[BlindRUG] RStudio is now Posit - does this mean anything for us?

Tue Mar 5 09:58:06 UTC 2024

Hi Jonathan,

Thanks as always for your thoughts.

In my humble opinion the use or not of an IDE comes down to the individual's use case. I would agree that using an IDE is likely less than desirable for a student coming out of school, however as that student progresses through university, and hopefully in to the workplace, the ability to have accessible IDEs to hand is surely becoming increasingly essential? For my part, I would hardly know how to use Excel for anything beyond the very basics, while I am fairly fluent in Emacs and increasingly VSCode.
I agree that the amount of information on display in IDEs can be overwhelming, particularly if not filtered properly. A good IDE should have full keyboard support to allow the user to jump directly to the relevant parts, and the ability to search for the commands to do so if the various keystrokes can't be committed to memory. VSCode has all of these features.
For my use case, I frequently need to have various scripts open simultaneously, and sometimes I run multiple R instances within the same session. While I love Markdown, and use it whenever appropriate, I also spend a lot of time running small chunks of code, and then making small alterations to that code. That is to say, I work quite interactively, and the ability to inspect the output in an efficient manner is important to me. I don't feel that rendering an RMarkdown file, followed by switching to and refreshing my browser, is the most efficient means of inspecting the output of my code.
Of course it's perfectly possible that I'm stuck in my ways, and that better solutions exist. Coming back to the original point though, which I know you support, having an accessible RStudio IDE can only be a good thing for lowering the barriers to entry that blind people face in statistics and data science.

Warmly,
Robin
From: BlindRUG <blindrug-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Jonathan Godfrey via BlindRUG
Sent: Monday, March 4, 2024 7:38 PM
To: Blind R Users Group <blindrug at nfbnet.org>
Cc: Jonathan Godfrey <A.J.Godfrey at massey.ac.nz>
Subject: Re: [BlindRUG] RStudio is now Posit - does this mean anything for us?

Hello Robin,

The change in organisational name is trivial with respect to the accessibility of the RStudio IDE.

Of greater note is the existence (or lack)  of human resource dedicated to positive improvements. I have to admit to not knowing how the staff reductions of 2023 have affected the programme of work that was making progress on accessibility. It has been over twelve months since I had an email from the accessibility guru and I therefore can't tell you if he is still with Posit.

I still have to keep RStudio on my radar for teaching purposes. The amount of explaining I must do about the IDE and the way it works gets less each year. I have students making use of the IDE in a variety of ways (cloud, virtual machines, and local installations) and on all operating systems (albeit a very small number using Linux). I cannot test all of these modes of operation for their accessibility.

I do believe however that the IDE will have a massive initial learning curve for screen reader users. The interaction model is much more difficult than say an email client, word processor, and perhaps notably, spreadsheet software. I continue to find that blind students finish high school with a poor understanding of spreadsheets. Given these are immediately explorable, the idea of working with a data sheet that is not so explorable, the idea of needing to create a formula, and generating extra panes with graphics or output, all make spreadsheets harder than other commonly used software.

In the end, part of my push for blind people to use R markdown is that they are relieved from the nonlinear multitude of windows/panes etc. I accept that they must hold an input and an output window open, but two windows that behave like individual apps should prove easier than managing an IDE.

All the best,
Jonathan

From: BlindRUG <blindrug-bounces at nfbnet.org<mailto:blindrug-bounces at nfbnet.org>> On Behalf Of Robin Williams via BlindRUG
Sent: Monday, March 4, 2024 11:20 PM
To: Blind R Users Group <blindrug at nfbnet.org<mailto:blindrug at nfbnet.org>>
Cc: Robin Williams <Robin.Williams at atass-sports.co.uk<mailto:Robin.Williams at atass-sports.co.uk>>
Subject: [BlindRUG] RStudio is now Posit - does this mean anything for us?

Hi all,

Due to its accessibility shortcomings, I am not a frequent follower of the goings on of RStudio. I have therefore only just found out that RStudio the company has been rebranded as Posit, although their initial RStudio IDE remains named as RStudio. You can read about the rebrand in this blog post.<https://posit.co/blog/rstudio-is-becoming-posit/> I do not know if there have been any further changes in terms of company structure and so on.

There was recently a discussion on another list that suggested RStudio accessibility could be slowly heading in the right direction. It sounds as though one can access various parts of the IDE, but that the use of the review cursor (eg the JAWS cursor or NVDA screen review) was still necessary to inspect the output. If that is the case, then it may not be a huge job for Posit to drag RStudio's accessibility up to scratch - for example, they could take inspiration from Microsoft's accessibility buffer in VSCode.

Can anyone here verify the current accessibility experience when using RStudio? If not, I'll make the time to install it myself and take a look. Further, does anyone know if there is any active work to make RStudio an accessible product? There used to be an employee of RStudio (now Posit) subscribed to this list, but I haven't heard anything from him in at least a couple of years. The Posit website makes bold claims about 'data science for everyone', and I feel a renewed effort to hold them to this claim is in order. If we could identify the current bottlenecks that are preventing RStudio from being a viable product, we could attempt to put pressure on Posit as a community.

Thoughts appreciated,
Robin
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://nfbnet.org/pipermail/blindrug_nfbnet.org/attachments/20240305/ccc70dd5/attachment.html>