IBM SPSS: Access Continues to be Denied for Blind and Partially Sighted Users

Blind and partially sighted students continue to be unable to access IBM’s statistical software, SPSS. The software is an integral part of many social science and psychology degree courses. Students and Higher Education professionals continue to contact Thomas Pocklington Trust (TPT) to share they cannot access SPSS with their assistive technology, leaving students unable to access crucial elements of their education.

“SPSS was not accessible on NVDA or Jaws. The screen reader stopped reading once I opened SPSS. I tried to sort out the accessibility issue with the instructor, the access specialist at school, and the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB). Still, we could not find practical solutions for using SPSS on screen readers” – Canadian student. 

Over the past year TPT has been engaging with IBM to find a resolution to the issue. A project team was established made up of students and IBM staff. However, this hasn’t led to any commitment to find a resolution to the issues experienced by assistive technology users when trying to access SPSS.

“I am currently working with a student who has a visual impairment. She is studying psychology and is using SPSS statistical analysis software to look at data sets. She has informed me that she is finding it difficult to manipulate the data to be able to filter out the information which she needs to focus on. If she just magnifies one section, she finds it difficult to track where she is on the data set as a whole” –  Diversity and Disability team at a university.

Emma Hughes, Director of Services at TPT has said.

“We believe that every student should be able to fully access their education. SPSS is a vital piece of software used by social science and psychology students, not just across the UK, but globally. We continue to hear stories of blind and partially sighted students struggling to access SPSS. That is why we are calling on IBM, who own SPSS to engage with not just Thomas Pocklington Trust, but with universities and students to address this and we remain committed to supporting IBM in undertaking this task”. 

We continue to call on IBM to engage with assistive technology users of SPSS to address the inaccessibility and poor usability of the software.  

We are calling on students and universities to: 

• Continue contacting our student support service on enquiries related to SPSS 
• Share our campaign to further raise awareness 
• Get in contact if you would like to support our work and share your own experiences of using SPSS.

You can read the full report here: SPSS: Access denied for Blind and partially Sighted users.

Stay connected as we will be launching a series of updates on this campaign! 

If you have questions about the campaign, or would like to discuss the work in more detail, you can contact us by emailing EducationPolicy@pocklington.org.uk