[BlindRUG] High contrast themes for people with low vision

[Jonathan Godfrey]

Hello Marcus,

This is a great idea. I can't evaluate the themes for you sorry, but I can suggest a few things that will make keeping your package nice and tidy.

First, I like simple, single purpose packages. They're much easier to maintain etc. I wholly recommend keeping it simple and focused.

I'd like to suggest a few things that will help with the package and its repo management. I've taken advantage of the usethis package and the  packages book. https://r-pkgs.org/ a lot over the years. I don't follow every best practice they recommend but that is because I'm stuck with legacy content. I have used them to good effect in a few packages I keep for my teaching purposes.


I recommend a .gitignore file. I use this to keep my personal working files from getting exposed to the world. For example, I have batch files that do the commits (and ask for the commit message) and the push to GitHub. I don't' want them on GitHub because they are Windows specific.

You might track down the work done by Achim Zeileis and friends (among others) in colour palettes and combinations. Achim and I were on a keynote panel a couple of years ago and he was showing people how things look to people with specific colour-related impairments. I find the topic fascinating even if I can't engage with the results.

I hope you enjoy your package work as much as I do mine.

Good luck,
Jonathan






-----Original Message-----
From: BlindRUG <blindrug-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Marcus Low via BlindRUG
Sent: Sunday, September 17, 2023 10:18 PM
To: blindrug at nfbnet.org
Cc: Marcus Low <low.marcus at gmail.com>
Subject: [BlindRUG] High contrast themes for people with low vision

Dear All

People who have some vision left might be interested in a package I've started working on called HighContrast. Essentially, it is a few high contrast themes that work with ggplot2. They are not the type of plots you'd publish in a journal article, but some people with substantially impaired vision might find them useful when doing data exploration.
Also, if you have any knowhow in this area, please consider contributing to the package - i'm not an expert by any means and would appreciate the help. The package is on GitHub at
https://github.com/marcuslowx/HighContrast

For people interested in trying it, I think the easiest way to install it is using devtools:
install.packages("devtools")
library(devtools)
install_github("marcuslowx/HighContrast")
library(HighContrast)

That done you can simply add theme_HC() to the end of the code for a
ggplot2 plot and it should use the default black high contrast theme.
Other options for now are theme_HC_blue() and theme_HC_red().

Your welcome to contact me off list or via GitHub if you wish to engage further.

Thanks
Marcus

--
Spotlight Editor
Mobile: +27 (0) 82 96 28 309
E-mail: low.marcus at gmail.com
Twitter: @MarcusLowX @SpotlightNSP

_______________________________________________
BlindRUG mailing list
BlindRUG at nfbnet.org
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/blindrug_nfbnet.org
To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for BlindRUG:
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/blindrug_nfbnet.org/a.j.godfrey%40massey.ac.nz
The list archive can be viewed at:
http://www.nfbnet.org/pipermail/blindrug_nfbnet.org
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