[BlindRUG] R statistics program inquiries

[Jonathan Godfrey]

Good morning Bella,

First let me commend you on being so proactive.

You asked about resources, tips, and tricks. You will have received some pointers to resources when you signed up to this list. Some of them are getting a bit tired, but finding time to update them in a world that now has lots of accessible resources is a low priority for me.

Tips and tricks are very user-specific. The most successful R users among us seem to make use of quite different approaches,
based on our research or employment needs and our backgrounds. For example, those of us who did not have decent access to RStudio during our formative experiences, haven’t all embraced RStudio since it has made improvements (myself included).

Knowing how much experience you have with programming, IDEs, and even which screen reader you are most comfortable using, and whether you have a Braille display will al help us help you.


I do suggest your proactivity includes reaching out to course staff early. Hopefully they can even help get you started using R. You will have to remember that most R users cannot function without that mouse so you will be doing things differently. Cut them some slack.

I would recommend making use of R markdown because it starts with accessible text and generates readable HTML. I would hope that a modern course would be doing this, but that will depend on the choices made by your professors. Knowing what they need you to work with will help us help you.

I would hope you make use of my BrailleR package. This will help with many graphs created using ggplot(). You won’t see the benefits until you are making graphs though.

OK, that’s enough for now,.

All the best,
Jonathan


From: BlindRUG <blindrug-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Bella Teta via BlindRUG
Sent: Wednesday, 18 June 2025 7:56 am
To: blindrug at nfbnet.org
Cc: Bella Teta <b.teta2005 at gmail.com>
Subject: [BlindRUG] R statistics program inquiries

Hello,
MY name is Bella, and I am writing on this list to get some feedback on how to use R software with a screen reader. I currently use JAWS and NVDA as my primary screen readers and I am planning to take a biostatistics course this Fall. I have never used this program before, and I am trying to seek out resources in learning this software before I start this course. I would gratefully appreciate tips and tricks using a screen reader with this statistical software and anything else that could be of help to me. Thank you.


Sincerely,


Bella Teta
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