I don't disagree in general; it's far from uncommon for legislation to have unintended consequences the drafters didn't envision (fully or otherwise), to say nothing of accidental drafting errors. Technical corrections after a bill has been signed are hard enough to make, but correcting unintended consequences in the current partisan environment is even harder.[1] In many cases, those who were opposed to a given bill are more than willing to let those consequences stand for political reasons or are just unwilling to risk blowback from their base. Even when that's not the case, there's a common mindset that once a bill has been signed the issue is resolved. It can take a lot to get past that.
UC Berkeley's actions were definitely an unintended consequence. But I wouldn't go so far as to say that it suggests the ADA is broken. Reading over the DOJ letter[0] to UC Berkeley, it seems like the decision was the result of a few years of laxity on the school's part despite the knowledge that the content had to be made accessible, as noted in school guidelines and policy quoted by the DOJ. Berkeley had the resources to help faculty with making their online content accessible, but it was up to the faculty members to avail themselves of it. Had the school done more to monitor compliance (and it would probably be a simple enough thing to automate) from the beginning, they'd have avoided the entire mess.
As it is, they have years of content and thousands of videos, PDFs/slideshows/supplementals, and more that needs to be sorted and reworked to meet WCAG standards. What might have been manageable as it was produced is now a massive project that would strain their resources to the breaking point. Deleting them absolutely sucks, but I can see the business logic behind the decision even if the idea of just deleting such a wealth of knowledge offends me on an intellectual level. Could they have found a way to orphan most of the content online, no longer under UC Berkeley's control? I don't know. That said, the situation seems to have been a rather unique largely the result of the school's approach to compliance monitoring.
UC Berkeley's actions were definitely an unintended consequence. But I wouldn't go so far as to say that it suggests the ADA is broken. Reading over the DOJ letter[0] to UC Berkeley, it seems like the decision was the result of a few years of laxity on the school's part despite the knowledge that the content had to be made accessible, as noted in school guidelines and policy quoted by the DOJ. Berkeley had the resources to help faculty with making their online content accessible, but it was up to the faculty members to avail themselves of it. Had the school done more to monitor compliance (and it would probably be a simple enough thing to automate) from the beginning, they'd have avoided the entire mess.
As it is, they have years of content and thousands of videos, PDFs/slideshows/supplementals, and more that needs to be sorted and reworked to meet WCAG standards. What might have been manageable as it was produced is now a massive project that would strain their resources to the breaking point. Deleting them absolutely sucks, but I can see the business logic behind the decision even if the idea of just deleting such a wealth of knowledge offends me on an intellectual level. Could they have found a way to orphan most of the content online, no longer under UC Berkeley's control? I don't know. That said, the situation seems to have been a rather unique largely the result of the school's approach to compliance monitoring.
0. https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/04/dealing-with-d...
1. https://news.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/2016-08...