>That adds substantial costs, and the end result, without additional funding, is no one gets it.

What do you mean "without additional funding"?

All federal grants to universities are by definition "additional funding".

And they only have to comply because they are getting this "additional funding". The university is deciding not to allocate this "additional funding" for this purpose, which is being construed as a violation.

There are a couple of things that are interesting to me about this.

1) If you don't have any vision-impaired people in your course, would you continue to 'downgrade' the curriculum to a vision-impaired level?

2) The funding that they get applies to curriculum, but I do sort of wonder whether this isn't an addition to that.

To point 1: The nuance here is that if I have to describe drawings that I present, even where the audience is fully sighted, it seems like it brings down the quality of education for those in the room. Of course non-sighted persons should be accommodated when they are present, though that adds the additional wrinkle of students perhaps trying to game the system so that they're not in an accommodating classroom, as they'd have more time for lecture, questions, etc.

If we accept that you can hold a class appropriate to sighted persons, but not acceptable to sighted persons when there are only sighted persons in attendance, then what is the meaningful distinction between publishing a recording of that class on your website versus just publishing it on YouTube as "Professor X talks about such and such @UCB"? The latter seems like it would be clearly allowed, while the former seems like it is clearly forbidden, which just reminds us that rules are complicated.

To point 2: This seems akin to saying that "Everything on the menu has to have nutritional information". Okay, everything on the menu does have nutritional information, but in addition to the menu items, I'm also offering you this amuse-bouche free of charge. It's not on the menu, and because we change it daily from ingredients that were delivered to us accidentally, we do not have the ability to generate nutritional information. Can I serve the amuse without nutritional info? It is not part of the menu, for which I receive funds, and it is extra, so the rules should suggest that I am allowed to offer it, but you're either living up to the spirit of or violating the spirit of the rule depending on how charitably you interpret the requirements.

>This seems akin to saying that "Everything on the menu has to have nutritional information".

We're playing a semantics game. I can easily change it to:

"Every thing you serve has to have nutritional information" and remove all ambiguity.

Sure, and then I could (probably a better analogy here really) just put it on a table and say "Take One", bypassing the definition of 'serving', depending on how it's been defined.

Whether we like it or not, law is largely just semantic arguments. The point (and reviewing my previous comment) is that it was something extra, for which your previous "funds have already been allocated to curriculum" comment does not apply -- I've taken the federal grants, applied them to curriculum, and then graciously tried to do something extra, but because the extra bit doesn't meet the requirements attached to the funds, I can't.

I'm not opining on whether that's wrong or right, but it is indeed curious. If we view the rules narrowly, as lawyers are taught to do, then the extra bit wouldn't be applicable. If we view them broadly, then logos and mascots might not be allowed unless accompanied by audio and braille descriptions wherever they are used.

My curiosity here derives from wondering where, since the law is being interpreted more broadly than it must be, the line is, and how this might impact future decisions by universities (or other entities that receive strings-attached funding).

> The university is deciding not to allocate this "additional funding" for this purpose

These grants were not made for the purpose of subtitling videos.

>These grants were not made for the purpose of subtitling videos.

When my advisor gets a half a million dollars to do research on quantum computers, do you think he gets to use half a million dollars for it?

If you do, you clearly have not been exposed to how grants are processed at universities.

The university takes a cut - I've often heard numbers in the ballpark of 50% - to fund infrastructure. See:

https://www.quora.com/What-percentages-of-research-grant-mon...

This is not a scheme - this is how universities have always dealt with grants.

It's entirely up to the university to decide where to spend this money.

So from the Federal government's perspective, they are funding them for it, and instead the university is choosing not to spend money on this.