Harvard University
Harvard offered free online classes to the world. They couldn't be heard by deaf students.
For years, Harvard published thousands of hours of free lectures and online courses — on YouTube, edX, and podcasts. None of them had accurate captions. Deaf and hard-of-hearing students could see the slides, but couldn't follow what professors were saying. The National Association of the Deaf sued in 2015.
Harvard fought it for five years. They argued that captioning everything would be expensive and unnecessary because the content was "free" and "optional." The court disagreed. Harvard ended up paying over $1.5 million in legal fees alone and now has to caption all public-facing online content forever. Every business with a video library should pay attention.
Court
District of Massachusetts
Case
National Association of the Deaf v. Harvard University
3:15-cv-30023
Outcome
Class action consent decree settlement approved February 27, 2020; Harvard paid $1.5M+ in attorney fees; required to caption all new public-facing online content and all archived content on request within 5 business days
What went wrong on the site
Each visual below shows what visitors with disabilities actually experienced.
No CC
Deaf users get audio dialogue with no captions
Audio and video content had no closed captions — deaf and hard-of-hearing users got no access to the dialogue.
WCAG 1.2.2 Captions (Prerecorded)
Sources & documentation
- Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse — NAD v. Harvard, 3:15-cv-30023Primary
- Cohen Milstein — Case study pagePrimary
- Seyfarth Shaw — Four-year battle proceeds to discovery (April 2019)Primary
- Harvard Digital Accessibility — Settlement caption requirementsPrimary
- Harvard Crimson — Harvard settles caption lawsuit (Dec 2019)
- National Deaf Center — Significance of Harvard settlement
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