[BlindMath] SPSS for low vision

Fri Jan 21 02:19:25 UTC 2022

Hello,
I'm formerly sighted and gradually lost my vision to the ravages of
Retinitis Pigmentosa.  I have been able to earn seven STEM related,
including a dual doctorate in economics and Systems Engineering  degrees in
the process though.  I earned the first two degrees as a person that did not
know I was visually impaired (self-diagnosed at 23 right before graduation)
, which were both Engineering related.   I marched across the stage at
commencement with a cane and about 20/150 with all the relevant symptoms of
my disease.
My five remaining degrees, one undergraduate and the others graduate were as
a person that could not see anything but light.  I learned a lot of skills
and tricks that assisted me along the way and can see the benefits of all
types of accessibility related devices, but nothing beat having usable
vision!
Each individual is different in how they perceive information in whatever
medium it is presented.  Given a visual disability, a number of issues are
relevant in deciding when to use speech and a keyboard.  At the level of
being barely legally blind, I moved to mostly screen readers and speech
synthesizers.  This was 1989 and I could readily use a close circuit
television set and hand magnifiers.  Ironically, the limited visual field
and scotomas from Retinitis Pigmentosa led me to still use a thirteen-inch
computer monitor.  When I decided to pursue graduate work in 2003, I had
lost  most  of my vision and used a combination of speech output and Braille
to get my job done.  In between 2003 and 2006, I completed a Master's degree
in Decision Sciences with an emphasis in Game Theory and a Doctorate's
degree with a dual emphasis in Economics and Systems Engineering.  The
assistance that was provided to me by my two universities was unprecedented
as they did not have to provide it.  My sponsor/scholarship provider was and
still is classified, but I can say that I owed the Federal government five
years of employment after graduation.  I worked jointly with the US
Veteran's administration as a Health Research Scientist and as an Economic
forecaster for another agency between 2006 and 2011.  It was during this
period that I noticed the issues that students with very little vision were
having with Statistics and Research Methods or specifically with using SPSS
and other graphical calculating packages with screen reading programs.  I
was fortunate, having learned introductory Probability and Statistics and
then two more Statistics classes as aa mostly sighted Industrial Engineering
student.  In graduate school and as a research scientist, I had access to an
eighty cell Braille display, an Interpoint Braille embosser, and the ability
to use pretty advanced macros in Excel with Python to do anything I needed
Statistically.  I also had access to a wonderful research assistant with an
undergraduate degree in Psychology.  She was invaluable in getting photos
and graphs embossed correctly and also became an expert at describing what
graphs looked like.  When I finished my five years of required work, I had
transitioned back to graduate school with my own mantra of trying to make
the Statistical  program of SPSS more accessible and the output more
understandable.  
I'm a big advocate of learning Braille, but also know about the advantages
and limitations of that medium and others.  My second stint in graduate
school led me to do research into using sound to make information output
more accessible.  I did this specifically after doing much studying and
working in this arena as I earned my other undergraduate degree, which was
Engineering Psychology.  One limitation of tactile output is the inability
to "glance" like a person can with their eyes.  You can do this pretty well,
if the audio icon is designed correctly.  The relevant changes in lines and
curves is difficult to discern until it is sonified.  Using a variety of
methods now, graphical output can be sonified and analyzed with a simple
computer.  
But what does all of this mean for your daughter now?  The GUI and graphical
output of the program are what make it the top program for doing Statistical
analysis in the Social Science arena.  If you can use a magnification
program that will make the output accessible enough to use your vision, then
you take away a lot of the Cognitive load that is going to be needed to
learn either "R" or "SAS".  No matter how Mathematically inclined some
students are, most Social Science programs have tended to use SPSS because
the GUI has benefits that other programs don't.  In Educational terms, the
instructions needed to use many GUI driven programs are imbedded in the GUI.
Your daughter might need small tweaks or given her career aspirations, she
should be making a full blown leap toward mastering everything related to a
combination of Braille and auditory output.  
Feel free to contact me off list and we can discuss her particular situation
in depth.  
My e-mail address is vincentfmartin2020 at gmail.com.

I've worked in Rehabilitation Engineering, Rehabilitation Science, Human
Computer Interaction, and overall Accessibility for a little over thirty
years now.  

-----Original Message-----
From: BlindMath <blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Eveline DEBRUIN
via BlindMath
Sent: Thursday, January 20, 2022 4:21 PM
To: blindmath at nfbnet.org
Cc: Eveline DEBRUIN <debruinfam3 at outlook.com>
Subject: [BlindMath] SPSS for low vision

Hello everyone,
My name is Eveline and I am looking for advice for my daughter with low
vision.
She has started SPSS. SPSS has a student version and it runs on her lap top
(PC system).

The question is: how do you enlarge the SPSS display?
A large monitor improves the display but she cannot read the variable names.

The bigger question is: When do you decide to work without a mouse and only
a keyboard and JAWS.

Thank you for any advice,
Eveline
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