[BlindRUG] Looking for volunteers to help make R data visualization education more accessible

[Liz Hare]

Hi all, 

I’ve been having a great time working with MiR, a new R user group that provides a space of belonging and support for people who identify as underrepresented minority R users. The people in this group are really committed to having accessible workshops and teaching R users to make accessible content. You can follow them on Twitter at @MiR_community.

You might also be familiar with TidyTuesday. It’s described as “a safe and supportive forum for individuals to practice their wrangling and data visualization skills independent of drawing conclusions” but accessibility is lacking. People post their work on Twitter without alt-text descriptions of their data visualization, for example. So a group from MiR has decided to work on the accessibility of this resource. We want to teach people about things like
-writing effective alt-text descriptions for their data visualizations
-writing code in a style that is easy to read with a screen reader and contains comments that help the reader understand the connections between code and visual features.
-low vision accessibility
-colorblind-friendly data presentation
-any additional ideas you have about enhancing accessibility of the TidyTuesday program.

We would like to have input from diverse blind people who have experience using R in their work and studies. We want to take over one Tuesday to talk about accessibility rather than providing a data set for people to analyze, and introduce people to the idea that they should build accessibility into their projects from the start. We’d like to use that as a kickoff event for MiR series on accessibility education that would provide more detailed education and be an easy-to-find permanent resource for the R community.

Please get in touch if you are interested in working with us or if you have any suggestions about making TidyTuesday inclusive..

Liz

Liz Hare, PhD
Dog Genetics LLC
doggene at earthlink.net
http://www.doggenetics.com