Hayes' Text Accessibility Analysis Software

• About the software
• Requirements:
  • Perl, which runs on most any computer and operating system made since 1996 or so.
  • Several megabytes of memory.
  • Several megabytes of disk space.
  • Optional: gnuplot or Excel for viewing graphs of the results.
• Obtaining, installing, and using under Windows:
  Download:
  • The zip file containing the software: qanalyze.zip
  • ActivePerl for Windows (here is a copy)
  • gnuplot (here is a copy)
  • Windows XP & newer can already open ZIP files, but if you want or need an alternate utility, obtain 7-Zip.
  Then:
  • Extract the qanalyze.zip file into a directory of your choosing (for example, c:\qanalyze ).
  • Install Perl. The Perl installer will offer to add Perl to your PATH, and you should let it.
  • Install gnuplot.
  • Put your ASCII or UTF8 plain text file to be analyzed in the "texts" directory.
  • In a Command Prompt window, use the CD command to change to the directory where you put qanalyze:

    cd \qanalyze

    Invoke the qanalyze program by entering a command like this (here using the provided IRS 1040 sample text):

    perl qanalyze -g c:\gnuplot\bin\pgnuplot texts\irs1040.txt

    The "-g c:\gnuplot\bin\pgnuplot" part tells qanalyze where to find the gnuplot program. You can also specify this by creating an environment variable "gnuplot" to point to the program:

    set gnuplot=c:\gnuplot\bin\pgnuplot

    and then use the simpler invokation:

    perl qanalyze texts\irs1040.txt

• Obtaining and installing For UN*X/Linux users:
  
  • Download the zip archive containing the program: qanalyze.zip
  • If needed, install perl. If desired, install gnuplot.
  • Unpack qanalyze.zip into a directory of your choosing.
  • From an xterm, invoke using a command like 'perl qanalyze texts/irs1040.txt'