Category: Geeks r Us
Hi.
The other topick about free premium membership for the zone made me create a simmilar topick but about screen readers.
I don't think they should be free but they charge too much i think. We have to pay bying the computer and pay extra for a screen reader. It is like penalising us for having a disability.
So i would be interested to read your oppinion and sorry if a simmilar topick exists somewhere.
Actually, in a weird way we are lucky that the screen readers are so high. The folks at Dolfin, freedom and gwmicro (the 3 big manufacturers) do a fantastic job of keeping up with the changing technology. They couldn't do it if they couldn't hire some really good geeks.
But, after saying all that, I do think that the screen readers are at the top of their pricing. I don't think they could charge much more and have people buy their products.
Good question, Nikos. Thanks for posting it.
Bob
Ya know, I'm not really sure. I mean I know they need to charge us something, but gall the prices just keep going up. With technology the internet changing so much, the screen readers have to keep up, which means upgrades.
6 years ago, when I bought window-eyes, it was mostly because of it's price. I was buying my own product and it was cheeper. I think back then it was $695. I have done one major upgrade since then, which cost me near $500. That was only a year ago.
I'm a little surprised at the cost of going from 5.5 to 6.0: $150.
When you add it all up, I'll be spending near $1400. Is that too much for a 6 year spand? And how soon will I need to make the decision to upgrade again?
One thing I've wished, is for a system that already has win-eyes or jaws already installed. A package deal. Though would that even be feasible, and the cost?
Lol, here's polka dot, very undecided on her feelings. Just some thoughts.
I think, screen readers rank up there with high end software. Take any high end software and it's going to be pricey. Sound forge, Dragon naturally speaking etc. They fill a need, that is what companies do. there programmers, sales reps, techs, etc get payed the big bucks and good for them. Money is what motivates most people and there isn't anyone out there who is going to make a quality product for free!
They are massively overpriced. The cost of my screen reader should not be 3 to 6 times the price of the operating system I run it on.
Yogi, I think the point you make about comparing screen readers to other bits of high end soft where is only half valid though because a program like SoundForge is certainly an audio editing tool that you may need if you worked in the music industry for example, but that would be your choice to work in the industry. However I don't think it can ever be said that we any of us choose to be blind. That is something that is forced upon us so there is a fundamental difference in my view.
As to the prices themselves, personally yes I do feel that screen readers are over priced for what you get. As SingerOfSongs adroitly pointed out, it's daft to pay 5 times as much for the bit of soft where that makes the operating system accessible to us as the operating system itself. Or to look at it a slightly different way, you can very easily spend more on Jaws or window eyes etc. than you would on your entire computer these days.
Is the current system fair? No of course it isn't. Are things likely to change? Also no. It's a supply and demand thing. The demand isn't very high due to the relatively low number of visually impaired people round the World so prices have to stay high to fund development. Such is life my friends. It's shitty not being able to see but then, we all already knew that. *Grin*
Dan.
Hi Nikos and all,
What I really hate is the sma thing. If you don't purchase an sma, and you skip a few upgrades, then you are charged a huge amount for th eupgrades you skipped. When i got jaws 5, I purchased an sma, and the price was pretty steep. I got 7.0 as an sma upgrade from when i got jaws 5, and for the bucks, I can't really tell the difference between 7.0 and 6.0, plus I don't have that problem with 6 in my computer with jaws not being able to arrow all the way down in large folders, or on cd's that have a lot of mp3's on them, such as my old time radio collection. Jaws 5 was a big step up from 33.1, jaws 6 had a few more quick navigation keys, but jaws 7 had nothing extra that was a benefit for me. You pay 128 dollars to stay up to date and get a version that doesn't have anything for you anyh more than the last version had, but if you wait for a version that has a lot of enhancements, you have to pay way up in the 600 dollar range because you skipped so many upgrades.
wonderwoman
I really think that they are over priced. Not just screen readers, but everything for the blind is. This might be okay for some people that have kick ass jobs and make lots of money, but for the students that don't yet have jobs, or older people that have lost their sight and can't very well work much anymore, or the people who are actually disabled in a way that they can't work yes it is way overpriced. If your services for the blind or some organization won't get it for you, and you don't get but a few hundred dollars a month to pay the bills, it's going to take you a really long time to save up for even Window
eyes which is cheaper than jaws. I've never figured out why things for the blind are so expensive when for the majority the blind people are the most unemployed. Very simple. They know we have no choice and we have to pay it or just not get it at all. Technology is great, when you can afford it.
Gotta agree with Harp here it's all in the market. Blind people are a relatively small group, so, to pay one salary, the manufacturers have to charge more.
Take windows/xp, it probably costs $200 which is one fifth the price of jaws. But it sells to probably hundreds of thousands of customers, whereas jaws sells to tens of thousands.
It's a lousy system, and I hate money, but it's the only thing that drives the world today.
Yes, I think screen readers are over priced for me, but, I certainly use one which I scrimped and saved for, not because I had to have it, but because I really really wanted it. Of course, food is over priced too <lol>.
By the way, mark this topic down because it's one of the few times that Harp and I agree. Don't let it go to your head buddy!
Bob
Anyway, just some random thoughts.
Well things will have to change when voiceover, the built in screen reader in OS10 on the Mac gets more advance. because you'll be able to buy any macintosh off the shelf and you'll have a built in screen reader. And it won't be narrator! haha. being that you can buy a new pc for $350 or less nowadays, paying $1000 for jaws is unfair. I mean yes, i understand they need to cover their R and D etc but, when the screen reader costs 3 times that of a basic desktop computer, things will need to change price wise eventually.
Ok, holly it's already been said, it's a niche market, so things are going to be expensive. now we all think the products are over priced simply because it's unafordable to most of us, but do any of us really understand the level of time work and effort that goes into writing them? do any of us understand the type of person who needs to be employed to create them? there are other things involved, but what I' saying is that our views are based mainly on emotional aspects not on consideration of the reality. so in conclution, while I think personally they're over priced, because of the amount of money we as blind people have, I can't possibly say if this is so relative to the quality of product we are getting.
actually, in Bangladesh we can buy a computer with 20000, while we have to buy a screen reader with 90000. and we are a developing country, government not have much effort to pay attention of disability sector. Can u imagine, we had start use screen reader from 2001 in our country. Still, most people in here not use original screen reader. Very few lucky in this purpose. Screen developer should be more careful for us.
nice subject. Thanks Nikos.
Aaaah! guitargod1 your the man! Now see, I new if I would wait long enough someone would have to bring up VoiceOver. As far as pricing in general and I quilify this as my personal opinion, I think most of the technology used by the blind is over priced. With respect to the post above asking us to think about the type of people needed to develope this technology I agree, we are not a large market and obviously things need to reflect that so some compensation for the work can be obtained. However, It seems like at least to me that developers are now trying to put so many features in these products to justify the price that unless the upgrade is signifigant such as supporting a new operating system like Vista or offering some greater stabillity or compatibillity with applications it's not worth it. I am running Jaws 6 on my system and have no desire to upgrade. It works and I am happy. I believe that Voiceover is going to change the way people look at screen reading technology. I have been using it since it cam out on 04-29-05 and have found that I can perform most of my daily computer related tasks with ease. There are many thinkgs I find much easier to do with the Mac. The stabillity can't be beat. The trick about voiceover is being able to approach it as if you never used a screen reader. it's different and some say more combersom but once you get used to it it's a breeze and makes lots of sense. I have taught 2 students as well as gave a presentation to the Board of Ed in NYC at the apple office and they were impresssed with the tools that Apple provided within voiceover to get tasks done. Leopard is the next release and I can assure you that you will see some MAJOR!!! improvements in voiceover.
Willy, that's a good point about nebulous features just to get a new version out the door. I, too, am running jaws 6.2 and am satisfied with it except for the fact that it won't work with internet explorer 7. And, soon, it won't work with vista.
Whatever happened to upgrades that mattered.
I can't speak to the mac because I never used one. <lol>.
Bob
Good morning all. I have posted the address to a document I have written regarding using applications with VoiceOver. I invite you to take a look simply to see what is possible using Voiceover on the Mac. Now, my challenge: Go to your local Apple store and play with a mac and try this document out. Have a great day.
http://icanworkthisthing.com/docs/mac_with_voiceover/Using%20MAC%20Applications%20with%20Voiceover.shtml
I used to think that screen reader pricing was unreasonably high, and was extremely angry with all of the big manufacturers of them. But PyroDemon helped me see what Bob pointed out in the second post on this thread: the companies have to hire really good programmers, and pay them at least some kind of reasonable salary. Those same programmers could easily be hired by a mainstream company and earn far more than they do working for places like Freedom and GW Micro.
So, though I wish the prices were lower, I have a better handle on why they aren't. Not to mention that the biggest purchasers of screen readers are agencies for the blind. Unfortunately, that means that the big companies don't listen to individual consumers one bit, but that's for another topic. Grin.
Very interesting oppinions.
I think the problem with screen reader companies is the fact that they have to keep upto date with the latest version of each programme.
I am wondering why programme developers don't take advantage of sapi5. We saw a lot of games using it but not any other type of programme. Maybe if programme developers made each of their applications self voicing by using sapi5 it wouldn't be as much to do because each programme would concentrate only to their own product to make it speak and not all the most popular programmes out at the moment. This would reduce the costs for us i think.
I hope it makes sence what i am saying.
For those of you concerned about the high price of screen readers, I would invite you to try out Non-visual Desktop Access. NVDA is an open source screen reader for Win XP and Vista that is free of charge. I have played with it and came away with the thought that, you get what you pay for. Its all about what you need from your screen reader. If this product meets your needs, then you are all set. If not, you will have to help fund the companies who employ individuals who devote their lives to providing blind computer users equal access to technology when they could be making far more money doing other things. I recently received a message describing the latest update to NVDA. I will post that below.
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Curran
Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2007 9:51 PM
Hi everyone,
Today I posted revision 315 of NonVisual Desktop Access (NVDA) to the NVDA
website:
http://www.kulgan.net/nvda/
NonVisual Desktop Access is an entirely free (and open-source) screen reader for Windows XP and Windows Vista.
It does much more than Microsoft's Narator (including support for Internet Explorer 6 and 7, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Outlook Express, Dos console windows, and much more).
I'm sure there are still bugs, and support for some applications could be a little better, but I personally now use NVDA as my day-to-day screen reader, and I know of others who are now starting to do the same.
Of course the only way for NVDA to grow and become better is for people to use it, and report bugs and suggest new features.
Also, I am always interested in help from other programmers who have skills in either the Python programming language, or skills in programming with MSAA and other accessibility APIs.
Thanks for posting. I will try this one. I never heard of it before. There is another free screen reader called thunder but there are still bugs in it that's why i didn't post it here. But for anyone who might want to try it the address is:
http://www.screenreader.net/
Blackbird, are you saying that coding a screen reader is more complicated than coding something like... i dunno, php (which is free)?
I think this is a bit of a circle going on here, i don't kno why no one has bought this up yet.
A screen reader is introduced at a rediculessly high price, yet people still want it.
A few months later, piracy of said screenreader rises.
Because of this, the prices of screen readers are upped even more.
It does seem now that ms are the only company that do not provide screenreaders with there operating systems; or good ones anyway.
BEN.
I'm glad Guitargod and Willy brought up Voiceover. I'm very interested to see the enhancements to Voiceover in Leopard. I've been tempted to switch over to a Mac, but can't quite justify it just yet. I'm really pulling for Leopard, though. Just imagine. A fully functional screenreader as soon as you take your computer out of the box.
As for windows-based screenreaders, definitely overpriced. It's ridiculous to pay nearly $1000 more for a piece of software that is essential for us to operate our computers.
I'd more likely put coding them alongside that of an OS. While a screen reader is an application it has to work with tens if not hundreds of other apps plus multiple opporating systems, whereas the coding of other applications is in the main only necesary to make them work propperly on an OS. Then take into account that an OS has millions of users, so sales are huge. A screen reader only has thousands of users, or at any rate a small posentage of the same users. So prices by default are going to be a lot higher. Bare in mind though that the screen reader manufacturers offer us SMA service maintinance agreements to try and offset the upgrade fees we need to pay enabling us to keep fully functional, I don't think this happens as much with other programs or companies. So while I agree once more that prices are high and difficult to afford, I'm not sure we as users are in the best position to judge what is too high if we are being objective and realistic about it.
Well, of course part of the game is deciding where you want to start from. I can't speak for either Mac, or Linux, but I know that both contain what claim to be full-function screen readers at no, or at least, seriously lower cost. Of course using these products means you have to chose to jump the Microsoft ship, and personally I'm not ready to make the leap. R and D are major issues that drive the price, but so is demand. If windows was no big deal, screen readers for it couldn't cost as much. As things stand now, however, most business and personal applications are available to the Windows user, and those with other opperating systems may scramble a bit more. I guess my thought when it comes right down to it is that screen readers are going to cost more for the system with the most users, but you are also going to get the most support, and likely the most flexibility. As Pyro and others have said, sadly, you get what you pay for.
I'm going to upset a lot of people here by bringing in a slightly different question to this. Why if you are all saying that your screen reader costs too much, do you not consider the price when choosing which one to buy? A few facts, WindowEyes is several hundred dollars cheaper than even the standard vertion of jaws, while only having the one vertion that covers all OS, and it supports cytrix and remote desktop without extra cost. those are just basic economic facts, without arguing which is better, plus GWMicro offer the lease to own package to make it more likely an indevidual can purchase their product, so again why do few if any of you actually take this into account when making your choice?
Ok, just a slight correction and clarification on my last post. I did a little research, that shows me that Jaws standard is $895.0 Jaws pro is $1095.0.
Windoweyes is $895.0 and windoweyes with an SMA covering 3 full upgrades is $1150.0.
I couldn't find pries for the jaws SMA or the cost of the extra support for citrix and the like, but thought I'd give the prices here taken from the websites just to illustrate what I was saying.
my opinion is that the cost is just right. Things cost a lot when they first come out. Then something comes out better and the price falls.
My major issue is that Window Eyes felt clunky. I don't like the interface as well. Also, once you have one screen reader you tend to stay with it so long as it meets your needs. I know that I personally was not given a choice when I got my first screen reader. The Commission just showed up with a copy of JAWS 3 in tow, so that's what i had to use. I expect I would be a die hard Window Eyes user if that's what I cut my teeth on. I expect that many people's first screen reader just happened to be JAWS, so that's what they stay with now. Who can afford more than one?
Ok, in the mane you are right, however i baught jaws first because it was what everyone told me was good, after about 2 years i had the chance to really try Windoweyes, and it took me 1 week to find that i could change and found enough improvement for me to want to. so i sold jaws, and baught windoweyes on lease to own. it's possible but a lot of people don't want to try. but we're in danger of this becoming a regular, wich is better, my origional point was why don't people consider the cost differences when they are buying.
I'm glad it works for you. I have to be honest though and say that personally when I get the cash to pick up a cheap second system, I want to see what the GNU?Linux crowd are up to. JAWS in my experience has a cleaner way to work with dialogs, and I find it meets about as many of my needs on the internet as can be expected. I have no way to justify the switch, and as I hope to be hired soon, I don't want to mess with the change in screen reader. Maybe later, but for now... I guess it isn't that broke, I don't plan to fix it.
Okay! gotta Woof!!!! a bit here. First, I am really enjoying the fact that all of these posts are wonderfully valid and it's net to see the variety of opinions. This topic will go on for a long time. Thanks to the person who posted the non visual access program. you just gave me something to do on my home office day! Regarding other operating systems: There is much going on in the world of linux and the mac. Linux is free so probably the easiest to try. Therre ar distributions that allow a user to run the system from CD with the screen reader included so a user doesn't upset there windows environment and can check it out. I have heard of Ubuntu being one distru and I am sure there are others and hope that they will be posted here. AS far as the Mac: I do use it for daily tasks but also agree there is much work to do. I have EXTREMELY high hopes for Leopard but do remember this. Apple is putting in place an excellent infrostructure and if Application developers abide by the accessibility standards apple has openly made available to developers voiceover will be incredible. Leopard bosts a variety of new navigation tools the hope of Braille display support and better recognition of objects on the screen. Also, the joy of being able to walk in to a store and use a machine without having to adapt it is somethinkg to experience for your self. The Mac won't be for everyone but now there will be a choice and that's really what needs to happen.
Frankly, it's going to be a long long time before I change operating systems, because windows is what I know best and I really don't want the problem of learning a new os and screen reader too. Gads, what a nightmare.
Blackbird brings up some very valid points. Personally, I think jaws is more intuitive than window-eyes. But, is that intuitiveness worth the extra bucks? I'm not sure. I'm using jaws professional (which is pretty expensive), but am unable and unwilling to upgrade yet. When that time comes, I very well may go with window-eyes.
Bob
Just a little report on the NVDA program that was talked about. I am actually using it now and although I don't think it's ready for prime time it's an excellent beginning that should be watched. The thinkg that intreaged me was that it didn't hvae to be installed. Just click on the exe file and the musical tune is heard and it runs. Unfortunately, I can't read the edit field I am typing in so if this looks bad that's why. I have no doubt that this will evolve in to another choice for screen reader users. It may not be as robust as jaws or window-eyes but again, it's a choice and for some a good one. It's ger great to see the open sourse comunity working on this.
I've always thought JAWS was well and truly over-priced. It is only £200 less than this PC I'm using now to write this post. We just bought a new Windows Vista laptop for me last weekend and we're just waiting for the release of Windows Vista JAWS. Now, as I have XP JAWS already, I only have to upgrade to the new JAWS, but imagine if I hadn't got this PC already. I'd have to pay twice as much for the new Vista JAWS than I paid for my laptop, which cost just £499 from PC world. Neat eh?