For better or worse, large portions of society (especially those found in academia and cities) have decided that a level playing field is more important than having any playing field. So to answer your question: it no longer matters whether or not society would be better off. What matters is that everyone is equal and has equal opportunities. If people cannot be given equal opportunity, then the opportunity needs to be taken away from everyone.
I think that's the most tame and non-sarcastic way I can respond to your question. This sort of stuff makes me furious and it's only going to keep happening.
> Finally, moving our content behind authentication allows us to better protect instructor intellectual property from “pirates” who have reused content for personal profit without consent.
Or maybe there are other considerations at stake.
> For better or worse, large portions of society (especially those found in academia and cities) have decided that a level playing field is more important than having any playing field.
That's completely false. What people has decided is that sometimes is worth having a small cost for the big benefit for everyone that it is to have accessibility. Without a more careful case your arguments falls into the Straw Man fallacy. (This fallacy includes an attempt to "prove" an argument by overstating, exaggerating, or over-simplifying the arguments of the opposing side and attacking that "straw man" argument instead of the original one.)
> This sort of stuff makes me furious and it's only going to keep happening.
It is about helping them, not about making things difficult for the rest. If you have the opportunity to talk with some disabled people that have seen their lives improved thanks to this measures probably you are going to be less furious and more happy about it. :)
We decided as a country that handicapped people get access, and we all pay a little more, rolled into the cost of services, to make that so. If Berkeley hadn't skipped providing access, we wouldn't be in this situation.
It's impossible to have access for all. Reductio ad absurdum: illiterate and mentally handicapped people exist, therefore, we should burn all books.
There's likely a fairer way of doing this instead of denying access to all for the sake of a few. For example, a JIT system for accessibility. A disabled person, if interested, could make a request to have material translated to their preferred mode.
And when it's prohibitively expensive, you really prefer just not giving anyone access?
The amount of video that is being produced and uploaded today makes a requirement to put traditional closed captioning on each one absolutely laughable and ridiculous. It's telling that the requirement was dreamed up in 1990, probably by people without a lot of vision for how cheap bandwidth might become and the amount of content that would be produced and shared within a few decades.
The public is the loser, here. Institutions like Berkeley will have to pull down high-quality content, but amateur content isn't affected. So the overall quality of content available to the public just got worse.
There is no way in which this is a win for the majority.
I think that's the most tame and non-sarcastic way I can respond to your question. This sort of stuff makes me furious and it's only going to keep happening.