[Social-sciences-list] FW: JAWS and Statistical Software

Fri Sep 5 02:22:49 UTC 2014

Didn’t see my reply to Candice come through so here it is…
Jonathan

From: Godfrey, Jonathan
Sent: Friday, 5 September 2014 1:42 p.m.
To: 'Candice Chapman'
Subject: RE: [Social-sciences-list] JAWS and Statistical Software

Hello Candice,

I’ve just had a quick look at them as they were unknown to me. Given both are web-based services there is always a risk that the accessibility will change – sometimes for the better of course. I was using Jaws 14 and IE.

My personal preference would be the StatKey option, which seems to be based on a particular textbook. If that is the book being used in your course the site is less likely to change too much from what they present in the book.

The StatCrunch service looked less inviting to me. I’m guessing it is a more generalised service from the publisher. It wanted me to log in so I didn’t investigate much further. It felt more cluttered than the StatKey tool.

So carrying on with StatKey:
I went to a page and found it had an analysis laid out. There were elements that I didn’t understand on the page but I don’t have the textbook or sighted assistance to help me learn what the strange details were for. What I could tell is that I could read the data, edit the data, and convince myself that the editing of the raw data had altered the results presented on the page. I feel confident that I would get something out of this tool if I had to use it. I might need sighted assistance to get through the course, but that’s going to be true for most blind people taking a statistics course no matter what software is used.

I love using R, and do so almost every day, but I do recommend that people see it as a backstop when the other options fail us. If you can work alongside classmates using the StatKey tool, and have access to the appropriate documentation, you should use the same tools as the others around you. I do not know what visual material was presented on screen that didn’t get read to me by Jaws, nor do I know how well the material can be copied to a report/assignment document. You’ll need to find out how that works best for you though, a s we all work differently.

Hope this helps. I look forward to hearing from others about the options you’ve introduced us to.
Jonathan

From: Candice Chapman [mailto:chapman.candicel at gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, 5 September 2014 12:49 p.m.
To: Vincent Martin; Blind Social Scientists List
Cc: Godfrey, Jonathan
Subject: Re: [Social-sciences-list] JAWS and Statistical Software

Hello all,

I am beginning my first semester of grad school this semester and I have stats and research methods right out of the gate.

I appreciate the info about R and it seems that would be the obvious choice. However, in my research methods class I'm required to use a program other than R. This leads me to my question: Have any of you heard of StatCrunch or StatKey? If so, what is the accessibility like?

Any info about these programs anyone has would be very helpful and greatly appreciated.

Best,

Candice Chapman

Sent from my iPhone

On Sep 2, 2014, at 10:31 PM, Vincent Martin via Social-sciences-list <social-sciences-list at nfbnet.org<mailto:social-sciences-list at nfbnet.org>> wrote:
Hello,
I am a user of "R", SAS, and SPSS.  I'm doing research into making the output of SPSS more usable and accessible to blind screen reader users.  I know the head of SAS Accessibility personally(he is blind and is a C         omputer Scientist)  and worked as an intern there two summers ago.  I have also been a beta tester and have helped with the accessibility of SPSS as well.
I still think that "R" and SAS are the most accessible and usable, but they do require much more knowledge from the user.  The "Ease of Use" clause in the Americans with Disabilities Act is what is being used to push the level of accessibility for IBM and with SPSS.  Plain and simply stated, the GUI, when accessible in SPSS, makes it much easier to learn to use by sighted and blind students alike.
The latest versions of SAS seems to be by far the most accessible version of it.  SPSS version 22 has much more accessibility than any version of SPSS since they went JAVA crazy in the 90's.  My Ph.D. advisor has me focusing on the use of SPSS, simply because it is the most dominant program in the Social Sciences.  My initial plan for my research was to develop a totally accessible development platform for "R" in the Windows environment, but I was steered to SPSS for the reason that Jonathan outlined in his earlier post.  Although I am at a school that is extremely technical, (Georgia Tech)  and the Psychology taught here is totally Applied Psychology, the undergraduates rebelled when they attempted to teach them "R" in their labs and undergraduate Statistics class.  The professors, who mostly had been using SPSS as well, also wanted to go back to SPSS as well.  The quantitative and Industrial and Organizational Psychologists all use "R" and SAS though.  They are Statisticians masquerading sometimes as Psychologists anyway!
If you are attending a school or are in a department that uses SPSS, I recommend that you use that program with JAWS and version 22.  You will have any visual assistance when you need to do certain things and I have also found that the latest version is extremely easy to drive from the menus now.
I can readily use "R", SAS, and SPSS from the command line/ syntax editor and also use all the screen readers in Windows, Linux, and Apple.  "R" is free, SAS is extremely powerful and is only free to college students, and SPSS is extremely expensive, unless you purchase a student access license.

From: Social-sciences-list [mailto:social-sciences-list-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Godfrey, Jonathan via Social-sciences-list
Sent: Tuesday, September 02, 2014 5:52 PM
To: Alexa Schriempf; Blind Social Scientists List
Subject: Re: [Social-sciences-list] JAWS and Statistical Software

Hello Alexa et al.,

I notice you sent the question to the blind math and social sciences lists. I know Theodor Loots is on the blind math list but haven’t seen him here.

Theodor and I wrote the article you mention together. His expertise is in SAS and I don’t think I’ve yet converted him to R. There are plenty of SPSS users around, including others on this list. Personally, I wouldn’t use SPSS because I would be operating on my own. The only real way for a blind person to successfully get on with SPSS to the same extent as they could with R or SAS is if they work in an environment where SPSS is dominant and  peer support is on hand. Successful use of SPSS is also tied to use of Jaws and for this reason, we gave it a black mark. Jaws might have some dominance in the US, and in my country too for that matter, but it does not have universal dominance. Having said that, we did say that SPSS has merit as a tool that could be used by blind people. Yes we said R and SAS were better, but SPSS gets a par score at present. Minitab gets a below par rating (bogey). We didn’t even mention other software options that get double or triple bogeys!

I know you are at Penn State, and given Minitab was created at Penn State, there would be a huge irony that you couldn’t get your students using it. While we prepared our article, I communicated with the help team at Minitab, and while there response was polite and informative, it wasn’t offering any hope of improving their software for blind users. In my opinion, they are in serious danger of missing out on being used in U.S. universities in the long run, if they don’t fix their accessibility issues. The VPAT detailing their accessibility standards is factually incomplete/wrong or perhaps to be kind, ignorant of the things they actually need to get right for accessibility. I have offered my services to help them get things right, but so far that’s all we’ve managed. Perhaps if the Penn State Disability Support people showed the Minitab team what was going wrong we’d get some progress.

Thankfully, my livelihood doesn’t have as much dependency on Minitab as it did even five years ago. If I were using it every day I would have more of a vested interest in getting things sorted. For the moment, my energy is going into helping make R even more user friendly for blind users because I can make a difference, I can get help from people that will help me make a difference, and I am getting help because those people want to make a difference. Attitude is everything. Theodor and I have had similar helpfulness from the people at SAS too by the way.

I’ll send the article to you off-list in a more readable format.

Cheers,
Jonathan

From: Social-sciences-list [mailto:social-sciences-list-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Alexa Schriempf via Social-sciences-list
Sent: Wednesday, 3 September 2014 7:45 a.m.
To: social-sciences-list at nfbnet.org<mailto:social-sciences-list at nfbnet.org>
Subject: [Social-sciences-list] JAWS and Statistical Software

Hello All, with apologies for cross posting:

I'm hoping to collect a list of useful resources for two of my JAWS users who are graduate students in the social sciences and will be using stat software. At present, they have several options and are not necessarily restricted to using one software package over another. There is a slight preference by the departments in which they are enrolled, for SPSS. That said, Minitab has headquarters near our campus. SMILE.

I have read Theodor Loots' helpful article that compares/contrasts the main stat packages: http://www.jstatsoft.org/v58/s01 but I am left wondering if there is a compact list of shortcut keyboard commands (ie, a cheat sheet or quick reference sheet) that JAWS users can refer to while using, for example, SPSS? (As opposed to reading the 2500 page command syntax guide).

(I understand from Dr Loots article that R is the way to go, with SAS being a next best option. I will share Dr Loots' article with my students once I get it out of PDF and into Word format).

Thanks in advance!
Alexa

--
Alexa Schriempf, PhD
Access Tech Consultant
https://sites.psu.edu/aschriempf/

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