,000 in damages and back pay after ruling that the sheltered workshop wrongly set subminimum wages for three of its employees with disabilities. Judge Steven D. Bell, an administrative law judge for the U.S. Department of Labor, ruled this week that the employer was not justified when it paid three of its employees below minimum wage. He also ruled that the subminimum wages were not accurately assessed. The case involves three employees of the Seneca Re-Ad Center, a sheltered workshop in Fostoria. In a petition filed in November with the Department of Labor, the employees said their disabilities, which include visual impairment and Asperger's syndrome, did not interfere with their work productivity and they should be paid minimum wage."

"Lia Commissar - Wellcome Trust - UK How can we ensure that education is ready to prepare learners for the future? And how can we create new learning environments which enhance the benefit of education? Learn about the latest theories, new digital solutions, policies, strategies, research and insights, as our expert speakers shared their enthusiasm for tomorrow's new world of learning. More info: http://bit.ly/1NgVtia"

"Toby Walsh - Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of New South Wales - Australia How can we ensure that education is ready to prepare learners for the future? And how can we create new learning environments which enhance the benefit of education? Learn about the latest theories, new digital solutions, policies, strategies, research and insights, as our expert speakers shared their enthusiasm for tomorrow's new world of learning. More info: http://bit.ly/1NgVtia"

"Fair Use, MOOCs, and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act: Frequently Asked Questions In October 2015 the Librarian of Congress issued new rules permitting certain teachers of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) to break encryption on DVDs, Blu-Ray discs and streaming videos to create short clips for use in their teaching. It's a major step forward for MOOC teachers and their students. This document, prepared by Professors Peter Decherney and Brandon Butler, answers some of the most common questions you might have about the new rule."

(Per il contesto, vedi http://infojustice.org/archives/35654 e http://ipclinic.org/2016/01/22/fair-use-moocs-and-the-digital-millennium-copyright-act-frequently-asked-questions/) Parti problematiche: Coursera and Udacity are for profit companies. Can they take advantage of the exemption? Coursera and Udacity are the platforms. Colleges, universities, museums, and other nonprofit organizations offer courses through these platforms. The organization that creates the course must be an accredited nonprofit educational institution, but the provider of the software platform may be for-profit . So a university course offered through Coursera may take advantage of the exemption. How can the material be restricted to students enrolled in the course? We believe that use of passwords provided only to enrolled students will sufficiently limit access to the course content to students or learners. How can redistribution be prevented? Offering streaming rather than downloadable versions of the course content should reasonably limit unauthorized redistribution of the work. Unfortunately, this unfairly disadvantages learners with slower internet access" Cioè l'autorizzazione a far saltare i blocchi anticopia vale soltant per i MOOC che non sono MOOC perché non sono Open ma protetti da password. E l'argomento secondo il quale il fair use vale per i video di corsi Coursera e Udacity, a patto che gli enti che elargiscono il corso non siano a scopo di lucro, anche se le piattaforme lo sono, è dubbio. in effetti Coursera e Udacity traggono profitto dai materiali proposti da questi enti. Quanto all'offerta dei video in solo streaming per impedirne lo scaricamento: almeno nei corsi Coursera dove il link di scaricamento è stato t

"Short panel presentation to Online Educa Berlin in which I reflect on the ways the agile process can go wrong when applied to learning design. Not that it always goes wrong, but this is the topic I drew in the panel. [Added to Youtube by Stephen Downes, Dec 27, 2015]"

"Allan Päll - Secretary General of the European Youth Forum - Belgium Miles Berry - Principal lecturer in Computing Education at the University of Roehampton - UK Jo Swinson - Minister for Business, Innovation and Skills in the UK's coalition Government of 2010-2015 - UK Pedro De Bruyckere - Educational scientist at the Artevelde Hogeschool - Belgium Are we equipping young people with the skills they need to participate, contribute and compete in our technology-oriented society? What specific new skills are needed? Are schools and universities the right places to teach these so-called '21st century skills'? On December 4, OEB 2015 experts debated on the motion "This House believes 21st Century skills aren't being taught - and they should be" More info: http://bit.ly/20zkM8R"

"Gilly Salmon - Professor at the University of Western Australia - Australia Gilly Salmon invited us to observe and explore technologies of the future and bring them to today, in the service of student achievements and business advantage More info: http://bit.ly/1YkCGOf"

"Ian Goldin - Professor of Globalisation and Development and Director of the Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford - UK The Opening Plenary session of OEB 2015 looked at the challenges of modernity and identify how people, organisations, institutions and societies can make technology and knowledge work together to accelerate the shift to a new age of opportunity. More info: http://bit.ly/1lugQWX"

"Cory Doctorow - Writer, Blogger, Activist - USA The Opening Plenary session of OEB 2015 looked at the challenges of modernity and identify how people, organisations, institutions and societies can make technology and knowledge work together to accelerate the shift to a new age of opportunity. More info: http://bit.ly/1lugQWX"