I have two main areas of interest:

• working dog genetic, genomic, behavior and health research and breeding program analysis
• inclusion and accessibility in the R and open science communities

You can learn more about my dog-related work, including a publication list, on my CV.

Accessibility note: I provide links to both videos and slides for most talks. It's important to provide access to slides in advance because screen readers can't provide access to video content like screen sharing on Zoom or YouTube videos. If you find accessibility problems with anything here, please let me know at [email protected].

ManyDogs is a big team science project aimed at enhancing our understanding of dog cognition by conducting standardized experiments at many sites using open science principles. The consortium will be able to address the problem of small sample sizes often found in this field.

• ManyDogs 1 repository

• Open Science Framework

The PennVet Working Dog Center does research on a wide variety of health and behavior topics related to dogs in training for careers like search and rescue and odor detection. I've worked with them over about ten years to identify statistical methods for their research questions, and to manage and analyze data.

I presented these slides from the 2021 IWDBA conference on the agreement between dogs' fosters and trainers on behavior questionnaires. If you are a member of the organization, you can see the video on the IWDA website.

I also work on inclusion and accessibility in the R and open science communities.

I worked with a great team to organize UseR! 2021. The website is a great resource for those hoping to plan inclusive conferences. Here are some related resources;

• We wrote a paper sharing what we learned from each other and our experience.

• Some of the team members built a Knowledgebase after the event as a guide for future events.

• My colleagues interviewed me about my perspective as a screen reader user.

I organized the Fireside Chat "Making Things Accessible in Data Science" with Tania Allard, Lynn Kirabo, Anne Lee Steele, malvika Sharan, and Sophia Batchelor. We asked each other about our positionality in relation to accessibility, barriers to participation in communities like The Turing Way, improvements we’ve worked on or witnessed, and things we wished other community members knew about accessibility. Thanks to the Society for Research Software Engineering for supporting the organization of this event.

• How to Make Things More Accessible in Data Science on YouTube
• RSE Society blog post on the Fireside Chat

Andrea Sánchez-Tapia and I gave a talk on Accessibility and Data Science for the November 2022 Book Dash.

• Our Turing Way Accessibility Video

• My Turing Way Accessibility slides

• Andrea's Turing Way Accessibility slides

This year, I have the privilege and fun of participating in the rOpenSci Champions cohort. As part of our outreach activities, I was on a panel "Screen Reader Accessible Tools and Resources for Learning and Working with R" with rOpenSci colleagues Yanina Bellini Saibene, Alican Cagri Gokcek, and Engin Yılmaz.

• Screen Reader Accessible Tools and Resources for Learning and Working with R video in English and Turkish with English subtitles.
• There's a Tech Note on the rOpenSci blog with details and links about how to set up an accessible environment, since RStudio is not screen reader accessible.

I served as accessibility consultant for the 2024 Big Team Science Conference as well as giving a talk. The video is available to people who registered for the conference and the slides are available on GitHub.

• I'd Rather Be Talking About Science: Advocating for Accessibility and Inclusion in Open Science Communities slides

I provided an accessibility evaluation report and suggestions for the future for the 2022 Unconference.

Alternative ("Alt") text is a critical accessibility practice. It is written text that describes image contents and meaning. It's especially important for scientists who need access to information provided in graphical forms.

I gave a workshop on writing alt text to Time Scavengers science communication students. The video is no longer available but the Time Scavengers Workshop Slides are. We talked about a wide variety of scientific images including photos and diagrams in addition to my usual focus on data visualizations.

The Urban Institute produced a book about accessibility practices for data visualization, Do No Harm: Centering Accessibility in Data Visualization. I wrote Chapter 4, "Writing Alt Text to Communicate the Meaning in Data Visualizations," introducing two models to think about how to write complete alt texts for graphs.

I gave a talk to R-Ladies NYC on "Writing Meaningful Alt Text for Data Visualizations in R." You can watch the Alt Text in R video or read the Alt Text in R Slides. The topics include writing complete alt texts and how to include them in R Markdown outputs like HTML reports and Xaringan slides.

Silvia Canelón and I investigated the use of alt text in the #TidyTuesday R data visualization learning group at CSVconf in 2021.

• Video of the #TidyTuesday talk

• Slides for the #TidyTuesday talk

• Repository for the #TidyTuesday work