[Athen] question on Jaws and Stats software

[Burke, Dan (DSS)]

Greetings -

 

I posted the original question to the Blind Math listserv hosted by the
NFB.  A couple of listers suggested abandoning all hope except Excel,
but were quickly countered by others.  Here are two useful posts below
that support Gaeir's link to the R Project; a quick search of that site
revealed no info on accessibility.  

 

*****

 

I use R every day of my working life.

 

Use the terminal version not the gui version. Jaws and NVDA work well 

with it and I have no reason for believing Window Eyes don't

 

I personally have issues with Excel and its usefulness for 

statistical analyses. Use it with caution if you do much more than 

the simple calculations.

 

*****

 

PASW and R can be used by Jaws users.

 

If the location of java accessibility bridge has been appropriately set,
and 

the accessibility.property file has been coppied into PASW folder, Jaws 

should be able to, and is able to read the menus in  PASW 18. I have
been 

using the program with jaws It reads menus quite well. The problem is of


reading output  in the output viewer. However, it can be exported to 

microsoft word for reading. NVDA also works quite well with PASW. I
think 

there is no reason for considering excel as the only solution. PASW can
be 

used with jaws.

 

As Dr. Jonathan has already stated R can be used with these two screen 

readers as well.

 

 

 

Dan Burke

Assistant Director/Assistive Technology Coordinator

 

Disability Services for Students

The University of Montana

Emma B. Lommasson Center 154

Missoula, MT 59812

 

406.243.4424

406.243.5330 FAX

 

www.umt.edu/disability

 

From: athen-bounces at athenpro.org [mailto:athen-bounces at athenpro.org] On
Behalf Of Gaeir Dietrich
Sent: Thursday, February 17, 2011 7:48 PM
To: 'Access Technology Higher Education Network'
Subject: Re: [Athen] question on Jaws and Stats software

 

Check out R-Project for Statistics. It is accessible with JAWS.

http://www.r-project.org/ 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Gaeir (rhymes with "fire") Dietrich
High Tech Center Training Unit of the
California Community Colleges
De Anza College, Cupertino, CA
www.htctu.net <http://www.htctu.net/>  
408-996-6043

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

________________________________

From: athen-bounces at athenpro.org [mailto:athen-bounces at athenpro.org] On
Behalf Of Linda Petty
Sent: Wednesday, February 16, 2011 12:31 PM
To: athen at athenpro.org
Subject: [Athen] question on Jaws and Stats software

 

Cross posting on behalf of Queens- pls cc a response directly to: email
Andrew at ashby at queensu.ca

Linda S. Petty, O.T. Reg. (ON)

Assistive Technology Consultant

University of Toronto Scarborough

ACCESSAbility Services

1265 Military Trail, Room SW302G

Toronto ON M1C 1A4

PH:416-208-5144

Fax: 416-287-7334

www.utsc.utoronto.ca/ability/

Posted on behalf of Andrew Ashby, Assistive Technologist at Queen's:

 

Please excuse cross-postings; we didn't want to miss anyone who might
have a solution to this...  Thanks!

 

Hi all,

 

I've come across the situation where a student who is blind is taking a
statistics course requiring the use of stats software to crunch data and
create graphs for analysis. The student is a Jaws user but the stats
software being used is PASW version 18 (formerly known as SPSS).

 

Our AT Lab has Jaws version 12 and PASW v18 and in testing them together
I found that Jaws isn't usable with PASW since it seems to be programmed
in Java. I thought I found a solution for this online where you create a
Java Access Bridge

(???) in Jaws but it doesn't seem to work with Jaws v12. I tried
statistical software called 'R', but it too doesn't seem to work well
with Jaws.

 

So my question is has anyone come across this sort of situation before?
If so, what solution did you use? Is there statistics software out there
compatible with Jaws v12?

 

The only solution I can see right now is trying to use MS Excel. Jaws
v12 now has a "virtual ribbon" that makes the ribbon menu in Office
2007/2010 more accessible.

 

Any thoughts or solutions would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks,

 

Andrew Ashby - AT Queen's University

 

To reply privately, email Andrew at ashby at queensu.ca

 

 

 

 

Linda S. Petty, O.T. Reg. (ON)

Assistive Technology Consultant

University of Toronto Scarborough

ACCESSAbility Services

1265 Military Trail, Room SW302G

Toronto ON M1C 1A4

PH:416-208-5144

Fax: 416-287-7334

www.utsc.utoronto.ca/ability/

 

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