[BlindRUG] Text-based progress bars and screen readers?

[Liz Hare]

>  for (pp in c(10,20,30,40)) { cat(paste0("\r", pp, "%"));
> Sys.sleep(2) }; cat("\n")
> 
> Does it read differently, if one uses a newline instead of a carriage
> return at each update like in:
> 
>  for (pp in c(10,20,30,40)) { cat(paste0("\n", pp, "%"));
> Sys.sleep(2) }; cat("\n")

On Mac Terminal with VoiceOver, the updates in the first version don't get spoken, but the second version with the newlines works great.

> As a supplement (or a complement) to text-based progress updates,
> would audial cues be useful to convey progress?  Here's a naive, toy
> example:
> 
>  for (ss in c(2,10,10,10,10,11)) { beepr::beep(ss); Sys.sleep(1) }
> 
This is great! I had no idea about beer. I used to use the Window-Eyes screen reader, and it played tones in increasing pitch to indicate what was going on with aWindows progress bar. Something like that would be great.

> Would it be useful there was an R option that would give the end user
> full control in how progress updates are rendered in R, e.g.
> text-based or window-based progress bars, plain text, auditory, and so
> on?

Absolutely, given the variety of OSs and screen readers in use.

Liz