[Blindmath] SPSS accessibility

Tue Sep 13 10:21:48 UTC 2011

Hi Tim,

If you are going to use R, I recommend you take a look at the pages at
http://r-resources.massey.ac.nz

This page contains the document I have made for my students here and 
for the blind community as well. It is called "LURN" which is just 
short for "Let's Use R Now". Chapter 2 is specifically for the 
benefit of the blind community and has been updated courtesy of my 
experiences at the Summer University in the Czech Republic.

The other documents on that page are for my other classes and are 
probably not worth looking at unless by chance you use the same 
textbook as we have done here. (quite a small probability I suspect).

Jonathan

At 09:27 p.m. 13/09/2011, you wrote:
>Michael,
>Those files were already present.
>Anyway I talked to my professor, I can do without SPSS so I'm giving 
>up on it, even if I would succeed in using it there would be too 
>many limitations so I'll look at R instead.
>IBM doesn't seem to do well in delivering or documenting SPSS 
>accessibility. Maybe we as a community should take steps to persuade 
>IBM to improve the situation or at least be clearer and honest about 
>limitations in their accessibility documentation to prevent others 
>from wasting several hours as I have. SPSS problems are a very 
>serious issue for a large group of blind students it seems.
>Thank you all for your help.
>Tim
>On 9/11/2011 3:46 PM, Michael Whapples wrote:
>>There are two files which need copying into the JRE being used. 
>>Firstly the jar file of the access bridge should be in the 
>>jre\lib\ext subdirectory and the accessibility.properties file 
>>should be copied to jre\lib. I don't know the exact directory 
>>structure of SPSS but there probably is a jre directory in its 
>>installation directory.
>>
>>The java access bridge files should be possible to be found at 
>>http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/tech/index-jsp-136191.html
>>
>>Michael whapples
>>On 11 Sep 2011, at 14:18, Tim in 't Veld wrote:
>>
>>>Faiz,
>>>Thank you for your help. I did get NVDA to read menus and many 
>>>other elements in SPSS 16, where Jaws doesn't read anything. You 
>>>mention the need to separately install java access bridge, a 
>>>requirement not mentioned in the documentation. How should I do 
>>>this? As I recall there is some access bridge zip file which had 
>>>to be extracted to a certain JRE subdirectory but as the 
>>>documentation didn't mention anything about this I had assumed the 
>>>JRE installed with SPSS didn't require this patch.
>>>Tim
>>>On 9/9/2011 1:06 PM, Faiz Rasool wrote:
>>>>Tim,
>>>>
>>>>I have had limited success with using Jaws and SPSS 18. I have been able to
>>>>use menus in the data editor window and have been able to 
>>>>transfer variables
>>>>into different variable boxes e.g. row variable and column variable. The
>>>>output window is completely unacessible and you have to export the output.
>>>>
>>>>I followed the steps in the documentation  and it work. I  will suggest two
>>>>things. First go back and varify that there's no problem with the defining
>>>>of path  variable e.g. is ; present after the line
>>>>c:\ProgramFiles\PASWStatistics18\the path to the folder in this directory;
>>>>   Also try NVDA with SPSS.  I have  found that   Jaws tends to 
>>>> be bit slower
>>>>with SPSS and NVDA does not have this problem.
>>>>
>>>>Also i assume that you  installed the java accessibility bridge.
>>>>
>>>>Hope this  helps.
>>>>
>>>>R is certainly a very good option, but I have very little knowledge of the
>>>>program. But fortunately there are members on this list who can 
>>>>guide you of
>>>>how to get started with r.
>>>>
>>>>Regards,
>>>>Faiz.
>>>>----- Original Message -----
>>>>From: "Tim in 't Veld"<tim at dvlop.nl>
>>>>To: "Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics"
>>>><blindmath at nfbnet.org>
>>>>Sent: Friday, September 09, 2011 3:16 PM
>>>>Subject: [Blindmath] SPSS accessibility
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>Hi all,
>>>>In a course I am required to use SPSS and it is being claimed in the
>>>>SPSS documentation that it was tested with Jaws.
>>>>Did anyone ever get this to work and if so, what was your exact
>>>>configuration?
>>>>I tried SPSS 19 or 16 on 2 Windows 7 x64 and a Windows XP configuration
>>>>with Jaws 12. On Windows XP I also tried Jaws 9 but nothing works (no
>>>>speech at all). I added the spssPath\jre\bin to the path variable and
>>>>copied accessibility.properties from the cd to spssPath\jre\lib as the
>>>>documentation described.
>>>>
>>>>I have seen more faillure stories on the internet so SPSS accessibility
>>>>looks like a big time-wasting lie rather than a reality so far, very
>>>>sad. I know that R works much better so if nobody can explain me what to
>>>>do I'll just check with the professor if I can use R in the assignment
>>>>although this is likely to make collaboration in the group assignment a
>>>>bit more challenging.
>>>>
>>>>Tim
>>>>
>>>>_______________________________________________
>>>>Blindmath mailing list
>>>>Blindmath at nfbnet.org
>>>>http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/blindmath_nfbnet.org
>>>>To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>>>Blindmath:
>>>>http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/blindmath_nfbnet.org/faiz7r%40gmail.com
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>_______________________________________________
>>>>Blindmath mailing list
>>>>Blindmath at nfbnet.org
>>>>http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/blindmath_nfbnet.org
>>>>To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info 
>>>>for Blindmath:
>>>>http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/blindmath_nfbnet.org/tim%40dvlop.nl
>>>
>>>_______________________________________________
>>>Blindmath mailing list
>>>Blindmath at nfbnet.org
>>>http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/blindmath_nfbnet.org
>>>To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info 
>>>for Blindmath:
>>>http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/blindmath_nfbnet.org/mwhapples%40aim.com
>>_______________________________________________
>>Blindmath mailing list
>>Blindmath at nfbnet.org
>>http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/blindmath_nfbnet.org
>>To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info 
>>for Blindmath:
>>http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/blindmath_nfbnet.org/tim%40dvlop.nl
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Blindmath mailing list
>Blindmath at nfbnet.org
>http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/blindmath_nfbnet.org
>To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info 
>for Blindmath:
>http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/blindmath_nfbnet.org/a.j.godfrey%40massey.ac.nz

_____
Dr A. Jonathan R. Godfrey
Lecturer in Statistics
Institute of Fundamental Sciences
Massey University
Palmerston North

Office: Science Tower B Room 3.15
Phone: +64-6-356 9099 ext 7705
Mobile: +64-29-538-9814
Home Address: 22 Bond St, Palm. Nth.
Home Phone: +64-6-353 2224 (Just think FLEABAG) 