[BlindMath] Matlab for blind users

Tue Apr 5 23:57:02 UTC 2022

Hello Rastislav,

I think your questions, or the answers to them,  show why we need a general list and specific lists as well.

Yes, R is a programming language and as such has  some common problems with any other languages. There are lists where blind people doing programming discuss those issues. I would point out that the tools you suggest that are used by that community are not necessarily within the reach of some people needing to use statistical and/or mathematical software, especially blind users.

R is an alternative to dialogue box and menu driven software that delivers the same/similar  outcomes for sighted users, and not for blind users. The tools used by the R community include some of those mentioned as well as many others that are of more use to novice R users. Supplementary resources is a crucial consideration in any software's accessibility to blind users.

Many programming based solutions use integrated development environments (IDEs), and I suspect that Matlab is fast becoming one if it wasn't when I last used it. This is the way of things, and not all IDEs are equally accessible to blind users. This is especially relevant for R users as the dominant player in this space RStudio is not accessible.

Can software deliver the same outcomes? Yes and no. You can't do everything R offers in anything else. You can't do everything Matlabl has to offer in R, and I could go on. R is statistical and Matlab is mathematical, but there is a degree of overlap. The overlap between mathematical and statistical software is usually less than this particular comparison we've ended up discussing.

The software chosen in any context is chosen for many reasons, not all of which are pedagogical, but many of these decisions do end up having pedagogical or cultural  consequences.
The choice of inaccessible software can make the pedagogical aims  of a specific course inaccessible. That has serious implications for the students and the support services they rely on.

I would point out that many courses in statistics focus on how we digest the analyses done by others, while we  see more and more courses want their students to be the producers of those analyses. The former set of courses have considerably fewer access issues for blind students, but they are now most often found in business and social sciences disciplines, and less often in any sciences. 

A course in statistics that chooses to use pull down menus and dialogue boxes  offers a road map to its users by implication because that is part of that software. Software like R does not. This has consequences on the way we teach and even if we then see software used in a real-world scenario. It is very hard to scale up work done using menu driven software without employing more analysts. Programming based solutions are much easier to scale up, and pass on to colleagues.

The employability of blind people using the skills they learn from school and at university level ought to focus more heavily in our thinking as a community. We focus on the education and perhaps need to do more about how people are getting to use their intellect.

I hope others respond.

Jonathan

----Original Message-----
From: BlindMath <blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Rastislav Kish via BlindMath
Sent: Wednesday, 6 April 2022 10:33 am
To: blindmath at nfbnet.org
Cc: Rastislav Kish <rastislav.kish at protonmail.com>
Subject: Re: [BlindMath] Matlab for blind users

Hi,

just a curious question, why all of this activity regarding R and blind users in particular?

I mean, isn't R just another programming language, just with a specialized focus of interest, making it easier and more convenient to work with?

For example, it would be practically useless to make a specialized Python list for blind people since well... Python is the same for everyone, regardles of their sight, so standard education materials can be followed without any problems, and one can engage in communities like Stack overflow #Python or r/Python just as anyone else.

Note I'm not trying to say here that R mailing groups for blind are of no use. I'm not an R user, so I don't have the expertise to do so.

You can interpret my question rather as: What's the advantage of me using specialized materials and communities, rather than the standard-ones with broader range of involved people?

Also, may be slightly OT, but I'm still to hear a good reason, why to use Matlab instead of SageMath, Python, R etc?

As far as I understand, Matlab is popular for it's interactive simulation capabilities, where one can try out various model choices by mouse clicks, drags etc. and see the results right away.

But for some reason, I'm pretty sure not a bit of this capability is accessible for us, and is not going to be any time soon.

So, what's the reason to struggle with an inaccessible environment, when there are perfectly accessible solutions, for free?

Best regards

Rastislav

Dňa 5. 4. 2022 o 2:30 Lucas Nadolskis via BlindMath napísal(a):
> Hello All.
>
> What do people think  about a group focused on MatLab and other stats softwares for blind people?
> I am struggling quite a lot with MatLab, but I also use it for the 
> last 6 years, so I think it would be interesting to have a space to 
> exchange information about softwares like matlab, r, etc.
>
> I am just thinking about a separate list because maybe not everybody here is interested on hearing about these questions.
>
> Thank you very much.
>
> Kind Regards.
>
> Lucas Nadolskis.
>
>
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