[BlindMath] data analysis question

[zhen holmes]

Hi there, 
I was wondering about how to best access and manipulate data. Here's  the story. I have the opportunity to work on a really ml research project involving presolar grains and aminoacid abundances. It would involve mining data from papers, creating tables, and making new plots. My question is how best to accomplish this. Some people I have spoken to recommend excel, but I've heard its not very screen reader friendly in terms of reading data. When you are in a table, without being able  to know what row and collum you are in, it would seem to me that the numbers would very easily lose their meaning. Even so, if that is a good option, is there a good list of jaws commands for excell? I haven't been able to find one. Another suggestions was to utilize a reader to get a better overview of the numbers and to start making extrapolations and to find internal assumptions on my own. Obviously that doesn't solve all the plotting problems, but it is something and would u simultaneously solve the problem that pre 2002 papers aren't accessable to begin with. At any rate, any suggestions would be welcomed. For the record, I will be posting this to both the math and science lists. 
thanks and best, 
Z H