From Inside Higher Ed:

Both MIT and Harvard have argued in court filings that they should not be required to provide closed captions for every video they create or host on their websites. After the institutions’ first attempt to dismiss the cases was denied, there was a yearlong attempt to reach a settlement out of court. When that attempt failed, the universities again moved to dismiss the cases.
Judge Katherine A. Robertson of the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts largely rejected the universities’ second attempt to dismiss the cases. On March 28, Robertson denied the institutions’ pleas for the exclusion of their websites from Title III of the Americans With Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. Title III of the ADA prohibits disability discrimination by “places of public accommodation.” Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in programs that receive federal funding.

My eyes are stuck in the rolled position, and this time I think it’s permanent. I may be missing something, but the only exception for captions in WCAG SC 1.2.2 or its “Understanding” documentation is for content which is a transcript of the video or audio. I’m not deaf, and I’m getting tired of the excuses for lack of captions or transcriptions. How many times does some variation of “it’s not popular enough” or “I can’t afford it” or “it’s too hard” have to be tossed out? People and organizations will spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on audio or video equipment, only to then not caption or transcribe the content they create. And Harvard and MIT both are schools which could afford to transcribe their content, so hearing from them that they care about accessibility as long as it means they don’t have to caption all of their content is especially galling. I suppose if we’re talking about a podcast that’s just starting out, or a one-man shop, I could see why you might not come out of the gate with captions/transcripts. But even that only works to a point. If you’re pouring hundreds of dollars into a good headset or other higher-end audio equipment, then at some point you should be making arrangements for captions or transcriptions. It goes without saying that Harvard and MIT aren’t in the one-man-shop category.

Read VPN – a Very Precarious Narrative by Dennis Schubert

A very long article about commercial VPNs, their marketing strategies, and the truth behind their privacy and security claims.

[…] another worrying aspect of today’s market of VPN services is the large amount of misinformation end users are exposed to, which makes it hard for them to properly tell apart vague and bold claims typical of product advertisement campaigns with actual facts.

That quote is four years old, and just as relevant today as it was when it was written. The article I’m linking here does a really good job explaining what a VPN (virtual private network) is and what it is not, and it makes sure to use as few technical terms as possible. It also goes into detail about what a VPN is good for, not just what they’re not good for.

Read Stop Throwing Away Your Content by Adrian Roselli

It is not uncommon for individuals and even entire organizations to rely on some third party platform to host all their thought-leadering. Medium is the common choice, but many use other platforms as well, such as LinkedIn.
While many argue that the reach is better and it is easier than self-hosting, few consider what will happen when their chosen platform goes away (or the platform chooses to purge you). After all, the web is littered with the corpses of platforms populated by content that you wrote and that we will never see again.

The death of GooglePlus earlier this week is the perfect time to re-up this from Adrian. With the rate of site deaths or just general data loss, like in the case of MySpace and all the music, this will never stop being evergreen content. Seriously, listen to Adrian and do what he tells you. Start taking control and ownership of the content you create.