Conducting Research as a Voice Over User Discussion

By Tim Hornik, 10 March, 2016

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Greetings Everyone,

Looking at the range of apps one might use as a Voice Over user for qualitative or quantitative research, there is very little information indicating accessible apps. On the AppleVis forums, only a handful of threads, usually from a couple of years ago, discuss issues with SPSS or QAS'. Yet these are the precise apps we need in order to excel as researchers in STEM and the Social Sciences. I am interested in learning what tools and apps on the Mac or iOS you use to conduct research as a Voice Over user.

To start, the default Numbers, Pages, Notes, and Voice Memo apps provide us with the basic tools to conduct simple research projects and compose final summaries. For my qualitative research project, I found the accessibility of F5 Transcription Standard a useful tool in transcribing interviews as it provides nice audio playback and full control of playback via keyboard and foot peddle controls. It has some unlabeled buttons and other elements, but the button descriptions informs you what the button is, and I do not care about the wave component. I have seen several free quantitative research related tools available for the Mac, but have not dived into any yet to test for accessibility.

So what have you found useful in conducting your research projects? Any tips or tricks you wish to share? I am trying to avoid jumping to Windows.

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Comments

By KE7ZUM on Tuesday, March 22, 2016 - 10:14

I just write my papers in pages and use docu scan to keep all of my documents, or did until they had us upgrade and there's no payment plan to do such.

By Ekaj on Tuesday, March 22, 2016 - 10:14

I'll admit I haven't done much work-related research on the Mac as of yet, but one web-based application that I just started using is called Follower Wonk. It is an app that is used in conjunction with Twitter, and there are both paid and free versions. A few weeks ago a colleague sent me a link to the website, and the free version appears to be very accessible with VoiceOver. Follower Wonk lets Twitter users analyze various aspects of their Twitter activity, such as how many followers one has and some demographic info. Users can pay for a subscription service on the site as well, which unlocks more features. I briefly checked out the registration process for the subscription-based features, and there does seem to be a CAPTCHA with an audio alternative. That was a few weeks ago, so they might've removed the CAPTCHA or replaced it with one of the newer alternatives. Somehow I doubt it though. However, we are only using the free version at least for the time being. I tested the site out with Chromevox as well, and it seems to be very accessible. The site is http://www.followerwonk.com . I'm going to eventually check out some of the Facebook apps mentioned in the Mac App Directory on here, as my job also has an Fb page.