[BlindRUG] R and WSL

[Marcus Low]

Hi All

Just thought I'd share a note following on Jonathan's very helpful note on
Windows terminal accessibility.

My standard way to use R used to be an R terminal on Windows plus Notepad -
with VS Code for some more complicated projects. Based on conversations on
this list I suspect most people use roughly the same or similar tools.

For some more complicated projects I've however had to also use C++ and
some other tools, for which Linux is in my view a much easier environment.
The problem until a few years ago was that Linux accessibility wasn't great
(i know some people get along great with EmacSpeak, but the barrier to
entry with that is substantial). For me all that was changed a few years
back with the release of Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). For those of
you who don't know, WSL essentially lets you use Linux through a terminal
in Windows. In other words, you can use NVDA or JAWS to interact with a
Linux command line. There is more to the integration - you can e.g. set VS
Code on Windows up to work with WSL and the file structure of your Linux
system can be accessed with Windows Explorer. In my experience it works
fantastically well.

I am sure this won't be for everyone, but for people like me who have to
use R together with other programming tools R in WSL works really well.

I'm aware that this stuff will be old news for some of you, but I'm posting
because I suspect there are at least some blind people who could benefit
from using WSL who haven't yet taken the plunge.

Thanks
Marcus
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