Hi Liz, This is a particularly sticky case – the student is attempting to get a PhD but is currently in between programs until her current project (which we’re attempting to hire an assistant for, or better yet some up with a solution she can work on her own) is completed and “accepted” in some way. I believe her main access issue is around mobility, she has little use of her hands. I wasn’t sure if sight was as much of an issue, but from what I’ve learned here it seems that enlarging the text itself is easy enough. I will double check with her about her computer – at the end of the day, if she is game, perhaps I could provide her with a mac.
Courtney Bryant, EOS Specialist Equal Opportunity Services, Human Resources Carnegie Mellon University 412-268-3930 | cbry...@andrew.cmu.edu<mailto:cbry...@andrew.cmu.edu> From: Liz Hare [mailto:dogg...@earthlink.net] Sent: Thursday, June 18, 2015 12:42 PM To: John McKown Cc: Courtney Bryant; r-help@R-project.org Subject: Re: [R] help for lay person assisting R user with disability Hi Courtney and John, The RStudio environment mentioned below will not work with speech output (I tried with Window-Eyes awhile ago). Some of my clients use it but I have no experience with it. Since the student is partially sighted, they might be able to customize the environment with big fonts and contrast, I’m just not sure. Using a screen reader like Window-Eyes, the student could use the R GUI environment, although it’s a little frustrating because it doesn’t speak a lot and you need to use the mouse keys a lot. The other option if you have to stick with Windows is to run R at the command prompt, which makes interaction slightly easier but you’d have to figure out how to log the output. What is being recommended for the rest of the students in the class? Ideally, this student’s experience should be as close as possible to the others’. Liz On Jun 18, 2015, at 12:17 PM, John McKown <john.archie.mck...@gmail.com<mailto:john.archie.mck...@gmail.com>> wrote: On Thu, Jun 18, 2015 at 9:32 AM, Courtney Bryant <cbry...@andrew.cmu.edu<mailto:cbry...@andrew.cmu.edu>> wrote: Good Morning, I am currently working with a disabled R user who is a student here at CMU. The student has both sight and mobility issues. The student has asked for an assistant who is well versed in R to enter data for her, which we are having a hard time finding. I would like information from R developers/users about how/how well R interfaces with Excel (an easier skill set to find!) In your opinion, could it be as easy as uploading data from excel into R? Also, do you know of a way to enlarge the R interface or otherwise assist in making the program accessible to a low vision person? My limited understanding leads me to believe that screen magnifiers like zoom text don't work particularly well. If you have information on that, I would very much appreciate it. Thanks for your help and for bearing with me! Courtney I am a bit confused (a normal condition for me). Is the student writing R code or is the student running a application written in R? Also, since you mentioned Excel, I am assuming that the student is using a PC running Windows as opposed to Linux or a Mac. If the student is writing R code, then I'd suggest that your computer support person install Rstudio. It is cost free and can be downloaded here: http://www.rstudio.com/ . The installer can then customize Rstudio to use a really large font, if that would be helpful. Please forgive my lack of knowledge about accessibility issues. If the student has trouble typing (mobility issue?), this likely won't help. Would a speech to text / text to speech interface help instead of a screen magnifier? I know next to nothing about these tools, other than that they exist. === If the student is running an R application (which is what "enter data for her" implies to me), then any accessibility issues would need to be addressed in the application itself. But I don't understand why a "data entry" assistant would need any skills in R itself in order to enter data into it. But without knowing more, that's about all that I can say. One thought: CMU has a college teaching "electrical and computer engineering". Depending on what that means, perhaps someone from that college (professor, TA, or grad student) could see what your student is doing and perhaps have some insights on how to help. Or is there a "computer club" on campus where some geeky student might be found? You might look here: http://www.club.cc.cmu.edu/ If these are true geeks (and the web site sounds promising), then a lure of beer & pizza would likely be irresistible <grin>. === For interfacing R with Excel, you might want to look at RExcel here: http://rcom.univie.ac.at/download.html#RExcel . It has a free student version. But is this more for an Excel user who wants to use R for analysis, not an R user wanting to use Excel for "data entry". -- Yoda of Borg, we are. Futile, resistance is, yes. Assimilated, you will be. My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells down by the seashore. If someone tell you that nothing is impossible: Ask him to dribble a football. He's about as useful as a wax frying pan. 10 to the 12th power microphones = 1 Megaphone Maranatha! <>< John McKown [[alternative HTML version deleted]] ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org<mailto:R-help@r-project.org> mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. Liz Hare, PhD Dog Genetics LLC dogg...@earthlink.net<mailto:dogg...@earthlink.net> http://www.doggenetics.com [[alternative HTML version deleted]] ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
