[Blindmath] Computers and data analysis software

[Theodor Loots]

Dear Arielle,

Jonathan Godfrey and I wrote an article on the accessibility of statistical
software in which we compare the packages you mention below.  We're both
academics at Universities, and use computers daily.

The quick answer:  SAS is still accessible, but you might get further with
R.  However, if you're use to SAS, then you'll probably be quicker on your
bike that way...

Please feel free to ask should you require more specific info...

Best,
t
-----Original Message-----
From: Blindmath [mailto:blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Arielle
Silverman
Sent: 06 March 2014 06:12 AM
To: social-sciences-list at nfbnet.org
Cc: blindmath at nfbnet.org
Subject: [Blindmath] Computers and data analysis software

Hi all,

I just got a postdoc at the University of Washington Department of
Rehabilitation Medicine which will start this summer! (Yay!) The job will be
data analysis-intensive. They will provide me a computer to use in my
office, but I will have to negotiate screen readers with them, and I may
decide to buy a second computer to do data analysis at home. (My current
data analysis computer is more than seven years old and I can't trust it to
meet my needs for much longer). For my own computer, I prefer a portable one
and the smaller the better.
So I have a few questions about your experiences:

1. Anyone had luck using SAS, SPSS or Mplus on a Mac with VoiceOver?
Or if I go that route, should I buckle down and learn R?

2. Anyone know if the current version of SAS (I think it's 9.4) is still
accessible? I've been using SAS 9.2 for years, and it's great, but I've
heard that the later versions of SAS put all kinds of annoying graphs into
the output. Is all that stuff still accessible or should I switch to SPSS?

3. How user-friendly is Windows 8 with the latest version of JAWS? I hear
Windows 8 involves some kind of touch input which scares me a bit.

Thanks for any advice!
Best,
Arielle

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