[Rd] Problem with accessibility in R 4.2.0 and 4.2.1.

[Ben Bolker]

   There was a long apparently related thread back in May:

https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-devel/2022-May/081708.html

but that problem was supposedly patched in 4.2.1 ...


On 2022-09-22 9:48 a.m., Andrew Hart via R-devel wrote:
> Hi. I'm having an issue with R 4.2.1 on Windows but I'm not sure if this 
> is the right place to ask about it. If it's not, I'm hoping someone can 
> point me in the right direction.
> 
> I'm blind and have been using R for about 11 years now. The base build 
> available on CRAN is quite accessible and works pretty well with 
> screen-reading software such as JAWS for Windows and NVDA. R-studio is 
> not accessible which appears to have something to do with the version of 
> QT it uses, but that's not relevant as I don't use it.
> 
> Recently I installed R 4.2.1 (I tend to upgrade two or three times a 
> year and this time I was jumping from R 4.1.2 to 4.2.1).
> However, I've encountered a serious problem which makes the latest 
> version more or less unusable for doing any kind of serious work.
> The issue is that the screen-reading software is unable to locate the R 
> cursor and behaves as though the cursor is near the top left of the R 
> application window. Practically, this means I can't tell what characters 
> I'm passing over when cursoring left and right, nor can I hear what 
> character is being deleted when the backspace is pressed. Most 
> importantly, I can't tell where the insertion point is. This is a major 
> regression in the ability to work with and edit the command line in the 
> R console. There are ways of actually viewing the command line but the 
> way I work is frequently calling up a previous command and making a 
> change so as to not have to type the whole command again.
> 
> I Went and installed R 4.1.3 and R 4.2.0 in an attempt to find out 
> exactly when things went awry and the issue first appeared in R 4.2.0.
> Looking through the release notes, the only things mentioned that seem 
> likely to be relevant are the following:
> 
> • R uses a new 64-bit Tcl/Tk bundle. The previous 32-bit/64-bit bundle 
> had a different layout and can no longer be used.
> 
> and
> 
> • R uses UTF-8 as the native encoding on recent Windows systems (at 
> least Windows 10 version 1903, Windows Server 2022 or Windows Server 
> 1903). As a part
> of this change, R uses UCRT as the C runtime. UCRT should be installed 
> manually on systems older than Windows 10 or Windows Server 2016 before 
> installing
> R.
> 
> I can't really see how changing to utf-8 as the native encoding would 
> produce the behaviour I'm seeing, so I am guessing that the change in 
> TCL/TK might be the culprit.
> 
> I'm hoping that someone will be able to help shed some light on what's 
> going on here.
> 
> Thanks a lot,
> Andrew.
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel using r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel

-- 
Dr. Benjamin Bolker
Professor, Mathematics & Statistics and Biology, McMaster University
Director, School of Computational Science and Engineering
(Acting) Graduate chair, Mathematics & Statistics
 > E-mail is sent at my convenience; I don't expect replies outside of 
working hours.