[BlindMath] FW: JAWS With Excel

Wed Jul 29 02:44:45 UTC 2026

Hello all,

Given Chris' question relates to completing coursework, the solution he needs to employ must work for him and for the staff he will need to work with. I'll comment as the only blind person in the world today who is employed full time to deliver statistics courses.

I am a huge fan of programmatic solutions. I don't consider Excel to be statistical software, and much of what Chris needs is not native Excel but relies on add-ins.

Very few introductory courses in Statistics will use Python, so while it has attractive rationale for other contexts, it will soon become impractical if academic staff aren't Python users themselves. FWIW, I'm a fan, but better solutions exist for stats than Python.

I use R almost every working day and many non-working days besides. It is the only software I know gets used in introductory stats courses which is reasonably accessible. N.B. R is; RStudio is not yet good enough to meet my standards for accessibility.
See a review of software options at https://r-resources.massey.ac.nz/statsoftware

All the things Ken suggested which are good reasons to use Python are also good reasons for using R. In addition, there is a way to get text descriptions of graphs created in R automatically created for you. See https://r-resources.massey.ac.nz/help/automaticgraphdescription.html

The problem Chris will have is that he must be able to meet the requirements of the course. If the rest of the class uses different software, he is on his own and might (but only might) have adequate support from the course staff.

Theodor Loots and I wrote a paper over ten years ago that is pretty much still the state of play for the teaching of statistics. See a pre-print at https://r-resources.massey.ac.nz/papers/JSE.v23.n3/ (A link to the actual less-accessible publication is there.) We also wrote a review of statistical software.

Chris: In my view, Job #1 is to get talking to the course staff, to make sure you enrol in the course that does best meet your needs. You not only need to talk to them about the blindness aspects, but also how much you will need to use stats software after the first course. You will need to see if they produce their course materials in an accessible format, ask about software, and a bunch of other stuff as well. Proactivity is your friend.

All the best,
Jonathan

-----Original Message-----
From: BlindMath <blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Ken Perry via BlindMath
Sent: Wednesday, 29 July 2026 6:32 am
To: 'Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics' <blindmath at nfbnet.org>
Cc: kperry at blinksoft.com
Subject: Re: [BlindMath] FW: JAWS With Excel

It's been a while since I've had to do this. Back when I was doing accessible graphing, I used software that unfortunately no longer exists.
If you're not a programmer, the Talking TI-84 Plus Graphing Calculator paired with a Graphiti tactile display works well. If you don't have a Graphiti, an embosser can also produce tactile graphs that are useful for reviewing data produced by the TI-84 .
I haven't personally used Desmos for statistics, but from what I've seen it has become increasingly accessible and is worth looking into as another option.
In my experience, Excel itself is not the biggest problem. Creating charts is fairly straightforward with JAWS. The real challenge is reviewing and interpreting the finished graphs. Screen readers do a reasonable job navigating the spreadsheet data, but they don't provide an efficient way to examine the visual relationships in scatterplots, histograms, box plots, or regression curves. For that reason, I generally recommend combining Excel with a tactile or other accessible graphing solution when you need to analyze the graphs themselves.
If you have python knowledge, Python with libraries such as pandas, matplotlib, Seaborn, and Maidr are in my opinion the most superior accessible workflow because you can generate the statistics programmatically and then produce accessible graph descriptions or tactile output that also looks good for a teacher and it is done in an html form that has sonification, braille support, and is also good for the teacher.  You can even email them.

Hope that helps.
Ken Perry

-----Original Message-----
From: BlindMath <blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Chris Adamson via BlindMath
Sent: Tuesday, July 28, 2026 2:18 PM
To: 'Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics' <blindmath at nfbnet.org>
Cc: Chris Adamson <christopheradamson608 at gmail.com>
Subject: [BlindMath] FW: JAWS With Excel

Hi,

Please find the below message. I am looking for some help with stats using JAWS. Please let me know if anyone can help.

Thanks in advance for any replies.

Chris.

From: Chris Adamson <christopheradamson608 at gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, July 28, 2026 09:08
To: main at jfw.groups.io
Cc: christopheradamson608 at gmail.com
Subject: FW: JAWS With Excel

Hi,

Below you can find my forwarded message about how to do stats in Excel with JAWS. Please give me a reply please.

Thanks in advance to any replies.

Chris.

From: Chris Adamson <christopheradamson608 at gmail.com <mailto:christopheradamson608 at gmail.com> >
Sent: Tuesday, July 28, 2026 09:05
To: main-jfw at groups.io <mailto:main-jfw at groups.io>
Cc: christopheradamson608 at gmail.com <mailto:christopheradamson608 at gmail.com>

Subject: JAWS With Excel

Hi,

I am attending university in the fall doing stats. Can you let me know how to do scatterplots, dot plots, box plots, histograms, chi squared, linear regression and other regression curves, normal distribution, and sample t test accessibly using JAWS. Thanks in advance to any replies. Chris.

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