[Blindmath] MATLAB accessibility

[Todd Schwanke]

Jeff:

1) In talking with end users, they generally suggest using other stats programs that are more accessible if they have the option.

2) If it is necessary for a screen reader user to use Matlab, then here's a summary of my experiences with Matlab in Windows as of Feb 2014.

* We have been able to get Matlab R2012a (7.14) 64 bit and R2011b to work with JAWS (64bit) and the Java Access Bridge (64bit) under Windows 7 (64 bit). 
* We have been unable to get Matlab R2012b (v 8.0) through R2014a beta (v8.3beta) which use the new ribbon interface to work with Windows screen readers (JAWS, Window Eyes, nvda) and the Java Access Bridge.  If any screen reader is running, then Matlab crashes right away with a "Abnormal Termination: Access Violation" that, according to the log file, appears to be related to the Access Bridge.  This has been reported to Matlab/Mathworks, but they closed the support ticket and there is no indication when they will fix this problem.  This is particularly puzzling since the Access Bridge comes pre-installed now, but doesn't seem to work.

On the Windows side, we have worked with 3 main options for Matlab
1) If the user wants to use desktop mode of Matlab (the GUI mode) , then if you have a copy of Matlab R2012a or prior, you can likely get it working fairly reliably with JAWS (or other screen reader) and the Access Bridge with some keyboard/script tweaks.
2) If the user doesn't need the desktop mode, then you can run matlab with the -nojvm or -nodesktop switches.  The downside to this solution was that we couldn't get the output to be read automatically.  There are some workarounds to review new output manually.
3) Alternatively, if the user doesn't need the desktop mode, then you can SSH into a Linux/Unix system that has Matlab and then run Matlab remotely.  We found that SecureCRT worked fairly well as an SSH client for this, though we had to add scripts to make it speak new output automatically.

You can contact me off-list if you are interested in instructions for a particular setup.

Todd Schwanke
UW-Madison

-----Original Message-----
From: Blindmath [mailto:blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Bishop, Jeff - (jeffbis)
Sent: Friday, May 09, 2014 4:42 PM
To: 'Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics'
Subject: [Blindmath] MATLAB accessibility

Hello Everyone,

Does anyone know what the current state of accessibility of MATLAB is at this point with JAWS, Window-Eyes and VoiceOver on the Mac?

I did some Googling on this topic and have found some pretty involved steps in getting it to work with the Access Bridge. Is this still the case?


-----

Jeff Bishop
Disability Resource Center
IT Accessibility Analyst
http://drc.arizona.edu

Phone: 520-626-1145
Fax  : 520-626-5500
Email Address: jeffbis at email.arizona.edu

Address:
The University of Arizona
Building 95
Room #: 217C
1224 E Lowell St.
Tucson, AZ 85721-0095

--

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