[BlindMath] Accounting resources for JAWS users?

Sat Nov 6 04:46:35 UTC 2021

I know what     you mean.being an accounting student  many long years  ago, and being in the profession for a long time and recently transitioning away into other fieled which my expertise has been saught.  

-----Original Message-----
From: BlindMath <blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Sean Loraas via BlindMath
Sent: Friday, November 5, 2021 2:25 PM
To: blindmath at nfbnet.org
Cc: Sean Loraas <sloraas at austincc.edu>
Subject: Re: [BlindMath] Accounting resources for JAWS users?

I've been challenged with making Accounting courses accessible to JAWS users and braille readers. It's been a huge challenge with courses that use MyLab Accounting by Pearson. There are several reasons for this that I won't go into here since that isn't the question that was posed. I have found the Accounting professions to rely heavily on visual tables, which is fine when those tables are presented as proper data tables, which like the previous responder mentioned, can be extremely accessible. Unfortunately, almost all the textbooks that I've encountered present many of the accounting tables in ways that aren't proper tabular data, or in such complex tables that there is no way to preserve column headings in a consistent way that is accessible for a screen reader. The more I examined the issues the more alarmed I became at how much was being lost for the screen reader users. It's important to know that without the tabular datatable features set up according to accessibility standards, screen reader users can lose all the information about what is vertically aligned. Seems minor, but the amount of information conveyed by vertically aligned data, is immense, and critical to recognizing the type of data expected for a given field or cell. This is often taken for granted due to the ease at which it is recognized visually: instantly and effortlessly recognizing the relationship between data that is aligned vertically.
Vertically aligned data usually shares a data type. For example Debits or Credits in Accounting. Complex accounting tables that are presented in a non-tabular format, without column headings, completely lose that vertical alignment information. The fact that most screen reading applications will skip blank cells without reporting them, further complicates the problem.
In Pearson's MyLab Accounting, these data tables are presented as form fields, sometimes with dropdown selections, sometimes not. So the visual alignment and layout of the table is lost for students navigating with screen readers. I have found some success providing braille and or tactile graphics that provide the visual layout of the table, but students without vision, or with low vision are still at a huge disadvantage having to become familiar with the table structure separately from the table data, and I find instructors have a hard time wrapping their head around the magnitude of the barrier. Some of the brightest students I've ever worked with have had to work much too hard for the accounting materials to be anything close to an equivalent experience. There needs to be some investigation and research into the nature of accounting tables and whether or not there is an inherent visual bias in the way accounting information is traditionally presented, that discriminates against individuals without vision or with low vision. I suspect that is the case, especially with undergraduate level textbook presentations. If there are any alt format specialists out there that have had success with providing accounting materials in an alternative format, I would love to hear about it also.
Given unlimited time to provide materials, there are solutions that may be identified. But I have had a difficult time finding a suitable method of making all the materials accessible in real time, keeping pace with the class with the resources available to our small department. I hope my experience has shed some light on the some of the barriers and how problematic they can be in a way that is subtle and not intuitive for sighted people to appreciate, which can pose as much or more of a barrier than the issues with the materials, and can derail attempts to provide solutions that give students the opportunity to have anything like the intended experience afforded to students with sight. I have even found issues in the accounting materials from some of the most reliable OER textbooks, from publishers like Openstax, who are publishing some of the most accessible textbooks in history (in my opinion). There were complex nested tables that would read down a column of account titles then go back up and read their related balances. breaking any link between the account and the balance. Though they responded to my support inquiry and pledged to fix the issue. I have actually found very few barriers like that in Openstax textbooks, so they are my go-to recommendation to students as a supplemental resource to their official textbooks. Sorry for such a long message. I'd appreciate any feedback or solutions others have identified that were successful. Stay safe!

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