Hello,

It is an interesting question. It seems to me that it is not a R specific question.

As far as I am concerned I think I had dyslexia symptoms when I was at school and got troubles in reading texts and write properly. When making my copies it was real mess...

I found however relief in mathematical and logic related fields: even if I was slow, I could ultimately get into the proposed question and found a good/right way to address the question. I am pretty sure that if I had tools like R it would have been so helpful for me as this tool gives you the possibility to overcome so many issues linked to dyslexia and render quite amazing results.

To get clause to your question, I would say that I am not aware of any packages or toolboxes that might aid dyslexic students but I think that R itself is a tool that may help any student to produce a rewarding job.

I must admit that It may be difficult to get into some on-line help however, if the meaning of an argument is not clear you always have the possibility to copy/paste examples and try different values of parameters to be understand what it may modify.

Dyslexia it not a matter of method but rather a difficulty to decipher the information and to render it. For the rendering issue R has represented for me a wonderful medium.

I realize this is my experience and that it may not be generalizable to all cases. Hope though my experience could find echoes,

Regards,

Marc

Thank you for your answer and time

If the student is more comfortable using dropdown menus transitioning them to R commander might be one approach?

Thank you, that is very useful. We were already using RStudio but scripting is unavoidable when starting to write your own functions. I wonder if perhaps there are fonts/colours that are more friendly?

Nice Question Eva Caamano , Following

Eva Caamano , I would be very interested in whether you got any further with your question above? I have had a couple of students with this problem and I was trying to find something that might make their lives easier.

Unfortunately I did not get much further. Something that seems to be in agreement in the sources I consulted is making sure more time is allocated for any potential time sensitive task and to provide materials in larger fonts (particularly of the sans family) and as much summarised as possible if applicable. I would love to advance more on this but I have struggled to find sources that discuss it

Hi, there is a style guide that one can follow in order to write material that help dyslexic people. Hope it helps.

https://cdn.bdadyslexia.org.uk/documents/Advice/style-guide/Dyslexia_Style_Guide_2018-final-1.pdf?mtime=20190409173950&focal=none

https://psyteachr.github.io/book-template/inclusion.html

You can download a dyslexic-friendly font for windows here opendyslexic.org . Once you installed it, you can set it for Rstudio text editor from Tools > Global options > Appearence > Editor Fonts, and selecting OpenDyslexicMono (the font you just downloaded and installed in windows).

thank you Lican and Yovanny!

Sounds like I have the same challenges as you Eva (I'm severely dyslexic).

Good news & bad news: Nope, there isn't anything much available to make R coding easier. However, after changing fonts and other small things, try using Markdown, since you can arrange your coding to be presented in a simplified way (e.g. exportable into a format that allows us to read it easier). Such as, Markdown allows having sections of the code broken into "chucks", where you can add descriptions as short or detailed as needed, and the output is presented in an easier to read MS word format.

Also, because I am severely dyslexic, I have a significant problem with memorizing the written work (i.e. I love text-to-speech programs, lectures, workshops and tutorials). So, I ended up changing university policy to allow me to get an Academic Assistant to help teach me coding in the way I learn while in my PhD studies (so I can watch, listen and then implement the learnings). Very long fight, but I won as there was another university in my city that provided one of their students a similar vein of accommodation, there is a bunch of peer reviewed evidence available to support the need, and I had the help of the Dear Dyslexic Foundation (access to experts in dyslexia, supervisor's of dyslexic PhD's whom research dyslexia, and other HDR dyslexics... the online support group with these people is international and great if you are a HDR dyslexic and interested in joining it).

Finally, I tried getting a coder to assist in creating an R package that changed the screen look of R, but this turned out to be a very big job, and the coder unfortunately had "life" things that took them away from this project. But, I have the ideas, just need to find the coder talented enough to be able to do it. Not in my networks sphere, so I doubt it will happen as my focus is naturally on my PhD studies (and there are still questions whether what I want achieved can actually be done in R). Nevertheless, if they work, they would be a useful tool in teaching R coding to all, not just for dyslexics. May be a pipe dream though.

For anyone reading the above uneducated in dyslexia and coding, there is peer reviewed research that shows we bring strengths to coding too. See Norman Powell, David Moore, John Gray, Janet Finlay & John Reaney (2004) Dyslexia and learning computer programming, Innovation in Teaching and Learning in Information and Computer Sciences, 3:2, 1-12, DOI: 10.11120/ital.2004.03020005