To other #blind #students, what tools have you used to help you format your papers with #APA styling and #citations? My #university provides #Perrla for free to students, but it doesn’t seem to be the most #accessible with #ScreenReaders, at least not the online version. I haven’t tried the add-on for #MicrosoftWord. With the online version, though, I don’t see any keyboard shortcuts, and when you move into the edit box to start writing a paper, focus gets trapped there and it’s hard to get out, so I don’t think it’s the best tool for me. The only other tool I know of is the reference manager built into Microsoft Word, but it seems to have fewer features and doesn’t really help you format your paper like Perrla does, something I was looking forward to since all the APA rules for styling seem hard to remember.
#College #CollegeStudent #accessibility #JAWS #ScreenReaders #writing
@mastoblind @main
@RareBird15 @kaveinthran @mastoblind @main I haven’t been a student in decades, but recently found an iOS app called Essayist. It’s been designed to be accessible with VoiceOver but is made for sighted people also. It sounds like the kind of thing you’re after.
@mfeir @kaveinthran @mastoblind @main Any way you can send me a link? I searched the app store for “Essays” but I didn’t see an app with exactly that name. I got suggestions for a bunch of AI essay writing apps.
@RareBird15 @kaveinthran @mastoblind @main It’s actually called “essayist” like artist.
@mfeir @kaveinthran @mastoblind @main Ah, okay that explains why I couldn’t find it. Should have had JAWS read by character there lol.
@RareBird15 @mastoblind @main I too wonder this, when I was in school, I just explained my situation in that I couldn’t format the paper in that style and that I would need an exception if they wanted a properly sourced paper, and I would always get it, so I would like to know how people are actually sourcing there papers with APA styling.
@RareBird15 @mastoblind @main For APA, etc, I write everything in markdown/plain text, including the citations, then I convert it later to a formatted document using Pandoc
@WeirdWriter @mastoblind @main Might have to try this. I use Markdown for notes but haven’t tried it for documents before.
@RareBird15 @mastoblind @main This website has templates you can modify. I usually make mine from scratch because I can work with styles easier then trying to modify someone else’s template, but you can see templates here, including mine. https://pandoc-templates.org/
@WeirdWriter @mastoblind @main I just scanned that list of templates and didn’t see an APA-specific one, but maybe I missed it.
I’d try using the Word template found in here. Hit the button that says, download raw. This should download the template. Or, ultimately, I could also make you one, because I found another template so I can just adapt that to Pandoc, but check out the templates at https://github.com/iamamutt/pandoc-apa/blob/master/pandoc/apa.docx @RareBird15 @mastoblind @main
@RareBird15 @mastoblind @main zotero is the best one I came across. Maybe it works for you as well.
@RareBird15 @mastoblind @main I used Latex exclusively!
@kfjelsted @mastoblind @main I’ve been thinking about learning Latex but I’m not really sure where to get started and thought it was more for math, which I’m not really doing yet.
@RareBird15 @mastoblind @main Latex https://tug.org/ excels at all document formatting most CSCI textbooks are written in Latex and the key is the number of templates and packages available. For bibliography production the BIBTEX tool makes formatting perfect citations and footnotes a breeze! https://www.bibtex.org/
@kfjelsted @mastoblind @main Thanks for this. Looking into it now. As a CS major, it’s probably not a bad idea to start learning before I really need it.
@RareBird15 @mastoblind @main I used TexShop on the Mac but you can use any platform including Linux. If you like I can zip up and send you a couple of papers I wrote in school as well as the template I used for papers so you can see examples. You should have my email address so send me a note as to where you want me to send the examples.
@kfjelsted @mastoblind @main Working on learning LaTeX now. Created my first basic document already using VSCode, MiKTeX, and the LaTeX Workshop extension for VSCode. What tools do you use?
