[BlindRUG] add-on packages

[Tim in 't Veld]

Hi Jonathan,
My professor pointed me to R Commander and R studio (a standalone 
integrated development environment-style application to develop R 
scripts). Neither of them are accessible, no speech output at all.
I think both user interfaces derive from Java. Your idea of writing a 
version of the tcl/tk package which renders native, OS-specific user 
interfaces is interesting, this should be a manageable programming 
exercise and would make many packages accessible.

This being said, just making an integrated development environment 
accessible doesn't necessarily make it useful for a blind user. I think 
coding R is not that difficult (I'm quite code oriented though so some 
people might disagree). An IDE makes the task easier for the sighted, I 
don't know what functionality tools like rcmdr and r studio offer but 
much of the advantage probably lies in getting an overview of possible 
commands / variables on the screen. Unless the UI is well thought out or 
scripted for in the screen reader (quite a large task), a text editor 
and a good R command reference are probably more usable in practice.
Tim






On 13-2-2015 20:45, Godfrey, Jonathan via BlindRUG wrote:
>
> Hello all,
>
> A question from Veronica about the accessibility of libraries came up 
> recently.
>
> R has picked up a number of unfortunate terms that are in the opinion 
> of some, rather misused.
>
> The command library() loads an add-on package. Packages are stored in 
> libraries. The folder where they are stored with the base distribution 
> is called “library” too.
>
> So Veronica’s question was actually about add-on packages and I now 
> know she had discovered that one package was not accessible. It is the 
> R commander package which is called Rcmdr for short. I’ve known for 
> some time that this package and others like it are not accessible.
>
> In the case of Rcmdr, the GUI that the developers have built for R is 
> done using a TCL/TK package that is part of the base distribution. It 
> seems to me that any GUI built using that set of tools will be as 
> inaccessible as Rcmdr. It looks like no one will put much energy into 
> making the outcomes of the TCL/TK package more accessible so the 
> developers who use it are stuck in an inaccessible environment.
>
> I have not created a list of the packages that rely on TCL/TK but I’m 
> pretty sure it is now possible to do so. Given there are 6000 add-on 
> packages on CRAN and many others not on CRAN, I don’t see the point of 
> creating the list and having to update it frequently. I think a better 
> approach would be to find someone who could write an add-on package 
> that has all the functionality of the TCL/TK package but uses an 
> accessible set of tools instead. (That isn’t me by the way) Perhaps an 
> interface to the wxWidgets might be a starting point; others will have 
> greater knowledge than me and in the end I don’t care how things work 
> while they are working so much. When they don’t work I want to know why.
>
> In most cases, a package that builds a GUI using TCL/TK has underlying 
> commands being generated in a retrievable manner. Those commands are 
> probably more use to us than the GUI will be for some time to come. 
> When I last looked at Rcmdr, it opened the GUI automatically which was 
> unfortunate. The first time I looked at it, the GUI didn’t actually 
> come up so the regular R session was still doing its thing and I could 
> use any of the commands provided by the Rcmdr package without the GUI.
>
> I hope this helps,
>
> Jonathan
>
>
>
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> More information and useful links about using R as a blind person can be obtained at:
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>
> Look for help using R commands by reading the accessible e-book "Let's Use R Now" compiled by Jonathan Godfrey at:
> http://R-Resources.massey.ac.nz/lurn/front.html

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