[Social-sciences-list] Seeking Assistance for Statistics Class

Gabias, Paul paul.gabias at ubc.ca
Tue Jan 8 19:27:25 UTC 2019


Hi Elizabeth,

I can certainly sympathize with your situation.  I have always had to plan how to deal with statistics courses, well in advance.

I am a blind professor of psychology, and I have had the occasion to teach Graduate Statistics and many  occasions to take many undergraduate and graduate statistics  courses, from psychology departments.  My go to method for reading any kind of arithmetic or mathematics has always been braille.  I can't imagine listening to equations. Even the Nemeth code, that places fractions, all on the same braille line can be difficult to work with, when you are working with simplifications and cancellations on each side of the equals sign, involving numerators and denominators. I have had to recopy some equations from the braille versions of books, , to replicate the spatial layout of them, evident in the  print versions of the books.  Some parts of equations belong on top, and some parts of equations belong on the bottom.

Troubling as it may seem to be, it would be worth the time it takes to master braille sufficiently so that you can begin to work with braille well enough to master  statistical concepts or equations.  In a beginning   level course of statistics, they are  elementary, but can be troublesome, if you can't read or understand them with the appropriate spatial layouts.

Just my 2 cents!

All The Best

Paul Gabias

Paul Gabias, Ph.D., L.L.D

Associate Professor of Psychology

UBCO - Irving K. Barber School of Arts and Sciences

ART 228 - 1147 Research Road

Kelowna, BC  V1V 1V7

T:  250.807.9383

E:  paul.gabias at ubc.ca

From: Social-sciences-list <social-sciences-list-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Elizabeth Mohnke via Social-sciences-list
Sent: January 8, 2019 10:10 AM
To: nfb-science at nfbnet.org; social-sciences-list at nfbnet.org
Cc: Elizabeth Mohnke <lizmohnke at hotmail.com>
Subject: [Social-sciences-list] Seeking Assistance for Statistics Class

Hello All,

I hope this message finds you doing well and enjoying the New Year. I am currently enrolled in a statistics class. The good news is that my class does not require the use of SPSS. However, my professor is a bit old fashioned, and likes to use a lot of handouts for our course materials.

My professor provides all of the handouts electronically in addition to the print hard copies we receive in class. I also have a dedicated disabilities office who is willing to make sure all of the math equations and formulas in these electronic materials are accessible to me by using the Math Type program to make the math content accessible to me.

However, I have never been able to figure out how to successfully read math content element by element electronically using JAWS. My introductory math classes were totally inaccessible, so I primarily used readers and my limited use of Braille. However, if my disabilities office is able to create accessible Math ML content for me, then I would like to be able to figure out a way to read it.

The textbook we are using for my statistics class is The Basic Practice of Statistics (7th edition) by Moore, Notz, and Fligner if this information is helpful for anyone. Also, my disabilities office was able to get an epub version of this textbook from the publisher. However, I do not have any experience using this electronic format as I typically get my books from either NLS or Bookshare.

Does anyone have any experience reading books published in the epub format? If so, what will I need to do in order to read this textbook? And since I have found my textbook on Bookshare, how is the epub format different than what I can get through Bookshare?

Any information you could provide in regards to these questions as well as any other tips or advice for making it through a statistics class would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Elizabeth
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