[Nfb-science] access to plots and graphics

[Amy Bower]

All- I'm new to this list and apologize if my questions have been covered
previously.

 

I've been  a research scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
for 24 years. As a grad student, I was diagnosed with macular degeneration
and RP. Since then, my vision has slowly declined. But with the aid of video
magnifiers, screen magnifiers and screen readers, I've been able to continue
with my career more or less as would anyone else, receiving tenure and a
series of promotions.

 

My research mainly involves the collection and analysis  of physical data
from the oceans. I use several programming and plotting tools, but primarily
Matlab. Of course I also read and write journal articles and other
publications.

 

My question is about access to graphics. Until recently, I could use my
remaining vision and either a video magnifier or screen magnifier to access
plots and graphics. That is getting more difficult, and I'm thinking about
alternatives. One of course is a human reader to describe plots and
graphics. But I'm wondering if anyone uses any more independent techniques.
There are a couple of ideas I have but haven't used extensively. One is
using the mouse echo feature of Magic/Jaws, which says the text under the
pointer (sometimes). If I can see where the axes labels are, for example, I
can move the mouse there and read what the label is. Another possibility is
the Convenient OCR feature in Jaws, which will scan and OCR the content of
any window. That method will probably read the text in an odd order though,
making it difficult to synthesize the information.

 

I've been keeping my eye on tactile graphics, but my impression so far is
that this technology is not mature enough to use in a fast-paced research
environment. I'm open to other opinions if there are professionals using
tactile graphics for their research.

 

Thanks and best regards,

 

Amy Bower

 

 

Dr. Amy S. Bower

MS #21

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Woods Hole, MA  02543  USA

Voice:  508-289-2781

Fax: 508-457-2181

Email:  abower at whoi.edu

Skype:  amy.bower1

www:   http://www.whoi.edu/scientist/abower