[Social-sciences-list] Social-sciences-list Digest, Vol 1, Issue 7

[vincent martin]

Arielle:
I will hesitantly say that I will take one of the versions of SPSS, but I
have to figure out which one right now.  I say this, because I have had
varying levels of access and success with versions eighteen through the soon
to be released version twenty-one.  I own version eighteen, and our school
license covered version nineteen for all of the last two years.  I don't
know if we are required to upgrade or will just continue to pay for another
year of coverage for version nineteen.

I have had serious problems with the ability of SPSS to speak correctly with
the various versions of the JAVA access bridge with different configurations
of the Windows operating system.  I may be able to get version nineteen to
work correctly with Jaws version 12, but only on the 32 bit version of
Windows Vista, while the 64 bit version won't speak.  There are so many
nuances associated with how data is processed with the access bridge and
with how SPSS writes data, that I still find it to be "hit and Miss".  Since
so many parts of the GUI still won't function, no matter what you do, using
a combination of the syntax editor and the GUI seems to work best or using
straight syntax.  Unfortunately, that then puts the blind student right back
to where they were many years ago.  They have to know a whole lot more than
their sighted peers in class, who can just click a button or menu to run a
calculation.  The blind student or sighted student that does use syntax does
understand what is happening better, but the time required and the fact that
very few sometimes can do it as well this way makes this a daunting task.  

Hopefully the people on the list will determine which version we should
focus on right now.  I can then go about coming up with a guide for trying
to make that version work with Windows 7 32 and 64 bit.

and by the way, I will be posting a link to another survey in about a week
asking for information related to access to Statistics and Statistical
packages in general.  My ongoing research is predicated upon actual data on
how many of us are actually encountering problems with Statistics and the
methods we use to calculate and analyze data.





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Today's Topics:

   1. Submissions Requested for Stats Resource	Guide (Arielle Silverman)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2012 17:08:23 -0600
From: Arielle Silverman <arielle71 at gmail.com>
To: social-sciences-list at nfbnet.org
Subject: [Social-sciences-list] Submissions Requested for Stats
	Resource	Guide
Message-ID:
	<CALAYQJCtxyaSifBW6U6irosFheX74M0RPGTWuWNFi9x_mC=X=w at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Hi all,
While we are discussing different statistical software packages, I thought
this would be as good of a time as any to put out a request for help with
compiling a statistics resource guide for blind students and researchers. As
one of my goals for this new group of blind social scientists this year, I
would like to develop and disseminate a user-friendly resource guide for
blind people to learn how to use the various statistical programs. I am
thinking of a guide where a student taking introductory stats can look up
the program their class is using and find a page with step-by-step
instructions for making the program accessible and sample syntax for
conducting the most basic procedures, if the program is syntax-driven or if
using syntax would facilitate accessibility. The resource guide I am
envisioning would assume knowledge of beginning statistical concepts. I
would also like to include a good deal of detailed instructions for the free
programs including Excel, Graphpad QuickCalcs and R, so that a beginning
stats student could use one of these instead of paying for a proprietary
license (with instructor permission of course).
I would appreciate if those of you who have expertise with specific programs
could email me a submission for the resource guide. This could be a link to
an existing resource specifically for the blind if one exists (i.e.
Jonathan's R resource) or if none exists, a step-by-step tutorial for making
the program accessible (i.e. how to edit the accessibility file for SPSS)
and then, if the program is command-driven, a few syntax examples or a link
to another website where a student can learn the syntax (perhaps if their
sighted peers are taught using menus, but the program is more accessible if
syntax is used).
Please send your submissions to
arielle71 at gmail.com
by the end of August if possible.
I can cover Excel, SAS and Graphpad QuickCalcs.
Thanks and best,
Arielle



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