[BlindRUG] VS Code setup for screen readers

[Robin Williams]

Hi Esteban,

Thanks for reaching out with this important question, and apologies for my slow response.

I am not a teacher, rather, I am a statistician working in industry. I am increasingly using VSCode, both for writing and running R code, however, it is not yet my primary environment. The reasons for that are part legacy, in that I have used Emacs with Emacs Speaks Statistics for almost 15 years now, as well as a couple shortcomings of VSCode which I would like addressed before I make the full switch. With that said, I would not recommend Emacs as a suitable environment for an undergraduate student. VSCode, on the other hand, has a learning curve that is less steep, in my opinion.
As well as running R code, I also use VSCode to write and compile C++, and to interact with Git. This is another appeal – it’s very nice as a blind person to have one tool that allows you to accomplish so much.

The only extensions relating to R that I currently have installed are ‘R’ and ‘R Debugger’.

A brief summary of my workflow in VSCode is as follows.

  *   Make heavy use of the command pallet – ctrl+shift+p, and the settings editor ctrl+,
  *   To run an R session, once the above extensions are installed, launch a terminal session with the R profile, using the aforementioned command pallet.
  *   Open, or create, an R script in the editor.
  *   Within the editor, to run the current line of code and have the cursor move to the next line, press ctrl+enter. To maintain the current cursor position, press alt+enter.
  *   To run a block of code, select it using the anchor commands. Place the cursor at the start of the block, and hit ctrl+k followed by ctrl+b. Move the cursor to the end of the block, and hit ctrl+k twice. Then use either ctrl+enter or alt+enter to run the selected block.
  *   Enjoy all the autocompletion and code suggestions while writing new code. I sometimes find these a bit verbose, and you can turn it off altogether if you wish.



A few comments on interacting with the terminal, which we launched at the beginning.

  *   Microsoft have implemented an accessibility buffer, which enables a screen reader user to inspect the terminal output. To get there, run the command Focus Terminal View, which I have assigned to a keyboard shortcut (ctrl+shift+t). However, if the terminal is already open, I believe you can also use ctrl+’. Then hit alt+f2, and you will be placed in the accessibility view. This acts as a read only edit field, which means you can copy from it.To get back to the terminal, I typically jump to the bottom of the accessibility view (ctrl+end), and then ctrl+down arrow moves back to the terminal.
  *   You can type and run commands in the terminal, use autocomplete and so on. However, what you can not currently do very easily is to scroll through the command history, edit a historical command, and rerun it. Therefore, if there are temporary commands to be run that aren’t required as part of a final script, I advise to have a second script open in the editor area, and run commands from there instead.


The settings are very customisable. Below is an extract from my settings.json, which you can find by searching for settings in the command pallet. If you search the settings (ctrl+,) for accessibility, you will see the variety of accessibility-related customisations that can be made.

{
    "workbench.startupEditor": "none",
    "window.menuBarVisibility": "compact",
    "terminal.integrated.defaultProfile.windows": "R Terminal",
    "r.source.focus": "none",
    "r.plot.useHttpgd": true,
    "r.bracketedPaste": true,
    "r.sessionWatcher": true,
    "r.alwaysUseActiveTerminal": true,
    "r.plot.defaults.fullWindowMode": true,
    "terminal.integrated.accessibleViewPreserveCursorPosition": true,
    "accessibility.signals.save": {
        "announcement": "never"
    },
    "editor.tabSize": 2,
    "accessibility.verbosity.terminal": false,
}

Please let me know if I can help further, either on or off list.

Bests,
Robin

From: BlindRUG <blindrug-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Esteban Montenegro via BlindRUG
Sent: 16 September 2024 18:54
To: blindrug at nfbnet.org
Cc: Esteban Montenegro <estebanmonte at gmail.com>
Subject: [BlindRUG] VS Code setup for screen readers

Greetings list members,

I'm Esteban, I'm a faculty member at California State University, Stanislaus. Currently, I'm preparing materials to make my lectures and teaching method more accessible for screen readers. I teach statistics using R and RStudio, but I know RStudio is not friendly with screen readers.

As an alternative, I've been thinking to use VS Code to teach R, does any person in this list have attempted to use VS Code for teaching R? Do you use VS Code with screen readers? If so, would you share with me your setup and possible add-ons for VS Code?

Finally, any recommendations on how to teach R and screen readers are always welcomed!

Have a great week!

-------------

Esteban Montenegro-Montenegro, PhD.
Assistant Professor
Psychology and Child Development
California State University, Stanislaus
Stockton Campus
612 E Magnolia St, Stockton, CA 95202
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