accessr: Command Line Tools to Produce Accessible Documents using 'R Markdown' v1.0.1

accessr

Command Line Tools to Produce Accessible Documents using R Markdown

This package provides functions to produce accessible html slides, html,
Word and PDF documents from input R markdown files. Accessible PDF files
are produced only on a Windows Operating System. One aspect of
accessibility is providing headings that are recognised by a screen
reader, providing a navigational tool for a blind or partially-sighted
person. A main aim is to enable documents of different formats to be
produced from a single R markdown source file using one function
call. The render() function from the rmarkdown
package is used to render
R markdown files. A zip file containing multiple files can be produced
from one function call. A user-supplied template Word document can be
used to determine the formatting of the output Word document. Accessible
PDF files are produced from Word documents using
OfficeToPDF. A convenience
function, install_otp() is provided to install this software. The
option to print html output to (non-accessible) PDF files is also
available.

Additional features. When the output format is a Word document the
function ext_img() enables the knitr chunk options out.width and/or
out.height to be used to set the dimensions of a figure (R-generated
or external image). Passing (the default) slide_level = 1 to
rmd2ioslides() enables the use of the level one header # to separate
slides in an ioslides presentation without producing grey segue slides.

The main functions

The main functions are:

• rmd2word(): create word documents and accessible PDF files.
• rmd2ioslides(), rmd2slidy(): create ioslides/slidy presentations
  and perhaps print to (non-accessible) PDF documents.
• rmd2html(): create html documents and perhaps print to
  (non-accessible) PDF documents.
• rmd2many(): create HTML slides, PDF slides, Word and PDF documents
  from a single R markdown file.

Rmd to Word to PDF

Suppose that in your current working directory you have the R markdown
files file1.Rmd and file2.Rmd, a template Word file
your_template.docx and that the file OfficeToPDF.exe downloaded from
OfficeToPDF releases
can be accessed. The following code creates files file1.docx,
file2.docx, file1.pdf and file2.pdf in your working directory and,
unless you supply zip = FALSE, a zip file accessr_word.zip
containing the two PDF files will also be created.

rmd2word(c("file1", "file2"), doc = "your_template.docx")

A path to the Word template document can be provided using the doc
argument. If doc is not provided then a default template is used. See
?rmd2word for details. If you include figures then the knitr chunk
option fig.alt can be used to set the alternative text. You may find
you need to enclose LaTeX maths environments in $$ … $$ when
typesetting mathematics.

A path to OfficeToPDF.exe can be provided using an argument dir. If
dir is missing then rmd2word will look for OfficeToPDF.exe in the
default installation directory dir of install_otp.

Rmd to ioslides

Similarly, the function rmd2ioslides produces HTML
ioslides
presentations.

rmd2ioslides(c("file1", "file2"))

If the argument pdf = TRUE is supplied then the chrome_print
function in the pagedown package is used to produce (non-accessible)
PDF files from these slides. This requires a secure internet connection.
See ?rmd2ioslides.

rmd2slidy (see
slidy
presentations) and rmd2html work in a similar way.

A basic example Rmd file

Executing the following code will copy the file example.Rmd to the
working directory and create from it output as a Word document, an html
document and ioslides and slidy presentations. In the working directory
there will also be the files example.docx, example.pdf and
example.html. The latter contains the slidy presentation because the
final three calls each create example.html, which is overwritten.

rmd_file <- system.file(package = "accessr", "examples", "example.Rmd")
file.copy(from = rmd_file, to = getwd())
rmd2word("example")
rmd2html("example")
rmd2ioslides("example")
rmd2slidy("example")

This example file includes examples of creating figures and tables and
notes potential issues with typesetting mathematics when creating Word
output. In particular, the knitr chunk options fig.alt and fig.cap
can be used to create a separate alternative text and caption for a
figure. It also features the use of an input list params of named
parameters, with a component hide that can be used to hide selected
parts of the output.

Suggested workflow

I have used rmd2ioslides to create HTML lecture presentations and
rmd2word to create accessible PDF document versions of these
presentations for upload, pre- and post- lecture, to a Virtual Learning
Environment (Moodle). The default setting of rmd2many produces these
files and Word document with 18pt bold text. The latter may be
particularly useful for some students. I use params$hide (see above)
to hide selected content from the file that I share with the students
prior to the lecture.