[Blindmath] new publication about R accessibility

Michael Whapples mwhapples at aim.com
Sun Nov 11 23:27:58 UTC 2012


May be I went into more detail than really needed.

Regarding Orca vs Speakup, I know what you mean, I guess possibly I was 
thinking it might have been nice to have had a comment stating that Orca 
can access the text console of R, but users may want to look into 
console specific screen readers if they find Orca difficult to use. It 
probably was correct to mention Orca as people might have spotted it in 
the menu system of Gnome.

I am scratching my head over your comment on not being able to read text 
which has scrolled of the screen, I am sure in the Linux text console 
there is a key press to scroll back, but I cannot remember what it is at 
the moment. May be there is also one for Windows (I think it has a 
swcroll bar, or am I getting mixed up with gnome-terminal).

As for the second comment on toolkits, the detail was just to explain 
why its such a difficult problem, I was mentioning some which have done 
well but still aren't fully accessible on all platforms. I mentioned SWT 
as a toolkit, its used in Eclipse. I don't know whether Eclipse has a 
plugin for accessing R or Maxima, I mainly use it for programming (Java 
and Python) but I know it supports much more, including LaTeX (the 
TeXlipse plugin).

I just took a search on Google for "eclipse R" and got this result 
http://www.walware.de/goto/statet, I don't know how well that will work.

Michael Whapples
On 11/11/2012 23:08, Jonathan Godfrey wrote:
> Thanks Michael,
>
> Such snippets of good information are what makes being on this list so
> valuable for me.
>
> Re Orca vs Speak up:
> I didn't intend to mention every way we gain access to software and
> operating systems as I think this is a conversation that must be had between
> a student and their lecturer if required at all. Lecturers do need to know
> that we can do something not necessarily how we do it.
>   
> Re wx vs any other useful GUI creation tools.
> I mentioned wx because it links to software of a similar kind to R. I also
> don't know of software built using any other toolkit in such an explicit way
> as does the Maxima project. Again, I wanted to show what is possible not get
> side-tracked onto which toolkit is to be preferred among those that are
> creating useful software for us. I'd love to learn of applications built
> using any other toolkits that do lead to useful software for us, so please
> do share - especially if the software is free like Maxima and R.
>
> Cheers,
> Jonathan
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Blindmath [mailto:blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Michael
> Whapples
> Sent: Sunday, 11 November 2012 10:58 p.m.
> To: Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics
> Subject: Re: [Blindmath] new publication about R accessibility
>
> Hello,
> Sorry for not getting to this earlier, but good work. I think you capture
> many of the issues one can have well and explain things well.
>
> A few small notes:
> * On Linux for console applications I probably would choose to use the
> speakup screen reader http://www.linux-speakup.org/. Orca is really designed
> as a GUI desktop screen reader where as speakup is just a text console
> screenreader and so is optimised for that use. Also cross-platform
> accessibility is a very difficult problem, even toolkits like WX can have
> problems, normally on non-windows platforms, probably due to the lower
> number of users. WX and SWT use native widgets of the platform, but to make
> all features common across platforms sometimes they need to use custom
> controls in which case it depends on whether they have done the
> accessibility stuff for the control. Sun Micro went a different route,
> having a common accessibility API for all platforms and needing the user to
> have access bridges, but we know how that is. While I agree cross-platform
> accessibility is a nice goal to aim for, probably realistically for a
> project where accessibility is not one of the main concerns (only a small
> number of users) then to have it working well on one platform may be more
> achievable.
>
> Michael Whapples
> On 27/10/2012 00:01, Jonathan Godfrey wrote:
>> Greetings all,
>>
>> For some time now, I've been working on making the R community more
>> aware of what R has to offer the blind community. (And vice versa
>> also!)
>>
>> Courtesy of links made via this email list and conferences/workshops
>> attended, I have been able to submit an article to the R Journal. This
>> is the main journal where those people involved with the development
>> of R present their work and findings. After some refereeing processes
>> and some editing, I have just learned that the article will be
>> published in December this year.
>>
>> The submission now appears online on the journal's web
>> site: http://journal.r-project.org/accepted/2012-14/Godfrey.pdf
>>
>> This is a pre-print so the volume/issue/page numbers will change but I
>> felt that this community deserved to see the fruits of my labour and
>> the snippets of  wisdom collated over the last five or so years. As an
>> academic myself, I think it is important to recognize those whose
>> shoulders you have stood on. Several list participants get an explicit
>> mention (John Gardner and Neil Soiffer) but others will know that they
>> have pointed me and other list members in the right direction to
>> excellent resources.
>>
>> Let me now extend my sincere thanks to those people: John, Neil,
>> Michael, Susan, Dominique, and those people too numerous to name
>> explicitly whose feedback has been invaluable. Thank you all.
>>
>> Jonathan
>>
>> _____
>> Dr A. Jonathan R. Godfrey
>> Lecturer in Statistics
>> Institute of Fundamental Sciences
>> Massey University
>> Palmerston North
>>
>> Office: Science Tower B Room 3.15
>> Phone: +64-6-356 9099 ext 7705
>> Mobile: +64-29-538-9814
>> Home Address: 52 Linton St, Palm. Nth.
>> Home Phone: +64-6-353 2224 (Just think FLEABAG)
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>>
>
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