# 64 bit screen readers

Category: Geeks r Us

## Post 1 by skpoet711 (Zone BBS is my Life) on Tuesday, 22-Jul-2008 10:15:03

Due to vista's thurst for ram, and more and more softwares requiring ram to function smoothly and efficiently, its time that screen readers support 64 bit systems.
We should petition fs and other screen reader makers like gw micro that a 64 bit screen is due.
If you take a look around shelves in brick and morter stores, you will find that more and more systems are having 3gb rams and up. While 32 bit systems can handle 3gb ram fine, a 64 bit system is necessary to recognize 4, 6, 8, and up gb of ram. Also, I am finding that software venders are beginning to release 64 bit software to work with 64 bit OS's. If anyone has a direct connection with a screen reader company, like the programmers, or the CEO's, let them know that I am all in favor of a 64 bit screen reader :)
Why do I need that much ram in my system? If you know the answers to the next questions, then you will know why I would like to be able to use a lot of rams in my system. No, its not cause I count a lot of sheep at night.
Why does vista need 2+gb to run smoothly? Why does sonar require massive ram to work efficiently with audio files? Why does audo cad consume so much ram when working with images? Why do games end up crashing if the ram you have for it no longer is sufficient?
On and on, you get the idea.

## Post 2 by Squiggles (Account disabled) on Tuesday, 22-Jul-2008 10:49:31

As far as I know, and I haven't tested it myself because I don't have a 64 bit box with winblows on it, NVDA should work just fine with it, however we all know NVDA isn't the best in the world. At this time, users of linux and mac are putzing along just fine with their 64 bit machines...hmmmm an advantage over windows? How dare I. I'm sure tossing a distro of Debian on a 64 bit box would be better because my current stats on my dell power edge with 512 MB of ram shows only 41 megs are being used. And unless you are running min win, that is only 25 megs and uses 33 mb of ram you'll never see that again.

## Post 3 by fastfinge (I can't call it a day til I enter the zone BBS) on Tuesday, 22-Jul-2008 11:48:31

But why wouldn't current screen readers work in 64 bit? The only things that won't work are anything that needs to be running in driver space. The rest of it, windows has a 32-bit emulation layer to run in the same way that 32-bit windows has a 16-bit emulation layer. Maybe it doesn't work, I'm just not sure why it wouldn't. I've got a mac myself!

## Post 4 by Squiggles (Account disabled) on Tuesday, 22-Jul-2008 13:01:35

this is because FS and company don't want to rewrite their video intercept. the video intercept is the real issue.

## Post 5 by blindndangerous (the blind and dangerous one) on Tuesday, 22-Jul-2008 13:44:58

That's true cody. I remember hearing it from some one, that when 16 bit switched to 32 bit, that the whole program of jaws had to be redone.

## Post 6 by fastfinge (I can't call it a day til I enter the zone BBS) on Tuesday, 22-Jul-2008 16:23:08

Doesn't Windows Vista not use the same intersept system as XP anyway? So didn't it already get a rewrite for vista? The actions of freedom scientific ever baffle; you'd think they'd just do the 64 bit changes while adapting to Vista.

## Post 7 by Squiggles (Account disabled) on Tuesday, 22-Jul-2008 18:38:29

Well, I guess when they start losing customers they'll jerk their heads up. I for one am not going to stick with 32 bit just because of accessibility. Fuck no.

## Post 8 by wildebrew (We promised the world we'd tame it, what were we hoping for?) on Wednesday, 23-Jul-2008 7:51:01

No, Vista does not have the same video intercept as XP does. They left in something called Mirror drivers solely for the screen reader manufacturers to use the video intercept, they are providing better ways to access the information from the OS, there's an article about it somewhere on the Serotek blog, they claim System Access does not use video intercept in its functionality, I don't know what NVDA does.
As for Vista, it's uncanny how resource intensive it is so I am not switching from XP any time soon. We've been recording with Sonar 6 on a machine with 2gb of Ram, Windows Vista and a single core AMD 64 bit processor, I haven't had a crash nor even a hick up with up to 30 tracks of recording so I'm baffled why you are experiencing these issues, the guys we bought our systems from practically banned us from upgrading to Vista, said it'd be the biggest mistake we ever make with Sonar, at lest for the time being.

## Post 9 by Squiggles (Account disabled) on Wednesday, 23-Jul-2008 18:36:50

And those guys would be correct, it is the biggest mistake you'll ever make. NVDA uses the MSAA accessibility thing. Satogo is useless on corporate networks and places you don't have internet. Why it exists is beyond me. My point stands, and case in point is that 64 bit accessibility on windows just isn't coming soon, so deal with it, or switch to linux or mac. There is no argument about it because this is fact.

## Post 10 by blindndangerous (the blind and dangerous one) on Wednesday, 23-Jul-2008 20:31:43

Or, do what your doing now, and stick with xp.

## Post 11 by Big Pawed Bear (letting his paws be his guide.) on Thursday, 24-Jul-2008 2:46:14

i think satogo is for the home user really, to allow someone to get online and do things if they have little or no funding for a screen reader. Satogo has its place. and I'm glad to hear SA works with Vista, I'm a user of SA as well as jaws and like SA for some things, jaws for others.

## Post 12 by Squiggles (Account disabled) on Friday, 25-Jul-2008 11:24:17

Ok which links back to my 50000 screen readers topic. Why do I need 5 screen readers for different programs. It's not worth it especially if your running vista. Voice over works in 64 bit and so does orca. Why must we bend over for billie G to make all of us his bitches? Or rather, why must we bend over to companies like GW and FS. They are limiting us if you are a die hard windows user and just can't survive without it you need to get your head examined. Fuck why don't we call it proprietary scientific. There ain't nothing free about it. Much like this country. They just make you believe it is free. In point of fact the country is run by gangs, and the Monkey man. They're doing quite a good job at making you believe whatever the fuck they please. And, you don't care. That is a scary thought. But chances are if you like what is on tv like MTV and you like drugs and sex and gunz and gangs and the media, then you'll love what FS is doing, because it is the same thing. Same logic. Who ever said FS or GW were the only options? No one, however it is repeatedly said that Jaws is the world renouned screen reading solution. lol bullshit. I can pull any app off the net and it will work with voice over, oh and did I mention 64 bit is a non issue. Ha, ha!

## Post 13 by wildebrew (We promised the world we'd tame it, what were we hoping for?) on Friday, 25-Jul-2008 16:12:24

..And yet again we come to the same argument (yes, I shoud stop posting to those, but they're just obviously flawed I can't resist).
f you think Steven Jobs is cuter than mr Gates by all means go kiss his bottom, fact is that just the standard, rather lame spec iMac computer starts at $1100, with 1gb of ram and 250gb hard drive, the hardware is basically the same you can get on any pc, the pc with specs that are not too dissimilar starts in the 400s, get a much higher specced PC for $600 to $650, you're paying an awful lot of premium for a Mac then, if you need two or a laptop you've laready paid the price of Jaws or a different screen reader, and you are at Apple's mercy regarding screen reading, they may decide it's not worth it and discontinue their reader at any time, I doubt they feel it's bringing them a big customer base. Apple is even worse than Windows because they make the hardware and the software and they aggressively market them together, it'snot like you have a choice of any kind.
For one thing music production software for Macs is way more expensive than Sonar, for instance, it used to be different but Apple are losing a bit of the edge they had, partly because of more competition from Sonar and similar, also because now they run on exactly the same hardware as Windows so there is no advantage to their hardware solutions any more. Bottomline, Apple gives you less freedom than buying a Windows screen reader and the price is not significantly less, with a screen reader you can at least install it on up to 5 different computers, with apple such a premium may run you from 2 to 3 grand depending on hardware config.
And yet, I have nothing against Apple, I'm curious to try them, but to portray them as saviors of accessibility and the heroes whilst good old Microsoft are the villains just is not making any sense at all.
I'm hoping VoiceOver may change people's attitude to screen readers, to introduce the idea of making a computer accessible out of the box, Microsoft may not need to do it (in fact, perhaps, they shouldn't) but the hardware manufacturers may decide to adapt a major AT solution as part of their computers, HP, Acer, Linovo etc. I think that's the way to go, leave Microsoft to make the operating systems (or linux, or Apple, give people a real choice) then one can pick a package of hardware and software solutions,, if the notion that decent accessibility should be built in become widespread we've really seen a step forward. If you can really read posts by squiggles and really beliefve this highly flawed ramblings are believable, then you got trouble and he'll be the one laughing at ya.
I hope Apple has more reasonable defenders.

## Post 14 by ¤§¤spike¤§¤ (This site is so "educational") on Friday, 25-Jul-2008 16:54:05

wildebrew, got a few questions for you, if you don't mind.
You'd said that you're a programmer, correct, if I'm not mistaken?
If so, though you're not a network admin, you are aware that Server 2008 is 64 bit only?
Windows 7, though it will not be 64 bit only, there'll come a time where Microsoft will not support 32 bit, yes, it may be in the future, not anytime soon, I don't think.
What're you gonna do then?
What's your opinion on Linux and 64 bit support, if you've tried it?
I myself own a mac, its not perfect, hell no, but thank you Apple, it don't say whether Leopard is true 64 bit, though my mac does have 4 gb ram.
I got it for database development.

## Post 15 by Squiggles (Account disabled) on Friday, 25-Jul-2008 21:56:13

mac osx is 64 bit. I have told you this, spike, because 64 bit supports 4 gigs of ram, which you have.

## Post 16 by ¤§¤spike¤§¤ (This site is so "educational") on Saturday, 26-Jul-2008 0:28:24

Squiggles, now that I've searched on the site, true, damn you apple for making this hard:)
url for 64 bit mac osx info: http://www.apple.com/macosx/technology/64bit.html

## Post 17 by wildebrew (We promised the world we'd tame it, what were we hoping for?) on Saturday, 26-Jul-2008 14:30:41

Once all apps are 64 bits screen readers will move to 64 bit, do you have any idea how much code is floating out there that's written for 32 bit, do you really think any OS, especially windows, will stop support 32 bit apps in the next 30 years, they will have an emulator to run the 32 bit apps, just like Fortran, ATA and Cobol apps are still floating out there, in fact I hard a large percentage of all code in the business world s still written and maintained in Cobol. As a general user 64 bit doesn't give you anything yet, the software vendors are just beginning to rewrite their code to take advantage of the 64 bit functionality of the hardware. In any acse, as a programmer should know, you generally never run your client code on the server itself so it doesn't matter whether the server is running on a 32 or 64 bit machine, you send requests to the database and get them back, by using web services etc, which is increasingly the way to go, you don't even know if the db in the background is 16 32 or 64 bit and whether it runs on linux, mac, Windows, wehther it's sql server, oracle or Sybase, it just doesn't matter.
So you guys are making a huge deal out of something that just doesn't matter, I'd much rather be able to do complicated Excel editing than have a 64 bit screen reader that works with Quake 53 multi player version on a quad core 128gb memory computer.
Neither Orca nor VoiceOver have the detailed editing I need in order to do my Excel editing (if you want to prove otherwise I can create an Excel assignment test and you can tell me whether you can do it and how fast, without cheating, I'd be curious to see this), .net is the best programming environment out there and it only runs on Windows, despite attempts to transfer it to the Unix/Linux world. I also write Java code (which is platofmr independent in any case) and not in my 5 years of coding experience has 64 bit functionality ever been a problem.
I truly hope that screen reading ans AT software has changed dramatically before we have to worry about 64 bit functionality, get out of the video intercept concept first and then we'll talk and, no, VoiceOver is not the solution to all my problems, despite what Cody says.

## Post 18 by ¤§¤spike¤§¤ (This site is so "educational") on Saturday, 26-Jul-2008 15:06:35

wildebrew, sorry if it seems that I'd said that voice over was the solution to everything, it and orca aren't perfect, I know that, from personal experience.
Only real problems that i've seen with voice over on my own machine is that sometimes in Safari, it'll restart but it won't take down the OS.
I've had limited experience with Orca under Ubuntu.
Nothing's perfect, its the reality we live in...:)

## Post 19 by blindndangerous (the blind and dangerous one) on Saturday, 26-Jul-2008 16:48:39

That's the only problem i've ever had with voice over as well spike, and Orca is kinda slow. If they could get orca to work with more apps that would be great.

## Post 20 by Squiggles (Account disabled) on Sunday, 27-Jul-2008 1:16:16

ubuntu is kind of slow I have had that as well but I'm unsure why that is. I never said voice over was the solution to all your problems, however one could easily shit can windows and switch to mac. I'm sure one could do it to linux as well in fact I've met totally blind people who have done both. every o/s has its bases coverd with the basic apps. we each have our own opinion and I find that text based is a lot better.

## Post 21 by blindndangerous (the blind and dangerous one) on Sunday, 27-Jul-2008 2:15:07

Wow. Now, y couldn't u have just said that before. U had to go and throw all that crap about windows, when u could've sumed up all your facts into that last post. Now, I was using mac 10.5.2, with virtual box that had ubuntu in it. I'll be getting my mac in spetember, and I can't wait. I liked my mac, but I like windows as well. But, as for ubuntu, the mac was running in the background, so maybe that was part of my issue?

## Post 22 by wildebrew (We promised the world we'd tame it, what were we hoping for?) on Sunday, 27-Jul-2008 11:18:23

Hear, hear, I'll definitely look more into VoiceOver and Linux solutions one of these days and I think it's both cool and necessary to make those OS's accessible, people should always have a choice. I'm happy with my 'Windows for now though, and it's hard to make a switch, if you are a programmer, most companies use Windows platforms and expect Windows based programming, especially companies in the financial services sector.

## Post 23 by louiano (I'm going for the prolific poster awards!) on Sunday, 27-Jul-2008 19:37:12

I do agree with post 13. While there might be the "nifty' option of having a screen reader for whatever your operative system might be, there is this tendency to say that what works best for us and whats the least comon (I.E apple) has to be the cream of the crop. It is a nice thing though that apple got some linux cores and decided to modify them and then make their own re-design for an operative system; however, I find that studios and other audio production companies love to use "macking trash" for much of their work with the "renouned" programs such as ableton live, protools, cubase... in short, the program that has the best graphics and the most intuitive visual interface will be the one who shall rule on the "industry". I remember not too long ago seeing a computer with an integrated musical keyboard (unsure of the name) which was worth quite the prize. Ok, so here we performed a test: The guy told me that this was run off mac (which I remember it used the oh so beloved integrated "voiceover"). He might had been using garageband, or whatever sequencer it was... I asked him if it was possible to select anything specific off a song (in a given time frame or audibly) by keyboard input. Long story short, he went through all the documentation and then asked me to call him back in a few days, which i attest doing (a foolow up that too a week) and nothing. He called both companies (according to him) and nothing. I attempted the same, asked friends, asked people, nothing. It is thus frustrating to people who are blind to navigate through all these tasks of different companies and employers. What if the workstation is not accessible? I am glad I resigned from buying whatever the workstation was called, 'cause I can produce pretty much anything I want without being trapped in the box. Universities are even discouraging blind people from taking classes which deal with audio editing and remixing because of the "industry" standards. i am fine with a midi keyboard, qws, a midi to mp3 rendered and a nice set of sound fonts which is a very small fraction compared to that of a complete workstation. My opinion on this whole post is though that i would launch such a petition until all other alternatives (32 bit emulators and the like) do not work, or when there is absolutely not a way to have an accessible machine. It is better to petition at the right time. I agree tat screen reading technology whould keep up with others when there is no way out. Screen readers should be updated (reasonably) foscusing on stability and reading improvements rather than the little nifty keystroke that will send the latest video to your friend over aim and other bloating features.

## Post 24 by wildebrew (We promised the world we'd tame it, what were we hoping for?) on Monday, 28-Jul-2008 5:44:05

And that's another problem we have though. Screen readers, especially the low cost ones and ones integrated into OS's will go for the masses, will fix what the average computer user needs, adding such little nifty things as compatibility with the latest version of the messaging client. What FS does have (although sadly not to such a great extent as they used to) is the ability to update and keep up with productivity tools, Excel, visual studio etc, because it gets a lot of feed back from those trusty blind coders who use it (Window Eyes is quite good too with those things, I'm just not as used to using it as I am Jaws, although I want to try their scripting tools now).
Unless there's an OS that unconditionally works with all apps there will always be choices in what to update the fastest and, sadly, I think there will be over emphasis on the most general apps (which makes sense).
So I hope that companies won't lose sight of the most important functionality of those products, to enable us to work and play, not just play.

## Post 25 by b3n (I'm going for the prolific poster awards!) on Monday, 28-Jul-2008 13:20:25

its not needed atm, but I can really see a time in the not to distant future where we will see machines with 4 gb ram.