[BlindRUG] About R Studio Accesibility

[Gary Ritchie]

Hi, I'm RStudio's accessibility developer. I've been working on
improvements to RStudio IDE accessibility for the past year, and have made
quite a bit of progress in the latest RStudio release, version 1.3. That
said, we still have a lot of work to do to make RStudio something that is
truly reasonable and beneficial to use via screen reader, but the
company is committed to continuing this work.

Sorry to say that progress has slowed in the past few months. I was
supposed to be freed up to work full-time on accessibility by now, but
slowdowns in hiring as a result of the pandemic have slowed that
transition. It is still very much the plan, and I am continuing to make
improvements as I am able to.

JooYoung Seo, who is on this list, is working with RStudio this summer as
an accessibility intern, helping us establish priorities, making fixes to
some key R packages, and educating the company as a whole on these
important issues.

I cannot honestly say that the RStudio IDE is ready for serious use via
screen reader. One significant limitation is that most improvements in
version 1.3 are limited to RStudio Server, and not RStudio Desktop. This is
due to technology problems that will take us quite a while to work through.

Here is a blog post that JooYoung wrote recently on the state of screen
reader support:
https://support.rstudio.com/hc/en-us/articles/360045612413-RStudio-Screen-Reader-Support

He also wrote this one on installing RStudio Server, a Linux-only product,
on Windows-10 using Windows Services for Linux (WSL):
https://support.rstudio.com/hc/en-us/articles/360049776974-Using-RStudio-Server-in-Windows-WSL2

Sorry I don't have better news about the current state of affairs, but I am
excited that the company is supporting this goal and we will get there!

Gary Ritchie
RStudio Product Accessibility Architect



On Sun, Jun 28, 2020 at 4:38 AM çağrı gökçek via BlindRUG <
blindrug at nfbnet.org> wrote:

> Hi all,
> I'm a Ph.D. student from Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey. I've been
> trying to learn how to use R. However, I also need to look at R Studio. In
> light of my investigations, I've realized that R Stuido has some
> accesibility issues. The resources that I found in the internet was a bit
> old. Thus, I wanted to write here and ask you about the most current
> sitation of R Studio accesibility. And if it's not accessible yet, what
> should we do to motivate developers to make it accessible for us? Thanks in
> advance for your replies.
> Best regards.
> Cagri Gokcek
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> More information and useful links about using R as a blind person can be
> obtained at:
> http://R-Resources.massey.ac.nz
>
> 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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