Dive Brief:
- Kansas State University is going with an alternative approach to making its online video content compliant with federal ADA laws: the school will import thousands of hours of lecture and production files into a new content management system, Mediasite.
- The CMS will serve as the central repository for open source, lecture and other faculty-created video content, which exceeds more than 14,000 hours of footage which has been viewed more than 2 million times in the last two years.
- Officials say the new approach will provide faculty a common tool for production that will allow a more seamless process of creation and publishing for public consumption.
Dive Insight:
It will be a tough process for officials at Cal-Berkeley to see that another major research institution has found a way to store video and remain ADA compliant without taking all of its content and locking it behind a single sign-on wall as a seeming sign of IT protest. Other campuses should consider similar initiatives to preserve video and audio files which, even if stored in specific places, can still be marketed and used for promotion of faculty and campus research impact.
After all, the rules don’t dictate that content disappears; just that all types of users with varying levels of sight, hearing and access are able to use it equitably.