Harvard ADA Class Deal Over Video Captioning Clears First Hurdle

Harvard University will provide closed-captioning on video and audio files posted to its websites and on third-party platforms, under a class settlement granted preliminary approval Dec. 9 by the District of Massachusetts.

The agreement would resolve allegations by the National Association of the Deaf and individuals that the university violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by making content available online that wasn’t accessible to the deaf and hard of hearing.

Harvard recently enacted a digital accessibility policy to address the issue, but the parties’ settlement goes beyond the policy, the court said.

Under the settlement, Harvard must caption new content ...