Category: Geeks r Us
A truly fantastic article about Freedom Scientific and the Jaws decline from a former manager at FS:
http://onj.me/1w57a
former , manager! Smile.
Having worked at fs for several years myself. Agree with much of the article
I saw some of the major improvements with jaws since I worked with it so long. The article was really well done. I go back to the beginning products for jaws and open book. Am very glad that expertise has been out there.
People love to see the big guys fall. I think most products ebb and flow, but technology marches on, so things change. It is good, and how things go.
people don't love to see big guy falls. only big guy that do nothing but tring to suck money out of blind people falls. Indeed, if one day, freedom scientific falls because of their own greediness, on their pricing and product, i'll be celebrate with complete joy.
There are some expect of Jaws is great, but at the same time, there are some expect of NVDA that is better, and greater than Jaws.
IIf NVDA Project can deliver what they deliver so far within a very short period of years, and gain no funding or no sales but little bits of funding from different source, i don't see why i need to pay around $1000 for a piece of software that require me upgrade every 6 months to a year, just because they can't get it right to start with.
So, i would say to people like FS, or even GWMicro, suck it up, too bad. This is the wolrd of information and the users are advancing in their usage. Its a comparetable market. Either, you live up your game, or you go out the field.
And forReel, consider how much you love freedom scientific, , why not trying to get a job with them. maybe you can be the person who wipe the current manager ass or someone who hold his dick while he doing business...
okay time for a reality check here, first off I use mroe then just windows7, android, IOS, OS mountain lion and I am picking vinux back up after the 4.o release. NVDA is great if your not having to working in a work setting where the software is not prapriatary and the companies software needs to be scripted. When scripts come to play then jaws is called up on. Let me know if any of you have taken NVDA into work and wrote a add on or NVDA scrip so you can still have a job. Its eat or go hungry, I will eat and keep jaws until the time comes where specialized software comes with accessibility built in to the produt. Until that happends jaws and I will be a team.
Absolutely. Jaws kept me working in medical transcription for 20 years. Used no speech before that and all together worked 38 and a half years. Jaws was able to be used on huge hospital networks. I'm on the jaws team too.
I have never ever understood why blind people get so upset when a company that does and has done so much to make their computers and life in general easier?
NVDA, as pointed out, is just not the end and do all, and will probably never be. It is not even exactly 100% free, because you must pay for add ons.
Jaws, also made it possible for me to work several jobs, and at the minute, makes it possible for me to do many things NVDA, and even Window Eyes doesn’t support.
I upgrade once, every 2 years at a cost of $260. That amounts to about $12 per month.
When I pick up my paycheck at the end of the month, $12 just doesn’t seem to be much money to invest to keep that paycheck coming. I spend $12 on 3 cups of Starbucks coffee, or a couple beers and lunch, so why not on something that brings me sort of even with the world?
During these 2 years, for as long as I have owned Jaws, the company has kept up with new programs as best they can. During these 2 years I pay nothing when, for example, Microsoft releases a new OS, or Google decides to change some programs, or web developers decide they are going to add new features in to websites.
For 24 months, I most times, consistently have been able to use new programs after a while, with good results. No, not right away, in some cases, but soon, and many times I don’t even need an upgrade.
It cost money in development, housing, employees, and other aspects to run a business, that not only does screen readers, but many other products. Where do we expect that money to come from?
Should the for mentioned Starbucks give us free cups of $4 java, because we are blind? If we don’t expect them to, why do we expect Freedom Scientific?
Apple has some wonderful products. I paid (Money) for my iPhone and pay (Money) to own it monthly. Hey, Apple, you’ve got such a great product, and I can use it beautifully. I’m blind, so why can’t I get mine free?”
It is difficult for any company to stay on top for ever. Competition is great and things will ebb and flow. This is how the world works.
I sincerely believe that all that dislike Freedom Scientific and applaud when they are reportedly declining, should do what good consumers do when they dislike a company. Do, not, buy, nor use it!
Simply stop supporting the greedy people!
This rant was typed on my Windows 8 computer, using Microsoft word 2013, all made possible by Jaws 14. Smile.
the one place i really feel FS is lacking is there PAC Mate product.
please tel me i'm not the only one that feels this way.
they still sel the product for insane pricing and they haven't updated the thing since the Omni came out. when was that? 2008 maybe ?
It is possible it doesn't sale well anymore, due to people having laptops, and Braille displays.
Just a thought.
why would it sell well? look at the outdated hardware of the unit?
you just answered your own question, JH. would you think, then, that the fact it doesn't sell well, has something to do with why they aren't updating it? if not, you should, as that's probably the case.
its running a dead OS, so ya its not going to sell well.
but the other note takers have managed to do things the FS one never put into its note taking solution. why would FS's cell well when there isn't even anything to markit?
at least Braille Sense has Youtube apps. At least Apex has better processor.
Yes, but the main thing is, if a product doesn't sale, why bother updating, changing it and such things?
They have other products you can use to do the same thing.
Sometimes a product just isn't working, or the compitition has better, so you just drop that product except for supporting the customers that already have them.
FS has another note taking solution that is in a portible compact hardware device? if so i sure dont know about it....
i can't help but wonder if FS will be considering doing an android device such as the BraillePlus or Braille2Go.
My biggest problem with FS is they no longer innovate. Sure, they give you the bare essentials, you are able to use mainstream MS products and OS's but get outside the box, and truthfully if I didn't have several screen reader at my disposal which I realize most don't or can't, I couldn't do my job affectively. GO back to jaws 10, and I challenge you to show me a real new innovative feature over the past 4 versions, which I have happly paid my $520 for to stay working! Even Jaws tandem is a very restrictive remote solution. Research it, really! Half the time it's broken, and it always will be because it relies heavily on other web sites working and not changing. The new OCR features, how well is that one working in win 8. Yes, absolutely, it does what it does and it does that part very well. That being said, I haven't seen it do anything outside the box in a long time!
The original prospective of the article written by the former FS worker was not the price of jaws, it was that Freedom has offered very little features since 2004. So we've spent all this time arguing on the side of an argument which was never in dispute!
Regardless of what folks say Jaws is a useful product, but we sure have a right as consumers to expect features for our dollars!
I wasn't arguing the articles points, but the poster that stated Jaws was basicly crapand that the company is, and has been ripping blind people off.
When you speak about outside the box, why does a product that is designed to make other products that are outside the box,accessible need also to produce features that are outside the box?
Most consumers don't know what they want, except for their new systems, no matter what programs are installed, to work for them.
That goal, in my opinion, seems to have been met for my dollars.
I, as a consumer, needed a new computer. I was not a technical person, and didn't understand that I could shop for a computer that had Windows 7 on it.
I purchased a new computer, and I wanted the screen reader I'd been buying to work with it, because I didn't want to spend extra dollars to buy a new one.
My new computer had Windows 8, and when I installed my screen reader all I needed to do was learn how to use Windows 8, one of these outside the box products.
This seems like the majority of consumers wishes.
If we start talking about job applications, we'd have a complete different subject again.
No, the product isn't perfect, but for what it does, it does well.
I didn't talk about how Jaws 10, a great product, needed to be updated either. Remember Vista and Windows 7?
Checking your bank account became difficult, because banks decided to use the latest Adobe reader if you didn't have an updated version of Jaws.
That is and was something basic,but extremely useful, would you say?
Jaws for the blind person that relies on his or her computer for day to day, and employment needs,makes their world that much easier, and available, even in the entertainment sector.
As fast as things are being updated, and released, even the simplist applications, I'd say they are probably over taxed at the minute.
The most fundamental thing you said there was for employment purposes. As someone who works with job seekers on a daily/weekly bases, I could point out 30 jobs in the past year that we were unable to place folks in because of various JFW issues. As a side, note I've worked as both a support person and scripter/programmer, so I'm not a novice when it comes to what jaws is able to accomplish in real time job settings.
Separate jaws from Freedom scientific, considering only the product, and there is a world of features that could be added to assist more folks with employment opportunities. As I stated in an earlier post, I worked for FS for 4.5 years, and left on my own to take up a new job. I worked with some of the most talented and smart individuals in the industry! Many of which I'm still great friends with today!
This being said, Compatibility with the most widely used account packages such as ACT, quicken/quickbooks, and goldmind, as well as . The ability for a blind IT specialist to remote someones computer using mainstream applications such as team viewer, ETC. Just to name 3 or four tasks that have not been even touched by Fs. I guess I should admit that they gave us great features such as: Flexible web, clipboard viewer, and the ability to skip past frames! Note that list of features available to us in 14, was sarcasm!
Again, never going to say it's a worthless product or any of the like, but I'll always contend that over the past 4 or 5 versions it's been more about churning out upgrades for SMA dollars rather then giving users features that can really increase employment opportunities! After all, it is Job Access With Speech.
The most interesting part of this article in my opinion was the section that dealt with all the innovative plans on the table that could have been, and which were not. they had people working on all sorts of stuff that would have made my school life easier, for sure. A fully excess friendly math solution that worked? I would have begged and pleaded for something like that. Sure, we eventually got AGC from another company, but it was half broken.
Its true though, apart from supporting the newest software, FS hasn't really changed a lot sense jaws 6 or 7. Because this is such a small market, and because governments will pay the huge costs of ownership for the majority of the packages they sell, why bother? I'm not saying its a useless product, because it got me threw school, and gave me access to some things nothing else on the market did. But I am saying that in my opinion, jaws has gotten bloated, buggy, and unwieldy as a program. Even now, they're focusing on more wow features they can drive new SMA sails with, when they really should be focusing on streamlining the product, and innovating.
I also found the mentions of how much money they were making, the profit margins, and the way the company prioritized things to be extremely interesting. It honestly looks to me like they could have done great things, if they weren't so focused on producing cheep but high margin hardware products they could mark up extremely.
Go back and read that again... they were pulling in over 1 million dollars a year in jaws profits. that got invested back in to R&D for hardware products that have extremely high margins. It cost them about $400 to produce market and ship a PAC Mate, but they sold it for over $5000. that's about a 1000 percent markup, that they only got away with, because again, governments were willing to pay extreme amounts of money for them. Talk about consumers getting the shaft.
that, is my real beef with fs. Not only do they fail to really innovate or refine the products, but they sell them with margins that would never fly in the non disability market. Hell, people complain that apple makes between 20 and 40 percent margin on products. Do you think they'd tolerate hundreds of percent in markup?
Don't tell me that FS didn't have the money to invest in the R&D for those products, because clearly they did....
Bottem line, they could and should be doing more, to justify their pricing strategy.
If FS isn't doing things to help the job market, were are the people that are?
I think most times the reason why things are not able to work in the job market, is due to companies not allowing programming, and lots of change and specific type programming.
If you look at the customer service job, much of it is visual, not because it has to be, but because it is easier for sighted persons to view a picture to offer a product.
This is true in the cable company business, and many others.
If you also blame FS for high pricing on their products, you'd need to look at the complete market for products for the disabled, and demand all companies lower the pricing to match the products worth.
This has not, and will not happen. The only products to date we can use without paying more then anyone else that work well are Apple's products. These are limited, but are a step in the right direction.
Sure, FS could probably do better, but until you get on the technical side of the business, you can't really say for sure they are deliberately dragging.
I wrote about FS, because we have data, about FS... We know more about the inner who, what, when, where, and why, about FS than anyone else... I didn't bring up other companies, because we don't know anything about their statistics, profit margins, etc. Thus, I can't factually speak about them... I never indicated that fs has done nothing for blind workers, though I suppose others may have.
Yes, for a sighted person, its easier to look at a diagram. Hell, when I can use them I can for that reason...
Hmmm, it's an interesting perspective. Jaws goes up against Window eyes and NVDA, those being the only other screen readers I am aware of. And I'd say 9 out of 10 blind people who I talk to use JFW. Being that I have taken business courses I can see this from both angles as a consumer and a person who works for FS. JFW has many benefits generally speaking. They are the most advocated screen readers by those who have IT experience and who work for the blind. Rehab agencies pay for people's licenses for JFW. And as a result, FS has a big advantage in the market, and they can control the markets to their advantage. Problem is people are starting to take notice of this and the customers aren't happy, at least here. Unless a lot more people bring it up I don't see it changing, or perhaps if Apple and other screen making producers begin catching the eyes of the JFW customers more frequently.
FR, I disagree,
Most time things don't work in the job market because fundamental CRM programs that are the norm not even talking of home grown programs are not supported or considered by FS as significant enough to spend time working with. SO, rather than paying someone like me to come in at 75 bucks an hour and script and probably rescript within a year they simpley won't offer the individual a job. Again I've written hours and hours of scripting over the past 10 years, so I know very well what JFW can do, and how simple it would be to build thsuch features in to Jaws. It is a very disappointing thing when working with a client, and having to explain to them that because of the screen reader ETC, the job they've interviewed for and perhaps were in line to be hired isn't accessible. Absolutely maybe jaws works great for you and many others as it should, but to dismiss the fact that jaws/FS have not really invested much in to R&D for real features to assist folks who work or want to work you're missing the point.
Trust me, I was there when much ado about all the LVI products, which honestly are fairly low quality compared to the rest of the market, was roled out, and many thought rightly so, that this was going to change the quality of jaws upgrades. I still challenge you to show me an innovative feature since J10.
What I don't understand on this debates is why when we talk about the market and how our access to technology develops, it automatically degenerates to a football debate like we protect our screenreader passionately like a religion.
The truth is that Jaws is, no matter what people say, over priced. And really over priced.
To be honest you ask me if I like Jaws? No I don't. It's heavy, complicated, not user friendly in my opinion and it doesn't make a lot of tasks the way I want.
Guys do you know how much Jaws costs in the majority of European countries including where I live? Over 2000 Euros!
There is simply no excuse.
You pay a laptop for 600 Euros and then you will pay over 2000 for being able to access it? Are you kidding me?
How much it costs a Mac computer? And no I don't have a Mac.
And my question is: I would like to know the percentage of people who scream the wonderful things Freedom Scientific does for blind people, how many of them actually paid Jaws from their own pocket?
I am truly convinced that more than 95 per cent of blind people usage on a Windows computer can be satisfactory done !by NVDA.
You can tell me, NVDA doesn't do this or that. Well does Jaws do everything?
But for me Jaws and Window Eyes they still have their place.
If you need it professionally than buy it! It's fine.
But at Freedom Scientific and GWMicro, they can not sell us the silly idea that they are the big miracolous savers of blind people's education and employment around the world.
With VoiceOver, Talkback, NVDA the times of over priced screenreaders are gone. Thank God.
The good thing though is that both companies allready understood that the business model is changing.
GWConnect is producing licenses for GW Connect and socialize. This for me is really a smart move. You are not forced to buy or purchase adds free license for GW Connect or a subscription for Socialize but you can support this products if you like. They have their place making skype and facebook easier to use.
And you are not ridiculously stowlen if you buy those licenses.
About Freedom Scientific I think they also moved in the right direction.
Someone mentionned here:
"FS has another note taking solution that is in a portible compact hardware device? if so i sure dont know about it...."
Yes and no. You buy a 200 Euros Ipod or a bit more for an Ipad, and you add the price of the new Focus 14 which is in the US 1295 dollars which in my country becomes with taxes a bit less than 1500 Euros. And there you go: you have a note taking solution with much more options than the Packmate and what's the diffrence in price? How much it costs a Packmate compared to an Ipad with a Braille Display?
I know that Freedom Scientific invested a lot in the new Focus Braille displays series because they understood that the Assistive technology companies in the future should help in the accessibility and not provide the full accessibility itself.
So what, with VoiceOver available? If they made a Jaws for Iphone would you buy the Iphone and than 2 times more for the screen reader?
If you think that now adays we use much more mobile devices than the computers, it's a crazy thought isn't it?
I for example have a new Focus 14 from Freedom Scientific and honestly guys it's an amazing product. If you use it with an Iphone it's a winner combination. So yes, I liked the idea that Freedom Scientific provided a nice solution which is not ridiculously over priced.
One of my best friends has a Packmate and myself I have a Focus 14 and an Iphone 5.
Do you want to compare what can I do with a 2000 Euros solution compared to what he can do with a 6000 Euros solution?
So my conclusion is. There is place for everything. Hate doesn't solve anything. If you like a product buy it if you don't like just don't buy it.
When companies will have 50 percent of loss on their sales of over priced products maybe they will reflect about their business model.
The last thing I wanted to say is that I really love and infinitely admire what guys at NVAccess did for blind people.
It doesn't do this and that? Did you ever think what things Nvda would do if we all paid 100 Euros for this screen reader? Yes we can do but the point is that it is not obligatory. I, myself when I have some money left in the end of the month, I sometimes donate to NVDA. It's not much it's true but I support what I really like and I help the product I use everyday in my life without the feeling of being cheated.
If more people would do that, maybe NVDA would be a unbeatable. That's my opinion!
When was text analyzer?
That one really helps skip through documents very quickly and catch the niggly things like running spaces, quotes that weren't closed. I've used that alt windows I thing to jump from inconsistency to inconsistency and caught things the normal spell checkers don't get.
Also the OCR saved my ass when it came to a Coast Guard chart for an exam. Not just it having done OCR on the text but using the JAWS's cursor and a Braille display I was able to infer what was missing because I got positional data, meaning I could tell based on screen location what it probably was. You can see the text as it was laid out on the screen there.
Oh also that Flexible Web can really help in some intranet web applications where you can cause it to immediately jump to places.
Unless I'm mistaken, these are things done since JAWS 10. Or at least have undergone some major improvements.
Oh and there's another one someone showed me, that is their Skim Reader, which you can scan through a document by paragraph, etc., and even have the lines it found put up in their viewer. Again, you don't have to use this very often but with a 400-page spec or some other really long document where you want to get a quick overview first, or look at data in a different way, that feature really does help us, when we need it, I think. Again, just talking from a business sense here.
Here's what I hope will prove a bit of perspective. Not justification, nor name calling, just maybe perspective:
Whether we're talking big companies for us, or big companies for everyone else, there are some understandable complaints with mature products. I know people in the architecture business who use specialized software weighing in at the thousands of dollars, who got some of their features very late like split screens and the like, as late as 2011, and hadn't seen a lot of innovation in a long time. But those companies had been around since the 80s, and what they were told was it was a lot of work to maintain the existing base support before adding features.
I've heard this from some peple using the big time accounting packages too, they've been around awhile and their feature sets are pretty stagnant.
Look at Microsoft office. It does a *lot* more than many even know about, but basically it's remained unchanged in many years except for user interface changes, and now the existence of SharePoint and other collaboration services.
I tend to agree with Wayne about the ebb and flow of these things. My aim is not to enter into the religious dogma on here, just put a bit of perspective.
And I think Big Dog Daddy is probably correct: there's a lot of real intelligent hard-working people in all these companies, and the developers generally do not make the decisions as to what comes and what goes. This despite users' general abhorrence and blame of people in the software development community.
Ironically, Apple is starting to face some of these claims now with the iPhone: people complain it has basically remained unchanged in five years. I would contend they're wrong, but I have to use the new stuff that Apple has put in the devices.
Believe it or not, Android will even face this some day. There's a certain slow-down and perceived stagnation that occurs with product maturity. Anyone besides me remember the problems IBM had in the mid 90s? Anyone else remember OS/2? IBM reinvented itself, is a big player now in the open source support community and funds a lot of advanced research. That takes some real innovation on the business front, not just software innovation, and I honestly don't know how that particular giant pulled that one off.
We'll just have to see with JAWS and the consumer-based competition can't be anything but good for all humans.
It's also difficult because when you read an article like this, you are getting one person's perspective. That's not to say it's wrong. But this is an ex-employee's perspective, obviously a very smart individual. However, it's not the whole picture. I certainly don't have the whole picture.
I think someday this will be an interesting documentary and we'll find out what really happened.
By way of example, I worked for an outsourced company directly involved on several of Netscape's contracts in the mid 90s. People made comments about Netscape the way many on here make comments about FS, in particular Netscape's Enterprise Server solutions vs. Apache and the NT solutions.
Now, were they entirely wrong? Not entirely, and not entirely right either. Fast forward now and any of you who wants to can get a whole picture view by looking up "Download: A History of the Internet," a part of which does an overview of Netscape from Mosaic through Communicator and its ultimate dissolution.
There were things I learned that passed me by while I worked there because I was fully intent on my job.
I'm sure this will happen again someday when people talk about assistive technology in the 90s through the early 21st century.
Even many people inside these companies don't know why one decision gets made over another. There are several decisions I can think of from my Netscape days where I thought we were doing things a certain way for one reason and come to find out the reason was quite different. I was quite a bit younger, and so also was more prone to the temperamental reactionary namecalling which was quite obviously unproductive as part of any intelligent discussion.
The other thing, just like after I left Netscape and made snide comments as to why the dissolution, this person left quite a few years ago. My snide comments were for the most part based on wrong information, or at least incomplete information.
So even if you think you have insider information, you have a snapshot of when you worked there. Also over time memories fade, memories change, certain things stick out more than others, and we paint ourselves in either the best of or worst of lights.
I doubt, for instance, that his supposed ineffectiveness was as ineffective as he thinks it was: he simply has the normal human reaction of feeling like a failure when something didn't work out right, and also hasn't seen whatever trickle-down since then. Remember in his article he hadn't used Windows in five years.
Again, this isn't to paint the author in a bad light, it's to put a little perspective that while it may or may not change anyone's thinking, mine or anyone else's, it will hopefully contribute to intelligent conversation rather than the wide-eyed champing and name-calling of schoolyard kids.
I hope people do less calling of names and mor use of the products that are working for them. This is what affects markets.
Everyone gets the frustration. Just ask anyone blind or sighted who's used Office for 15 years who has their favorite bug in the product that hasn't been addressed. Ask people who work on PBX systems of all god-awful things. Ask people who use software and mainframes at banks, you'll find things they contend with all the time we PC users don't have to. These are all mature product examples.
And I've heard these sorts of accusations before with mature products, and less mature ones like Netscape server solutions was back in the 90s.
Add to that the challenges of being us, and it compounds. Hell, I remember trying to get a job in the late 80s before I'd heard of a screen reader, and didn't get to keep it very long because it started with messages being typed on a typewriter and moved to a computer, and I didn't know then that computers could talk, nor did the employer have any sort of ADA nor was the word accessible even applied to us. So yeah I do get it. We all do. At least those of us who work in other people's environments.
Sad but true, we will probably always face this, except where we can create our own work spaces. Call it midlife cynicism if you want, but I don't think I'm entirely wrong in this.
Not excusing anything, just a little perspective.
On the technical, I have to agree they've not don't anything different sense J10, but as stated have kept up decently.
Yes, as to the job market, it is a problem, and again I agree, but I don't feel this can be blamed on FS alone, nor is it something I believe they ignore.
We should be blaming these same Government organizations, and big businesses for using software that isn’t compatible. We should be mad with them, because many times the software choices made are made for profit reasons, not accessibility reasons.
Many times the accessible software programs would work just as well, but they aren’t used.
They buy and use products due to being lobbied just the same, if that is what FS does.
We should be angry they don’t work with screen reader vendors to make sure things can work.
FS have opened up scripting for anyone willing to try it, so that to me is a point, they have not continued to keep it closed, and in house.
I guess my stance is when we as blind consumers try to blame FS for all that isn't right in the screen reader business. We dislike when a company gains a profit selling us products, when that is exactly why companies are in business, like everyone else.
I have a wish list of things I'd love to see, but I have 2 choices. I can wish, or I can put a company together, deal with all the responsibility, and the failure aspects or running a company to try to achieve my list.
I can't blame FS for having a product many consumers like, purchase, and continue to purchase.
FS, believe it or not, does not have any mind controlling capabilities, and these Government, and any other organizations can surely shop another place, or put the funding together to open another company.
It is like blaming Mercedes Benz, Toyota, and Apple, for having products people buy lots of, even though they don't have all the innovations available, and sometimes release products that are only a little better or lacking in some area.
Any and all business could do things better in a consumers opinion, but that consumer doesn’t have to shop that product.
If in the blinds case, you are given the program, how can you complain when the program does get your foot in the door, and makes your life that much better?
I guess even a complaint is valid, but at a point it gets ridiculous when we say we are being ripped off, miss used, and other things by this monster company.
You don’t want your organization to buy FS products, put something together showing them were they money could be better spent, and how that money spent will be better for you if they purchase a competing brand.
I should also add that in trials, witness testimony is usually the least reliable. My witness testimony of Netscape would have certainly been very unreliable.
This especially happens when time passes, memories fade, perspectives and ideals change.
Not only that, but anything we don't directly know, we fill in the gaps mentally and infer. Happens all the time, whether it's kids' belief that mom and dad's divorce is their fault, or some high level manager believing they were less effective than they should have been, or some junior developer believing their ideas don't seem to account for much.
Let me take this outside software and this discussion to illustrate:
When you were a kid, did your parents or someone get you some sort of ice cream treat from the Dairy Queen like those Dilly Bar things? Often during summer, often on the way back from tromping around in the woods or swimming at the lake? Then you go get one of those as an adult, you hadn't thought of it in years, and come to find out, that bar you thought was so *HUGE*! as a kid you now find to be quite small? Your first inclination is to say like the old folks: "They just don't make 'em like they used to."
But you could now go online and research and find out the company that makes those has not changed the size / ounces / proportions in years. But your mind playing tricks on you plus our propensity to assume we're being jipped does the pseudo math for us.
I'm not saying it's wrong, probably protected our evolutionary ancestors from having their precious food stores raided. It's vestigial like xenophobia, but that doesn't make it a reliable source of information.
I remember the world of what we call access technology when it was JAWS 1, JAWS being the program I happened to find and use. It was so revolutionary then, the idea that I could in real-time read something at the same time as my sighted peers, that every single new thing they did felt absolutely enormous. Almost like some documentaries talk about the life of a recently freed slave.
In the PC space, it's been awhile since I've had any revolution quite like that. That's really really tough to beat.
The iPhone did it, because I could separate and sort groceries I had not bought and so didn't know what was what. It's still pretty spotty but so so much better than not doing it at all.
So it's really hard for me to say with clarity whether I'm seeing stagnation or that initial wow factor was so incredibly powerful it's just really hard to beat?
You all who are in school would cry and carry on if you had to use your JAWS Cursor all day long. But for me when this came out, it meant not only being able to read things, but being able to positionally look at things relative to where they actually are. You see, in Braille, they reformat books to a very linear format and so you lose all that relational data on transcription. Probably meaningless jumbo to some of you. I can't expect you to understand anymore than I can expect my daughter to understand what life was like before the Internet, or for me to understand what life was like before racial integration, interstate highways and other things that have radically changed our lives.
The iPhone's wow factor, which is still pretty big right now, is gonna wear off too.
And there will come another huge wow factor when we can be guided independent of cane or dog and not search for a chair. that'll be a huge wow factor, but it too will wear off, and the products will mature and stagnate while they work endlessly to support a huge list of features, make enhancements that affect certain key groups of users but others don't even know about. It's the way things appear to work.
I say all this knowing what it's like to live through a wow factor like that, well two, including the iPhone, whose wow factor hasn't yet truly worn off.
Anyway enough from me, and again I'm hoping this adds to perspective / intelligent conversation and not screen reader dogma. I don't particularly care which spaghetti monster you hail to, if any, or if you're like me and just doing the best you can with what you got and keeping your eyes open for improvements.
We Should blame business for using the most basic packages like ACT and quicken and Goldmind? These products have been around for 20 years, and I just contend that attention needs to be given to active development toward working with these MFR's and insuring more is done to make them accessible to screen reading user. Most companies and government agencies are no longer willing to use scripting as a method of access. Why, because an upgrade to the software or an update to jaws itself, and scripts are broken. Leo, I'm not arguing that some folks find features such as text analyze or schem reader useful, but to the masses, they really don't matter, and under XP they were so video and DCM specific that often they didn't work anyhow.
I remember some of us asking for years for the ability to select between markers. This finally got in in jaws 12 for MS word only, and now in 14, it was worked in to internet explorer. What's the bet that this could have actually been introduced back in j12. Very likely, but instead it got held on to as a later "feature"!
I agree that some of the problem is the wow factor, in that Jaws gave us so much between 3.2 and 8.0 but as someone who uses jaws for so many different tasks and see so many different needs, I certainly see areas where effort needs given. I think the point of the original article was there are not enough blind folks in the development process at fs, any longer to insure the voice of the actual customer base is being heard!
Leo, you're making some very good points.
Its true, my posts are probably filled with a bit more hate than strictly necessary. that's been one thing i've thought about jaws for a long time, as a mature product, i'm sure a big part of the problem is digging threw all the old code, resources and the like to properly get new features and additions tu run at all.
I also agree with BGD, most of those features often didn't run at all on most windows xp machines I used, so I never really had the ability to test them, and get to grips. Jaws on xp requires so many things to work properly to have the perfect experience, and during my schooling days, people were unwilling to allow a windows seven machine on the network, with full access to the student fileshares, etc. I also agree with your points about scripting, what you're saying aligns nicely with what most other consultants are saying. Hell, in the case of some government positions I know of, they'd rather build a barebones web interface that only allowes the blind user to do 20 percent of what the sighted user in the custom app can, rather than pay to get it scripted every time they make changes.
While scripting is a great thing for some use cases, its not the end all, be all.
blaiming corporations for using the gold standard products sounds about as logical as blaming government agencies for using JFW. Honestly, most of those big name products are used for the same reason everyone uses office. Its the standard, everyone has it, everyone uses it. files will open when you send them to another employee or customer.
Again, i'm not begrudging FS their profits, i'm begrudging them the way they choose to spend the money, and the resulting uh, features, we get.
People working on the product not being able to have any say in the feature set was one big complaint that the article addressed. Who knows, maybe things are starting to open up at FS. Only time will tell.
I wouldn't be shocked if NVDA one day faces similar problems. But just as pro products tend to languish, and then make big jumps, I think a lot of it ultimately comes back to complacent customers that have no other real solutions, and executives choosing stability over innovation. Its true, we don't know the hole story, and while that would be nice, I doubt it would ever be told, or told from an honest perspective. Why after all would FS want to risk turning over the apple cart before they've made delivery? Taking the more dangerous yet quicker road may lead to customer loyalty and respect, but they may lose a good deal of apples along the way.
when you spoke of an Ipod with 14 cell focus, that isn't what i was talking about.
I was under the impression that a new note taking solution came out to replace the PAC Mate.
Just other methods to get it done. Not the exact same machine.
ah ok, i figured that's what she may have meant.
Again Big Dog Daddy knows more of the specifics than I do here, but I imagine problems with software like Act and Goldmine or Great Plains is not the base software but the individual databases set up and the labels / UI constructs the designer chooses to use.
There are really nicely written VB applications which every reader I personally know of supports really well. Then there are the totally illogically laid-out VB applications that look like someone was on a combination acid trip / Bad Day on Design Star . The association between label and control, the general flow and a ton of other factors were so poorly done that it was near impossible to use with a reader. Logically so since that reader couldn't tell what label belonged to what control. It's easy to lift and plop controls on a canvas in a UI and fool sighted people - until they have to go make sense out of the code.
But the important thing to understand about a lot of these packages like Act and Goldmine is they are environments, not just programs. The front-end applications to the user are the databases that user uses, which means for better or worse the designer has to have supported it.
Anyone who has ever written Office VBA script to support automation in an office setting knows just how much an environment - not just a program - Office actually is. Most of these huge packages are like this.
Again, not justifying FS or any other reader company for this. Not even contending the author of the article is technically wrong.
But if FS today said they fully supported Project X large package, the first thing company y is going to do is install their custom database or front-end which is often terribly written, and again, a reader won't know to what each label belongs because it's not implicitly set up in a logical way, and the users will feel justifiably upset. I think this is a very complicated issue that sadly affects a lot of human beings' livelihoods, something many of us know all too well. Certainly people like Big Dog Daddy could write several volumes on this for sure.
The challenge with any sort of front-end scripting, be it something like Window Eyes or JAWS, or NVDA Add-Ons, or Greasemonkey scripts in Firefox, is you have two options: Use data directly from the application, such as relationships, obviously the most stable option. But when that is poorly done in the examples I mentioned earlier, I imagine a reader has to scrape. I've done some of this for myself and it's awful at times: you're trying to make the most intelligent guess as to what is least likely to change in the environment and what you can use.
For a non-blind example, Facebook did some roll-out recently and half my Facebook followers set off an alarm because all their greasemonkey scripts that were set up to ignore ads stopped working. This is because those scripts weren't talking to the Facebook API, something I was ridiculed for pointing out, and somewhat justifiably. The justification? Facebook's API for some of that stuff is, or was, terrible, and difficult to code around. in fact they had to scrape from the web pages themselves, sort of like Research It in JAWS has to.
I'm not minimizing what we users of NVDA or JAWS or name your reader have to go through, by comparing it to getting rid of Facebook ads. In fact, any add-on or script or what have you has to decide a lot more, and do a lot more and often with a hell of a lot less, when it comes to access for us.
So if you have an environment whose design is such that the labels to controls relationships are always implicit no matter what some sad sack of a designer does for a front end to customer service or what have you, you could code the most reliable solution in the world to read it.
Somebody please show me one single such environment that makes these compensations for bad front-end development.
The problem seems to be a lot wider than just one company and I've heard similar complaints about customizing Window Eyes in these environments. Window Eyes being nearly the same price, from what I've been told.
I don't know about NVDA as its flat review is not the same as the screen scraping of other products that I have at least run into, though Big dog Daddy would be a better expert on that.
Sadly, this leaves us with people like Big dog Daddy scrambling for solutions for users, all too often having to shim something together or not at all, it leaves developers at these screen reader companies trying to figure out new ways to work around old problems - never something people can appreciate or understand, and this I think is understandable. It leaves other groups trying to apply standards to at least web pages, though desktop environments haven't seen any real universal standards so every reader will presumably have to get bigger and bigger trying to work around any number of red herrings and bad algorithms.
Where this leaves executives, I have no idea, I leave that to them and people like this gentleman who wrote the article.
It's too bad that the youngers on here who are so champing and the bit and activist against companies have yet to use all that pent-up energy to help us come up with some way to implement new solutions. Even if they're not developers they could work with companies to improve the systems they have. But that means having something other than a third-grade knowledge of what's going on: these companies can't just drop huge environments. They can't justify that sort of thing to investors. If your young eyes just glazed over at the thought of investors, a basic business economics course would be a start: many of these investors are your parents having put money away to pay for your college education.
But the article itself, plus Big Dog Daddy's responses, are all moving, to any human being with a beating heart. If I had not been personally moved by all this, I would have been left to wonder at my own personal psychopathy. These are very real problems that require very real solutions. Most people don't get to pick their work environment.
I'll give you one non-blind example: my wife's employer switched time clocks, even teachers like her there have to use a time clock. It's written in Lotus Notes, and it's terrible. She came home and asked me about it, which of course I didn't know. I've written a bit of Lotus Script here and there but am no Lotus Notes expert. But even a Lotus Notes Expert can't know how a particular time clock written in Lotus Notes environment is going to work. It had a lot of errors, and if she'd been blind using it, my bet the reader would probably not have known what to relate to who. And she wouldn't have been able to tell what errors were her reader and which were the time clock.
This is a very complicated problem, and I'm not sure how it's going to get solved. Obviously we have a lot of bright minds in all the companies working on it plus consultants like Big Dog Daddy. But there's a lot of opposition from either name-calling kids or shoddy front-end developers who design extensions / databases / front ends that don't make a lot of sense to a human, let alone a reader.
Remember the best environment for any third party program to bridge to is going to be one where the relationships are well defined. Imagine you're in a group conversation and all day you have no idea who is talking to whom, what comment is directed at whom. Even we humans with arguably very sophisticated software on board have trouble with this. So certainly a reader is going to struggle here and often get it wrong, or be designed in an environment based on analysis of that environment, not based on what that environment is directly communicating.
Again, not justification, but hopefully perspective no matter what reader we're talking about. I don't know what the answer really is. I wish I did. If I did, it would be criminal for me not to implement it somehow.
In terms of Storming's comment about stability over innovation, I an see this: you see how in previous years Open Office was said to have done a lot of innovating but was not stable.
Problem was in a work environment stability is absolutely key and no I.T. professional will sign off on software that crashes a lot. I imagine there is competition in the reader space for who is the most stable. I've seen it some on here.
Sad but true: Android has innovated beyond the iPhone and also is decidedly less stable. The daughter's new Galaxy Note 2 is pretty stable but she's also used to the types of freezes and crashes that you iPhone users aren't used to. Her response: "Oh, Dad, these phones always do that."
So innovators inevitably get creamed for instability and stable, so-called rock-solid products get blamed for innovation. How this plays out in the reader space I don't know.
But I generally see more parallels than not from other spaces.
This is an interesting thread. I don't get people who passionately hate software. I think that's weird. If you ask them why they hate it you'll probably get some really technical answer normal people wouldn't understand.
I have never heard of people not being able to get a job because of Jaws not being good enough. I'd be surprised if there weren't other reasons such as the employer not able or willing to adjust, the job requiring skills that blind people don't have, etc.
I think the OCR thing is an innovation and I have found it useful I don't think it is at an ideal standard, but it is better than not having anything.
I have found The Vocaliser voices are very useful for people who aren't used to speech technology. They seem to prefer it to Elequence (what I use).
Once upon a time Jaws couldn't be used with Firefox but now it can.
Yes there are programmes like Spotify Jaws doesn't work well with, and yes I would prefer Spotify to be fully accessible, but I am glad that at least Jaws works well enough for me to use Spotify.
Onto the pricing issue. Some blind people don't want to have to pay for anything. They expect everything for nothing. People who expect everything for nothing shouldn't be allowed to have anything. People who don't think they should have to pay any price should have to pay the ultimate price. I know there are sighted people like this too, but we are talking about Jaws, a product for the blind, so that is why I am focusing on the blind.
That been said, I think Jaws prices have been so high for so long because nobody has been able to create a screenreader that is as good as or better than Jaws and sell it at a cheaper price. If Jaws had a rival and the rival was geting better and better, Jaws would have to improve their product and price.
For me, Jaws is a helpful product that enables me to do most of what I want to do on the computer.
Spotify isn't accessible even on an iDevice. If you look on Freedom's page you'll find a set of scripts for it however that make it work beautiful.
I use these scripts for iTunes, not really necessary anymore, if you run Jaws 11,and up, and Rhapsody. Rhapsody's client is also not accessible at all without the scripts.
Just thought I'd tell you that.
Saying that a product is shamefully overpriced doesn't mean that we are people who don't want to pay for anything!
I in fact pay for NVDA. And also I paid for my I devices where by the way the screenreader was included on the price.
I don't care about Jaws. They can sell it at 5000 dollars if they want as long as there are people who buy it.
But charging more than 2000 Euros for a screenreader is overpricing a product which doesn't worth it no matter how much people love it.
If every single blind person in the world who uses Jaws paid for it from their own pocket, maybe there would be much more people screaming at Freedom Scientific for their price policy!
If it is true what I heard on Serotek's podcasts that now with their big loss in Jaws sales, maybe they will start thinking about making a product for clients and not for gouvernmental agencies!
I heard that GWMicro also lost a lot in Window-Eyes sales! Is it a sign the world is changing?
Again I don't mind to pay for a product. I simply don't accept being cheated!
How do you know you are cheated?
If you buy any other product you pay the price, but you never go study the investment that might have gone in to developing that product.
Maybe they pay to much for the development, because they aren't good at stream lining cost?
If you buy a Mercedes, it is expensive. You could buy 2 fords or even 3 for the same money, so are you being cheated by Mercedes?
I personally will not suffer if fs kicks the bucket. I have n v d a.
I know I am cheated because I can have a decent computer for 500 Euros and according to them for me to be able to access to it I have to pay a product that costs 4 times mor!
Remember that NVDA is only around since 2006 if my memory is correct.
With VoiceOver and NVDA on the market, selling a screenreader for such money is cheating!
It might not be your opinion but it's mine. it's what I think and that's it!
You mean, a Mercedes is expensive so you pay the money for it. That's right but if you have another car which allmost makes the same thing and costs 2000 times less maybe Mercedes would be cheating!
And as I said, for me this is a stealing asking such prices.
I don't care about myself. My money goes to where I feel it's worth it.
But maybe you should care about such prices because often who buys such products is often the governements and which money do they use? The tax payers money so yes I care about their price.
And don't tell me that all the sales from Jaws to public institutions or purchases made with public money around the world couldn't be replaced for better usage of the public money. If you think that Jaws costs the same price of a Braille display maybe the public money could be better used for something else.
Of course in certain cases certain applications only work with Jaws and in those cases I don't discuss! It's the market but it's not surely the case for all of them!
You mentioned:
"If you buy any other product you pay the price, but you never go study the investment that might have gone in to developing that product."
So what explains their really agressive pricing strategy of their new Focus braille display series?
New Focus 40, 30 percent smaller than the previous one, an amazing quiet keyboard, lighter etc etc.
What is the difrence of price between the old Focus 40 Blue and the new one? Difrence 0. The price remains the same.
Does it mean zero investment in the product?
New Focus 14. A totally new braille display that in the first year of sails explodes the opponents in the same category in quolity in price. What does it mean? Does it mean that because it is cheaper it means they invested less than the other companies. No.
What it means is that they understood the market and they understood where the market goes and they were very clever in it.
I don't believe that developing Jaws costs that much more than braille displays.
According to me the Jaws price was thought because they know where they will sell it, to who they will sell it and how they will sell it! And by the way they also know for how much they will sell it. lol
To Senior: I don't think that JAWS is priced the way it is because it's the best ever and the only reason it's not cheaper is because of lack of competition. Yes, JAWS is, I suppose, the "top" screen reader, at least in some parts of the world, but that may be due to a few things, such as the fact that it has been around a long time, and is the screen reader most frequently taught. When I was learning to use a computer, I was given JAWS as an automatic, and not even told about alternatives like NVDA, or window eyes. So no matter how good the competition can get, JAWS, like microsoft, has a strangle hold on the market, though that may change in future if they don't do anything spectacular really soon.
That being said, while I do think that JAWS is overpriced for what it does, I respect the product and quite like it. I like NVDA quite a lot, but it doesn't do quite everything I need it to, so until it does, JAWS will be my main screen reader. The price is just something I'll have to live with.
Meglet said basically what I was thinking. Other screenreaders are innovative and creative and coming up fast on Jaws, but Jaws is still pretty much top dog. I notice no one's even mentioned poor Hal. Heh. Voice-over is kind of a niche thing because it's only Apple-based, while some other screenreaders (most actually) can tackle both Windows and Unix/Linux environments.
In any case, I do feel the price is high. I think FS at this point could bear to cut the price in half and get away with it without completely tanking. But the simple fact is this. They don't have to do that and, because they own Jaws, it's up to them. I wonder if you put up a huge issue if you go to a restaurant and are charged fifteen dollars for a good spaghetti dinner when you could have bought and made the same thing for maybe half the price Or what about a concert? You pay fifty or sixty bucks to sit in a usually uncomfortable seat and listen to your favourite band wail for three hours...you and thirty thousand others. At fifty bucks a head and twenty thousand in a stadium, that's a cool million. The stadium, the personnel, the roadies all need their cut, but when you figure that band might be doing a twenty-city tour at venues sometimes bigger than yours, that's an insane amount of money, and concerts are arguably a lot more useless than Jaws. So, while I understand your anger about Jaws being high-priced, I sure hope you don't go to concerts or otherwise throw your money away.
Incidentally, the cost of Jaws in Canada and the U.S. is somewhere between twelve hundred and fourteen hundred dollars I believe. If you're being charged two thousand euros, that's a whole different kettle of fish, and is related to the country you're living in. I personally don't get why there should be such a huge markup, I'll give ya that...but the normal price for Jaws in the country it was made in is not nearly that high. If my math's right, two thousand euros is fairly close to four thousand dollars. That's brutal.
TO post 40, I have no problem with spotify and use it daily on an iphone 5. In fact with out it, my travel time would be nuts! I've used it now since it first came to the states.
I am currently giving the latest NVDA a run to see how I can use it on a daly bases if it can do what I need it to do I am probly done with jaws. Go see my board on the rant board its probly a dumb reason but seriously FS pissed me off. bad!.
I have not triedspotify on my iPhone. My information comes from the website that deals with apps for the blind.
They are lobbying them now to get it fixed, because they say it is not completely accessible.
Sometimes I've learned skill makes for better accessibility, if you understand me.
Now, as to developmentand paying a price for a product, I think Jaws keeps it price, so they can stay stable. The price, in the US has not changed in many years, but other companies need to change pricing from time to time on a product.
I don't waste money, but for me Jaws, is a value in my budget as I see it. I'd love it cheaper, but I've not studied what it cost to keep it afloat, and that is my point.
If I go about decideing companies should be cheaper on a product, I need some concrete reasons why over, well other people make other product cheaper.
There is a saying, you pay for what you get. You buy a Mercedes, and a Ford, there is a marketly different experience.
I happen to think Mercedes should be cheaper too. Smile. I could own the top of the line model if so without paying over my budget.
But, again, as consumers, we have the right to decide what products we think are over priced, and other issues. They think is, we can't brow beat a company unless we've got a solution. I personal don't, like the product, so buy it. Freedom Scientific is just like any other company. They are not specific, because they make products for us, is my point.
In response to Meglet, I do think Jaws should be cheaper. It is great that alternatives to Jaws are being developed. However, until they are equal to Jaws in terms of ability, I don't think FS will address the price issue. If other screenreaders start to become better than Jaws, FS will have to bring prices down and fight harder to get their product back in the lead. For the blind, this will mean better products at better prices.
When I wrote about people who don't want to pay for anything, I didn't mean people who have bought different products to Jaws; I meant people who basically think they are entitled to screenreaders and shouldn't have to pay for them.
The Only Spotify scripts I tried were from Spotify Blind, and I found using Spotify easier without them so they were uninstalled. If there are any on the Jaws website please somebody post a link to them.
Wayne, JAWS is not equal to a Mercedes. A Mercedes, as many would agree, is a luxury. A screen reader, for many people is far from a luxury. It is a must if you want to work in most types of jobs nowadays, and that's not even mentioning personal use. Computers are so ubiquitous that comparing JAWS to an overpriced luxury like a Mercedes doesn't quite work, in my view at least.
Meglet, I believe the comparison may have been Ford to Mercedes...serviceable, perfectly good car to luxury car which has more bells and whistles. Your Ford is NVDA, say, since it does a lot of things but not absolutely everything. Your Mercedes is Jaws, since it does a bit more but has a much higher price tag. At least that's how I took it.
I do agree, however, that the comparison is a little sketchy, because cars in general are arguably not necessities, and a Mercedes is -definitely not within the budget of the average person. It's sort of a different mindset, so on that angle I see what you're saying.
I've never gone into a blow-by-blow of what FS is actually paying out for Jaws (as in, how many units have to be sold at current prices for them to break even), but every company is entitled to a margin of profit.
Exactly SF. I am just using it as a comparison.
Because Jaws, or any other screen reader is a necessity for us, is why organizations give it to many. These ortanizations, when doing so, give the best product available, and pay the price.
In America, and many other countries, Jaws, Windows Eyes, are available free to start for many users, so you just have to keep up after the support goes away.
Currently, Jaws is the best, and when and if that changes it will be a good thing.
Some say, well, when I learned to use a computer, Jaws was the first thing given me, so that is what I had. I respect that, but don't you have a mind, and after you learn your computer wonder if maybe, just possible something else might be available?
No one twist your arm and makes you stay with Jaws unless they are paying.
Like Mercedes, Jaws has great advertising, gets the job done, so folks pay!
In my opinion, the iPhone gets the job done, has great advertising, so I paid! Damn thing should be free, but. Smile.
The law is, if you can afford it, you can have it, if not you must do without, but that isn't a law Freedom Scientific wrote, now is it?
Let me add. To all of you that claim Jaws cost to much, how much do you think it should cost?
Tell me why as well?
Oh, and last. Meglet, you say Jaws is not a luxury, it is a necessity. Tell me how that is so?
I know blind people that don't even have, nor use a computer. Because of reasons, they can't afford one. They don't have internet either, and live just fine.
No, they can't do what you can do, but you have a Mercedes, so you can roll at 100 MPH and not even notice it. They've got to ride a mule. Smile.
Okay, Wayne, here we go...
Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, I apologize for completely missing your point. That's all on me; thank you, Shepherdwolf, for pointing that out.
Second: okay, so JAWS may not be a necessity. Food is a necessity, a screen reader (or indeed a computer) is not. But how many people do you know who don't ever ever ever use computers in their job? my entire job revolves around a computer and a phone, and if that computer were inaccessible, I'd not be hired, plain and simple. In fact, every single person in my building uses a computer on a daily basis, even if their actual job title is an O and M instructor or an independent living skills specialist or what-have-you. They still have to electronically put in their hours, file reports, describe visits, keep track of announcements via email, etc. etc. Another example: at my university (and indeed at most of the ones in Canada that I know of) a lot of the material is stored on a website called blackboard. Assignments are often submitted by email or through this special web portal. Often, the library's resources are much more vast if you go online. You have access to better research tools; you can catch up on notes or readings; sometimes, professors would not even bother to announce which readings you'd have to read before next class as we are supposed to check the website. Exams are even posted online sometimes. How on earth could I operate smoothly within this university if I couldn't even use a computer? So no, computers may not be needed to live, but if you can't use one, you're going to have a harder time of life in general, at least in developed nations. How often are you simply given a website with no easy-to-find phone number to use instead? How often are you confronted with forms that are only available online? How often is it easier and more convenient to look things up on google rather than having to order braille books or scan them (without using a computer) in order to read them? I think you get my drift here.
Third, I was the one who pointed out that JAWS is on top because often it's the first thing you're given. I was shown JAWS and not informed about other screen readers. Yes, thank you, I do have a mind, and yes I later discovered other screen readers, but I had to become familiar with using computers before i could try other readers, and by then I was so comfortable with JAWS that switching seemed like a bigger deal. Just like many people find switching from a PC to a mac a bit challenging for awhile, switching from JAWS to NVDA is going to be a bit of a challenge. I did it, and it was fine, but it was still a learning curve. So I really don't think that you can say that screen readers are on the same level as a car.
Hope that better explains my position.
Meglet, I don't think Wayne was disputing that computers are indeed part of most people's lives. what he was saying, is that some people truly don't know how to use them. and, although he didn't say this, I'd argue that in those particular cases, it'd be much more of a hastle to try and teach said people how to use a computer, much less a screen reader, if they happened to be blind.
sorry for getting a little off topic. just had to point that out.
Meglet, I need no apology. We are having a discussion. Jump me! Smile.
Now, I totally agree with you as Chelsea said, but computers nor screen readers are necessities.
I even know several sited persons that don’t use one, nor have one. In many of these cases, as to blind persons, they can’t afford one. Some haven’t taken the time to learn how to even use one, just like some can’t read braille.
Now, why they can’t afford one has several reasons attached to it, but they live okay.
Some can actually afford them and Jaws if they’d budget better, so saying that means that Jaws, while expensive, it not unobtainable for many, and as you pointed out a great useful and even necessary item.
You and I happen to live in countries that provide these thing free to the person that is willing to do something for themselves, even if that something is reading email, and general life dealings, but some people don’t want to learn, and in many countries, if your family doesn’t have the money you don’t get these things.
Now, that Mercedes is wonderful to have. You have never driven, so you don’t understand how it feels to drive a good car. These same people without computers have no idea what could and would be available to them if they had. Smile.
Good stuff sometimes cost good money, and if you have, well you have baby!
I meant to type aren't necessities, but you got me I think.
The funny part about all this, Wayne, is that we actually agree for the most part. lol I certainly don't want to jump anyone. And you're absolutely right: good product will mean good money. Thanks for posting, Chelsea.
can I quickly interject on one issue here. We Any price that we postulate for jaws is going to be pulling numbers out of our special places, because we do not know the overheads, the taxation issues, the marketing costs and what it takes to higher good programers for a niche market. Where FS is, IMHO, a bit ove rthe top is regarding the 2000 euro price tag cited above. I can confirm that in non-English-speaking countries jaws price increases substantially! In engliahd, a jaws pro licences is 800 quid I believe, in France, its double that or more. This cannot be because of translation...and frankly charging a user more because of the language they speak smacks of discriminatory pricing anyway. But in the internet age, that kind of markup just because of the country of sale is insane particularly in EEC countries which are tax-neutral on such issues. So as to euro pricing, yes, jaws is way, way overdone. I would even go so far as to argue that fs should simply deal with customers direct, cutting out must resale operations, staffing at the local level only with tech support specialists fluent in the local language ETC.
But that's just me
FS does deal with customers direct. Even international ones. Check the website. You might save some money cutting the middle man out.
yes, but the website is exclusively in English.
Jaws translates websites does it not?
They offer several languages Jaws can run in do they not?
Next, if it doesn't, Freedom Scientific is not the only one guilty of this language issue.
This website right here for example. Smile.
I guess, if a customer wishes to find fault, they'll find fault, but for my money, experience, and fairmess, Freedom Scientific has, and does, a decent job.
Not perfect, but reasonable.
firstly, no, jaws does not translate websites, lol.
Secondly, no, it does not offer several languages *at the same cost* at the original product. That is reprehensible.
Anyway, the guy wrote a follow up article, so I thought I'd post it:
http://chrishofstader.com/screen-reader-failure-innovation-deterioration-despair/
Definitely worth a read, and for those that didn't read the first one, you should read that one first. Out of order is fine, but reading them chronologically gives this new article a ton of context.
I do know it cost more if you get say the German version.
I assumed that these versions would be in the language you purchased.
When I go to a non English website, my Jaws switches to that language. This feature can be turned on or off, so I assumed this was so for other language versions.
When installing a program, many times I am given a choice of instalation language, and if I choose one, Jaws speaks in that language. How accurate it is, I have no idea, because I don't speak the language it is speaking.
I can even add languages to my current English copy.
Now, as to pricing, again, I'd assume that having a complete program that was written in English translated to another language would have to have extra cost.
You'd need technical staff that were able to do the technical as well as speak the language both English, and whatever, the complete program was translated to.
It always interests me when people say that JAWS is not overpriced.
If we accept that JAWS is the best screen reader (actually I'm not sure it is), then we're basically saying that it is acceptable for blind people to be charged $1,000+ to have the same access to a Windows computer as a sighted person.
Now I know the well rehearsed argument as to why JAWS is so expensive: They have a comparatively small customer base, and because of the constant development needed, the fact that it is a low volume product in sales terms needs it needs to carry a high price if it is to be sustainable.
However, FS and the other traditional screen reader manufacturers could flip their business models on their heads and make screen readers a high volume, low price product as Apple have done with Voiceover. Voiceover obviously isn't free because Apple are employing people to develop it and need to recoup those costs, but instead of selling it for a high price to a limited number of blind people, they are effectively charging everyone who buys a Mac or an iOS device a much smaller amount of money for it. So instead of FS selling 1,000 copies of JAWS at $1,000 each, they should look to have it included with new computers and sell 1,000,000 copies for $1 each.
Now obviously this is easier for Apple because they control their screen reader, their oS and their hardware, but it shouldn't be insurmountable for screen reader manufacturers to get their products included in new computers meaning that the cost of a screen reader would be both very low and hidden. I suspect that this would need to be via a tie-up with hardware manufacturers rather than Microsoft if law suits are to be avoided.
I also believe that such arrangements would help to stimulate innovation. Currently, users of screen readers such as JAWS and Window-eyes are unlikely to switch because of the amount of money they or their agencies have invested in buying their product and keeping it up-to-date. Some are also inclined to purchase the regular updates even if they don't want the new features for fear of features being included in subsequent versions that they do want, and the cost to upgrade from a version several releases out of date being too expensive. In addition, FS is receiving annual income for upgrades meaning that it may understandably be tempted to hold back features for release in subsequent years, which is a perfectly sound commercial decision given the pricing model.
Under my scenario, screen reader manufacturers would need to constantly innovate to keep the contract with which ever computer or OS provider they had tied in with.
If that pricing structure is a bit too radical, then selling JAWS as a subscription service might help a bit. The incentive to innovate and make new features available as soon as possible would still be there, as customers could switch without the fear of the sunk costs involved in purchasing it at the minute.
I like some of your ideas, especially the subscription service.
I don't know if Jaws is not to expensive, because, as I've stated I have no model to compare it to.
The reason GW and FS would have issues including the screen reader in to a windows computer, is because so many manufactors build them, not like Apple. If a PC was not able to run without a screen reader, like it can't an OS, I think many might agree, but as it stands no, because they'd need to raise the prices just to include a program that wasn't necessary.
The programs you normally get with a PC that are worth anything, raise the price and are options, not must haves.
This is why an Apple computer cost so much more, because you are made to take things with it.
I wonder, would the public embrace higher cost, so that all PC's were accessible without a law to make them?
the subscription idea is not new. In fact, GWMicro Window Eyes have been doing so for years with $39 for a month, with 36 months contract. In this 36 months, you can have unlimited upgrade, as long as withint your contract. This means, if you say, buying window 7.5 last september, and window eyes 9 release in end of 2014, you can still upgrade to that without any extra cost.
If you look at major company like Adobe CS, (Creative Sweet) already do so since their CS6. Adobe goes so far as distroying all their box units, and now switching all to either monthly subscription or yearly subscription. This also mean, if a designer, who may need the software for 6 month, only pay 6 month worth of the license instead of the whole software. Soon after, Microsoft office follows the same principle with office 365. If you look what they have done with their office line, you get ther whole office sweet under office 365 with a yearly subscription, and the same product, if you do purchase the box unit, again, its double the price or more.
In many way, Freedom Scientific business strategy is still in the early 2000s, where, internet at that time was not as supirial as now, where there's no NVDA, with the thought that they can kill Saratec and of course, maybe, they never thought that Apple Voiceover could be as supirial and as advance as it is now.
By the way, Jaws does not translate any website for you. In fact, what you thought jaws reading in other language, it is just eliquen attempt to read or pronounce as it thought it does.
Again, compare to Voiceover, as a multilingual user, i have about 5 different language voices install on my system, ones Voiceover come contact with those language, it will read in that language, using that language voice. E.G. i can read and reckonize a facebook post that is written in chinese using voiceover in chinese voice without change anything or doing anything.
Not only that, Voiceover does not crash on me, like Jaws does at time, when come to forign language/simbles. And, i do not pay a cen more than the person next door who uses Mac.
So, Again, Forereel, your arguement does not stand.
I was under the impression that JAWS has language detection, which means that, if you're using eloquence as your chosen voice, JAWS will switch languages once it encounters a change, provided that language is supported. I have seen eloquence switch between English and French very smoothly, but it's not an actual translation feature, it's just a shift to a different language in eloquence. I imagine if you had multiple languages installed for vocalizer voices, the same thing would happen, though I haven't tested this.
Exactly.
Now when you buy an Apple, you don't pay more than anyone elxe, but you do pay a premium price.
As I have stated, Apple can do this, because Apple is the only company building and selling Apple products.
If Microsoft sold PC's only, than maybe we could have a working screen reader like Apple.
The other issue with that seems to be that Voice Over is limited in many ways as to its application.
Jaws is not, nor Windows.
Sure, I'd love to see my PC come already set, but I don't think the public or company groups will agree.
Hi Wayne,
I'm not sure if the public would have a problem with paying for software that they didn't use in order for a PC to be accessible, not least because it wouldn't be presented that way. If you think about it, individuals pay for features in all sorts of products that they never use because they buy things off-the-shelf, rather than commissioning them to their own specifications. Do you use every program on your washing machine, every setting of your oven, every recording facility of your TV recorder/set top box? MOst people won't, but they've still paid for them.
Most accessibility improvements are funded in charging everyone a little bit: Blind people don't pay a levy on their municipal taxes to have accessible road crossings, an additional charge on their bank accounts to have talking ATMs or extra on their bill at Olive Garden to have a Braille menu.
There are various reasons why Apple computers are more expensive than PCs, the least of which I suspect is Voiceover.
Hi Joanne,
You're right, the subscription idea isn't entirely new - I think that System Access/Serotek operate it.
I think that strictly speaking the GW Micro facility is a payment plan rather than a subscription, the difference being that you are a licensed Window-Eyes user at the end of the process and revert to paying for upgrades in full after the 3 years.
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding something here, but I think I see Wayne's point, Ed. Here's why.
He's asking if people would be willing to pay more for features they aren't going to use, and some probably would...but I bet you many wouldn't. If you saw, say, a two-hundred-dollar increase in either Windows, non-apple laptops in general or even both, to accommodate a universal screenreader, most people (who are not at all benefited by this) are going to complain. It would be the same as having refrigerator prices suddenly leap with no particular benefit for the buyer. Sure we pay for stuff we don't use, it happens all the time, but we do it in a way that appears to make sense. They'd either have to slowly raise the price and sort of sneak it in that way, or leave prices alone and very likely lose money. Any significant price hike in any product is going to leave users wondering why it's happening.
Hi Greg,
My point is that if the screen reader were shipped with each unit, then the price wouldn't be $200 or anywhere close to it. Even though tablets are out-selling PCs now, PC sales are still in the millions annually. THis means that the cost of a screen reader would be negligible were it to ship with each unit, even with the myriad of PC hardware manufacturers.
I agree with the last poster. I really doubt that we'd be looking at a price hike that significant. Most people wouldn't even notice. I mean, how much unwanted software do you get rid of when you get a new laptop? There's always what they call "crapware" installed, and nobody complains much about that, primarily because they don't know, don't think about it, and don't care. Sadly, people are very "meh" about where every penny is going; they just want the laptop, for an affordable price, and they don't care if they're paying an extra handful of dollars for programs and features they're never going to use. I've even encountered several people in my lifetime who have been really excited to see accessibility features put in place. They seem to look on them with a benevolent "the world is an okay place to live after all" sort of approval.
Functionally speaking I agree. It shouldn't cost much at all, given the number of PCs worldwide. I completely agree with you. I'm a little concerned, though, because what should happen and what will happen, if screenreaders are shipped as the default on every PC or in every OS, are vastly different...or at the least risk being vastly different. If FS or GWMicro decides they want to make x amount of money overall, and if 99 out of 100 units are going to be useless because the screenreader isn't being used by the consumer, it might be a bit sticky. Here's hoping, though, that you'd be right, and that their targeted profit would be such that any hike in price would be so minimal as to not matter, or perhaps not even really exist at all.
Ed_G, you'd be correct, providing the price didn't jump a great deal, but if the price did, or people were told that they had to pay more, say 200 dollars, I wonder.
We complain about taxes, and even here people complain about what they call bloat ware, the cost of Windows upgrades, and you name it.
If a washing machine has a greater price, because it has more features, people look for the cheaper model, that does what they need.
It is like when computers are offered with Microsoft Office, or Adobe pre installed, the price is much much highter.
It is only due to the way PC's are sold, that I think this would be an issue. If PC's had started out sold like Mac's no.
As to the price of a Mac, I don't blame it on the screen reader, I think it is just Apples pricing, due to all the development that goes in the the machines.
If you look at a Mac from a part prospective, you'd wonder why they were more expensive than PC's, because they use exactly the same parts now.
The hard drive might be Western Digital, the mother board another company, you see my point. Other than the development, I'd say a Mac cost more due to the use of higher quality parts over a bargain PC.
Aslo, I forgot to say Ed_G
, these crossings, and accessible features built in to roads and such are forced paid for through taxes, so law. This is what I mean by forcing screen readers in to PC's.
I'll bet if people had a choice they would say no, if they knew these feature could be paid for by other organizations, like Jaws is frequently.
one thing we dont know is if a screene reader was put into windows by default, would whomever got that bid inavate?
What do you mean?
I mean would they continue to develop new features or make more apps accessible?
Hi John,
It's an interesting question. But we should remember that the latest official release of what is supposed to be the world's leading screen reader doesn't yet support the touch screen interface in Windows 8 almost a year after that operating system's release, and access to Office 2013 with that screen reader is at best partial. This leads me to wonder how well the current model delivers innovation, at least these days.
Hi Greg,
You're right, it would be interesting to see what sort of pricing behaviour my hypothetical model drove. It is obviously predicated on the fact that screen reader manufacturers are being honest about why the software needs to cost so much, and on them being willing to settle for the same amount of profit delivered through higher unit sale.
The commercial reality may of course be that they seek to increase the amount of profit by not dropping the unit price as significantly as they could. The check on this behaviour would probably be that screen reader manufacturers would be negotiating with hard headed commercial operators in for the most part large hardware manufacturers, who would be used to cutting deals with component suppliers such as Intel and NVIDIA, and who would probably challenge them a lot more than buyers in Government agencies. Let's face it, although Government agencies need to make cuts, they probably do it by seeking to help fewer people rather than seeking to drive a hard commercial bargain with the likes of FS.
What's the world's leading screen reader?
Lol just for the fun NVDA has touch screen accessibility since longtime.
And also I just wanted to point out for those who said that the price of 2000 Euros was because of where I am. Yes it is true but it is also true that this price is the same in a lot of countries specially in Europe.
If you take a minute and check the Jaws prices around the world you will have some nasty surprises.
Cheersb
It is interesting that FS has not added touchscreen abilities yet, and I wonder if there is a reason for this, or as others will say laziness, complaisantly?
I don't currently have access to a touchscreen computer I can play with, so don't know how well it works with NVDA. I wonder how much this ability would actually add to my computing experience, i e, add something I can not currently do other than being interesting? On this one I'm out.
Can anyone that uses NVDA with a touchscreen post your advantages?
Hi Faial,
I expressed my scepticism about JAWS actually being the world's leading screen reader in a previous post, smile.
Wayne, touch screen operation is supposed to be coming in JAWS 15 if the trails for the summer round of Freedom Scientific presentations at various technology-related conferences and exhibitions is anything to go by, so it doesn't look as though it was a philosophical decision not to support this type of operation or anything like that. THey just didn't do it in time for the release of Windows 8 or any time soon afterwards. I'm sure they'd trot out the line about wanting to get it right, roll out something that was robust and met user needs, etc etc etc.
Than I'll have to buy a touch screen monitor. Now, what a blind man would do with one, other than novelty, or for the sighted persons that live in the house...
My computer has the ability, I just didn't purchase a new monitor. The only use my monitor gets is when a friend of mine come over and she loves to play games. Sometimes I need some sighted help to repair something as well, but mainly it is there for the entertainment of my sighted guest.
Everyone claims to be the number one something or other. This is called marketing. Smile.
Thanks for that info Ed G!
Again, if someone has used it with NVDA post your opinion on it.
and what's wrong with wanting to get it right?
do you rush it out now now now? or do you take your time and do it right.
It rather depends on whether or not you believe them. That's the typical argument deployed regardless of whether or not it's actually true. I'd find it difficult to believe that it took them 18 months or more to perfect a touch screen interface if they'd focused on it, I say 18 months because they would obviously have had significant access to Windows 8 prior to its release.
Whether or not taking the time to get it right or putting something out there quickly so that there is a minimal level of access and improving upon it is an interesting area of debate.
sure is an interesting debate, which is exactly why i posted it.
Yes, they had much access to Windows 8 before the final release, and they claim to work directly with Microsoft, so getting it right is debatable.
I did find that Windows 8 was vary smooth to upgrade to however. All the features worked well in the first release of J14.
We'll see how easy it does work, and how easy the change over from 8 to 8.1 will be.
Hi Ed, oops for the mistake with the payment plan and the subscription with GWMicrow Window Eyes. when i wrote that post i was half awake. :) and yes, System Access from Saratec already done so for many many years.
Again Wayne, you miss the point. the point is, you can access the same product that is out of the box qwith the same amount that your next door neighbour purchase with or without the voiceover or with or without any of the accessibility features.
NVDA already has their touch capability since the very first day they relese NVDA12.1, that works with window 8. and now, they take that another step further to enhance the touch ability even more.
There's no point argueing with you Wayne, because, you simply don't see, or rather, refuse to see the point of the whole argument.
I suppose, each everyone has their views and opinion and emotional attachment on what they see as right.
For me, i embrace enclusion, i encourage inclusion. But perhaps, for some, they will see inclusion as a thrat for their status in the society, the special place.
For me, inclusion is to have an accessible mainstreem product available for all. regardless of disability and status. So, in another word, i refuse to be exclude from the mainstreem, to purchase or pay another $1500 on top of what a regular person, to use a system tghat may have half a chance of being accessible, and 80% chance of crashing.
I'm not attached to any product. If I find a product that works better I buy it.
So far I haven't for the things I do.
If and if NVDA gets to Jaws levels I'll stop paying and switdh.
Ah, and BTW I'm not arguing, I'm discussing. Smile.
I really don't understand all this anti-NVDA stuff I see. I find that it works quite well on most applications. Sure, you'll find something it doesn't work with, but that's life. JAWS does the same. Also, do you know how fast NVDA has come? NVDA has succeeded so well by skipping many useless things that JAWS has. For example, NVDA sees no need for research it, because we can already use the internet, thank you.
Here's another point. Forereel claimed that NVDA isn't free because you need to purchase add-ons. As of now, I know of one, that's one, add on that you pay for, and that's vocalizer support. You need to purchase the voices, not really the add-on.
And here's a point about languages. To buy an interface translation for JAWS, you have to purchase an entire new copy. For NVDA, all translations are included by default. Many NVDA contributors are volunteers. Most add-ons are written by community involvement, and integrated into the main NVDA codebase in future releases if found useful. This is one of the best features of NVDA. There are many people willing to donate their time to develop something for NVDA, which can be made easily available and then inducted into the main codebase and given to everybody, and they are still able to do it with only two full-time workers working for what is essentially minimum wage. You pay if you can and you pay what you think the screenreader is worth.
I have donated to NVDA, but this is something I can afford. For many others, they can donate through their own coding or translation projects, or perhaps leave donation until they have more resources.
I hope that this post is less unorganized than it seems to me. My apologies; I really should go to sleep.
Just to make it clear: no matter what people may say, NVDA is totally free and it will remain free.
And you don't have to buy add ons. You can buy add ons or voices or whatever if you want but it's not a requirement to use the screen reader.
I use NVDA and I don't like to use any add ons so I just use it clean of extras and it works perfectly for me.
And we also can donate which means give money to support the project. But if we choose to give money it doesn't change the fact that NVDA is still free!
Jaws is, and will always be my favoriye screen reader. FS always keeps up with new programs. It's helped me greatly, especially through college. For instance Jaws is much better in programs like Microsoft Word than NVDA. You get what you pay for, that's just how things go. Team Jaws all the way!
Now that you have made that claim (that JAWS is better than NVDA in Microsoft word), I'm going to have to ask you to prove it. I would actually suggest that NVDA is better, or at least equal, in word access. For example, I have never reliably gotten JAWS to announce spelling and grammar errors. Either it announces nothing at all or it speaks really long messages that are quite cumbersome. In NVDA, all you do is check one box that says "report spelling errors" and it does so very easily. While JAWS can probably do this too, it is much more complicated. While this is only one example, I invite you to prove that JAWS is better. Thank you.
do not get me wrong, NVDA has come a longway, now that they have a review cursor that has really help them. Go use avast and NVDA, please tell me how far you get. Do it with jaws, sorry JFW won that test hands down. I tried it with NVDA and could not clikc on the scan tab to save my life.
Same deal with malware bytes. NVDA will sometimes work with it, and JAWS will just about -always work with it. I like them both and use them both for different things. For example, I use NVDA with iTunes because I find that running both JAWS and iTunes together causes a lot of unnecessary lag that NVDA eliminates.
I find Jaws works completely all the time with malware bytes.
Same with iTunes minus scripts lately.
If you run the scripts and close iTunes, you must restart Jaws or restart the computer when you reopen it.
Without the script this isn't necessary.
I don't have any issues with iTunes and JAWS, either, and I don't use any scripts.
I don't use scripts; I tried them and found them more cumbersome than anything else. I find that JAWS doesn't -always work with malware bytes, as the JAWS cursor seems really finnicky about accessing the scanning details and suchlike, and if it actually finds anything, it takes a lot of careful fiddling to actually select the objects for removal. iTunes, on all three laptops I've owned in the past couple of years, has been a resource hog and sometimes it works perfectly with JAWS, but other times if I run both of them at the same time everything goes to hell for awhile.
I have never had problems using NVDA with malware bytes. What problems are you having? Also, I use iTunes on mac osx, so have never tried it with either screenreader.
Meglet, perhaps what's occasionally happening with iTunes is a computer issue, then, rather than a JAWS one.
On all three laptops? Each of which were completely different models, with different specs and even different versions of JAWS? Possible, but unlikely. Either way, though, iTunes is not really the point. The point is that both screen readers have individual merits, though I still prefer JAWS for a lot of things.
I fully admit the issues I have with NVDA and MWB may simply be a symptom of my inexperience with the more advanced features of the program. I use JAWS much more often so know a lot more about how to use its cursors. I find that I can't seem to see scan information with it though, and I can only navigate to the "update" tab sporadically.
No, it isn't the computers. It is a pop up window. Jaws doesn't read it, so things seem to go to hell for a bit.
I have forgotten how to disable that, because I've not use the Bytes for a while, but if you do that, things won't go boom. Lol
I belive it is asking you, or suggesting you buy the paid version. That might be how I fixed it. I got the paid version for like 13 bucks, so jumped it.
Malware bytes is not the program that makes things go to hell, it's just a bit hard to navigate with JAWS sometimes, at least in my experience. iTunes is the one that makes my computer lock up or lag for awhile when used in conjunction with JAWS. I can only conclude it's JAWS because when I use NVDA all is well.
Weird. I have iTunes on several computers, and have installed it for other people.
When I use Jaws with it it works smoothly.
I'm currently using Jaws 14 latest version, and iTunes latest version.
Before version 11 iTunes, not Jaws caused issues on anyones computer sighted or blind. It wasn't stable for some.
Now after 11, and current version, it is extremely stable.
Interesting issue you have. Especially, when it is on all your systems.
Have you upgraded iTunes?
It work better even with NVDA or the computer in general.
Oh, man. I remember those days. having a big iTunes library and trying to get anything done with it/my phone, using jaws was a sure fire way to make sure my computer lagged, got sluggish, or froze up.
And yes, this happened on several high end windows machines I had at the time. Jaws isn't exactly resource friendly by any stretch of the word, and has a few memory leaks that can make it more so, at least with 11, 12, and 13. Never used 14, so can't say. Either way, I feared needing to sync my 32 gb iPhone when I had it full. I never knew if that would make iTunes/jaws kik the bucket or not. Don't really want to know how badly my full 64 gb phone would do.
Another bad program to run with jaws was firefox. lol the combo of memory leaks in older builds of firefox with jaws could kill resources in less than 1 hours browsing, and mind you, I had 4 gb ram, and a core i 7 at the time.
I suppose the moral of the story is resource intensive programs don't mix with jfw.
Yes, Wayne, I agree that it's gotten better since version 11, and yes, my version of iTunes is always up-to-date. Stormwing, I think we have the same problem. My library is not enormous, but it's not small. Thousands of songs, a few podcasts, etc.
Yeesh James, i've always found 4GB to be plenty good for me, and i'm on older hardware (P 4 3.0 GHZ HT)
and older OS.
i can easily have Sound Forge version 9 (processing audio), WLM, GW Connect, Socal Eyes, IE8 (with more than one tab open), Jaws 14, Winamp, and AIM running without problems with Jaws 14.
this is with a focus 80 display and i am useing elaquince, too.
I know jaws used to have memory leak isss issues, as when i'd shut d ja jaws down and restart it things would seem to run smoozer. this isn't the case for me with Jaws 14.
Firefox had an issue before this last update where some pages wouldn't show. Now with the latest versions of both it runs smoothly.
I have had some issues with Firefox depending on versions, but they come and go, so I always test it on my laptop, before I update it on my working machine.
I don't mind it not working well on my laptop, but I depend on it from time to time on my working machine, so always wait to update it.
I have used the latest iTunes with Jaws 12, and it is smooth. I have a machine I work on, and the person likes to use Jaws 12, so this is how I learned this.
I wonder if you both removed all or iTunes and related programs, than install it fresh would you solve the issue?
My laptop runs and i3 with 2.5 and 6 GB ram. I can run a host of stuff, iTunes included and it never slows or gives me trouble.
Interesting issue indeed.
I have even run iTunes on a low powered Netbook, the latest version, that is.
Wayne thanks for that tid bit about Itunes running on a low powered netbook well, I am giving my asus EEPC HE 1005 to my sister-in-law she has an Ipod that will be sinked with it. So glad to see this run fine on lower in computers. Yappers I could sell it but not wurth the time or effert when new netbooks kill it even though its got a 750 gig harddrive and 2 gigs of ram.
Yeah, firefox is very sporadic about whether it will work smoothly or not; this latest update seems okay so far.
I have done a complete uninstall/reinstall, multiple times, never really did much.
Not saying you didn't do it correctly, but did you also uninstall anything that was Apple related as well?
Yep, ITunes should work fine on the netbook. The one I just replaced was 4 years old so pretty chincy on the hardware and it ran ITunes fine with Jaws 13. Good luck.
my sister-in-law is sighted so she will not be using jaws still glad to know Itunes will work fine for her. She is 12 so the netbook will work fine for her.
I should stipulate that a big part of how well or not well iTunes will work depends on the size of your library, and how clean it is. Once you have gigs and gigs of music, books, games, apps, pictures, etc just sitting there, the odds of having issues with your library go up exponentially.
Though re building an iTunes library sucks, sometimes it can help.
I've switched laptops several times so have had to rebuild my library quite often. lol
Yes, Wayne, I did remove all things apple, still not much joy. Ah well, as I said, NVDA solves the problem beautifully, and on the whole I like iTunes, even if it is cluttered.
actually, I've tried what you said, and found that NVDA does work in word, especially with reporting spelling errors. I use both readers. I use NVDA for avast, and find it works better than jaws. When you tab in the main avast screen, for instance, with jaws, you hear nothing, while with nvda you can here all the screens.
Well, I always say what works, works.
I am a loyal JAWS user, but I have to say that I agree with much of this article and find it extremely enlightening.
NVDA was the first window screen reader that can read headings, footers, headers, on ms words. although this is not so important for most of the user, but it is crutial for under grad and post grad students. Also, NVDA is the first window screen reader that i know of that reads the fon style, and fon type. Again, this might not seems important for most, but it is rather important for writers, researchers, students that require absolute accuracy in their papers. For those who claim that you need to pay for addons for NVDA beside vocalizer (which is an absolutely personal choice) Please, bring your evidents to the table for such claim.
One of the problem for some posters on the board is that, they refuse to do a detail research, rather, trusting some random blogs or random site and form their arguments according to those.
As far as ITunes are concern, Yes, its depends on how much you have on your local itunes library as to how much resource it requires to run.
Bare in mind though, Jaws also a resource sucking hawk, and when you have more than one program that is a resource sucking hawk, your processer will indeed slow down, if your computer is not capable of advance multitasking.
ooops, sorry, i meant hog, not hawk. excuse. me.
but i like halk a lot lot better! *Laughs*
The problem with some posters is they refuse to see or concede a different point. They can't know how much research another poster has done unless that poser has told them, and they can't be sure there research was complete, because as we have noticed, iTunes works differently for some.
Until we can actually sit down and experience that problem on the persons computer, we can only state, we have no problems with it, but accept that they do, and one or the other screen reader works better for them in this case.
Some people love Fords, they don't want or desire a Mercedes, because they don't see why it is better for them. However, when it comes to resale values, length of time the product last, and other conditions, the Mercedes proves to be the best product all around.
We have another factor in opinions, and that is the personal factor. Some posters have a personal grudge for a company or product. No matter how much research is brought to the table, that person will still dislike that product. It is personal, not factual.
I evaluate a product on what it does for me. I like Mercedes, but if I needed a truck I'd buy a Ford. I don't, I need a car.
I used headers and footers with JAWS in Word long before there was an NVDA. Not sure where that particular data point about NVDA being first with that comes from. Only with JAWS I think you had to turn that stuff on. Things like footnotes and stuff, someone told me you had to turn it on because of people who wanted to just read documents and would otherwise have found that to be clutter.
Plus their Skim Reader is great for overviews of large documents and Texxt Analyzer has caught things for me that spell check missed.
Though of course with so many things going on in the larger product, of course NVDA is more resource-friendly and I've always seen it to perform faster during installs, setups and other resource-intensive tasks. That makes sense. I'm afraid Wayne is right though, some people are simply here for the dogma and to rail against a manufacturer. But accuracy would go a long way in credibility when railing against people.
We all know there are problems with the big manufacturers, just like there are problems with the big phone carriers or anything else. I've explained in earlier posts how this stuff happens, and it's rarely about a bunch of greedy piggy people sitting around laughing about who they can torment next. I realize that romantic notion is extremely popular and makes for great bedtime stories, but again reality is usually a bit more complex, less black-and-white and less dogmatic.
Exactly. Freedom Scientific is not out to get or use the blind.
Sure, they make money on the blind, but that makes sense. For a long time, they were the only company making a viable screen reader for Windows.
The also make, and promote other products as well. Some good, some not.
It is a company and it was created to make money. It had to be.
You don't want to work for nothing, nor does the people that work for this company.
Some money has to come from someplace.
Excuse me to people who dis NVDA. I've got a news bulletin for you.
Even my office for disabilities at my college has heard of NVDA. The reason why NVDA won't be seen in a job environment is because companies just simply don't trust free software. Say about that what you will. But they motto is, if it's pay, well it must be professional. We all know that's a bunch of crap. NVDA is a fifth of the size of jaws and does the same thing, and does it better. Period. End of discussion. NVDA can be scripted for christ sake have you not seen the bunches of add ons that, oh, emulate jaws functionality? I haven't, and will not, use jaws. People are finally waking up and saying fuck you to the big money sucking companies. For software and hardware, you just plain and simple need to look outside the united states. Optelec for braille displays, NVDA, shit, it's founded in the UK. Wake up folks, and when voke rehab tells you they're only offering you something from the 3 big guys, tell them you know exactly what you want and don't settle for it. Having them foot the bill isn't the point. The point is, don't support these monsters of companies be it directly or indirectly.
Let me ask just one more question.
What in the fuck does Jaws do that NVDA can't?
Why does jaws need to act like your personal assistant rather than just, oh gee, reading the goddamn screen? Get rid of research it, people are you nuts? Research it is purely for lazy people and has absolutely nothing to do with the original purpose of what jaws is/was.
Why can't JAWS just be what NVDA is? I'm seeing people slowly migrate to NVDA.
Also, people saying they're having issues with iTunes on Windows. It's an apple developed application. It runs best on an apple product. They aren't microsoft engineers, they're apple engineers.
I can clearly answer this question, NVDA still needs to work on their mouse clicking when using the review cursor, I was attempting to answer a window that popped up from addaware and NVDA's review cursor jumped out of the whendow know matter how hard I tried to put focus on the okay button. Are you ready for this, sit down, a product used in a lot of tech and call center to clear out malware better known as malware bites, NVDA looses focus when attempting to do a right mouse click so you can check all. Jaws, guess what?, does this with ease, no hick ups at all. I am sorry, if it makes my life easier, puts food on my table latterly then I am going to use it no matter what free alturnitive is out there. Heck to even go the free rout, I would use pages for work but sorry pages does not hold a candle to MS. office word on windows. So free is not always the way jto go if you are really trying to get off SSI.
Lots of other things as well.
It boils down to what you need, what you like, and what you are willing to pay for, or not pay for. I have said many times, when NVDA can do all I need, I'll use it and stop buying Jaws. It doesn't have to even be NVDA. Any company that comes along, or that is already available will work for me. I am a consumer, and as such, I pay for the products that I feel work best for me.
Amen to the last two posts. Listen: I respect the open source thing, I really do. But to say that NVDA does absolutely everything JAWS does and better is blatantly false. I'm a starving student, okay? I don't like paying hundreds of dollars to upgrade JAWS any more than anyone else does. I got JAWS through a scholarship and now any future costs are my problem and my problem alone. So yeah, that really really sucks. But guess what? I have NVDA on both my computers, and for some things it works just as well as JAWS, or nearly. But I have found very few things NVDA handles better, so until NVDA catches up, I'll do as the above poster said and use what works. I'd rather do that than cling to a false ideal. And you know all those addons you mentioned? The ones that add JAWS-like functionality? With JAWS I don't even need the addons. I just use the program out of the box and it's a done deal. That comment alone invalidates your statement about how NVDA is equal or better. If we're adding JAWS-like functionality for it through addons, obviously it's not quite there yet. I used to work for a non-profit organization. They had no friggin' money and if they knew a free program would do everything JAWS would have, you can bet they'd have jumped all over that shit. But they didn't. Why? Because much of the professional software they had to use worked best with JAWS. So it's not just me in my crazy bubble that still thinks NVDA has work to do before it can stand up to JAWS, at least outside of basic windows functionality. I love NVDA and as soon as I have more money to throw around I will send a big fat donation there way. But I'm not naïve, I know they've a ways to go.
Oh yeah, and about your note on iTunes? I was actually saying that NVDA gave me fewer issues than JAWS, so I'm not sure what your gripe was with that particular discussion.
well said, Meglet, Wayne, and starfly.
Regarding the iTunes comment I wasn't targeting anyone in specific, relax. It was a generic statement. NVDA is simply faster, and because it is maintained by the community, only legitimate features are installed and not all this extra crap. You need a program with braille and speech support and operating system support. The shit jaws works with exclusively thus far like cakewalk for example is proof that yeah if you want to get into audio production, sonar is probably the best option on windows, but you need to pay out the ass just to get access to the software. NVDA is working on this support. When a former software engineer comes out saying this company is a failure and goes on to state all these ideas like jaws for Mac that he presented over 10 years ago and then gets laughed at because bug fixes don't sell products, yeah, I'm going to go right ahead and talk all the shit I want because they deserve it. If NVDA doesn't work with something, write a script to take care of it. Really how easy is that. It'd be the same way in jaws. But the problem with jaws is that there's too much fluff. 130 Megabytes now. Are you fucking serious? Pacmates costing $400 to manufacture and then mark it up 4000% because blindies won't know any better. That article posted by Chris needs to be spread to as many lists as possible, it is the coffin nails to what is wrong with this so called free market and unless you know exactly what you want in software and are tech savvi, you'll just eat up whatever vr gives you. That's why I made my stance absolutely clear to my counselor and OCB. I will not use their cheap ass $50 focus 14 blue or even the 40. Sorry won't do it. I'll use my Alva which was made in Germany by hand and not in a Chinese suicide factory (see Apple's factory conditions) Google apple suicide nets and Foxcon. If the extra 100 megabytes jaws as put on actually had real world use instead of promoting laziness (see research it) then maybe my stance would be different. Blindies just don't care enough to care, really, is all it comes down to. The point is not that jaws works. The point is that it is a stagnant piece of software which is extremely over priced, embarrassingly so and what's more how much money this company is rolling in, and people are just, well, ok with it. Stand up for what is right, and free software / open source sometimes isn't the right option or the best option. Every situation is different. Android and talk back are open source. But do they compare to the iPhone which is a paid device? Fuck no. NVDA will naturally be better and more innovative, though it may take longer to be so solely based on the fact that it only incorporates features people want and need, not bloatware. Being free software, free doesn't pay the bills. I have no clue what the comment was about cursor tracking. I can use OCR with NVDA and click on text in graphics on webpages such as speakeasy.net, which is a flash object. What am I missing here. Not to mention NVDA basically took a page from voiceover gee imagine that in the way their object level navigation works. Antivirus software for the most part sucks in terms of accessibility. I haven't a clue why this is. As Apple has done, they've made a developers guide to teach devs how to make their applications accessible. Sadly most programmers who are sighted don't give 2 shits about accessibility. That's their problem and nothing we can do about it except bitch. Apple may have the most polished products on the market but that doesn't mean for a second I support nor like how they go about producing their products.
I never thought I'd chime into this topic, but the last poster had me decide to ask a question. You say that you can just write scripts on NVDA if you want something accessible, but it's not presently accessible. Well, that's all well and good for you, and for those people that already know how to program. How about the people who don't know how to program however, write scripts, and all of these types of things? JAWS provides stuff right out of the box with minimal programming requirements as well as minimal script-writing that NVDA requires add-ons for and the like. If you don't know how to write the script, someone else will have to in NVDA. that person may not get it right, and you'll have to deal with the headache until its finally done reasonably well enough to be called functional. Yes you have to pay an SMA for JAWS, but in the end, I'm willing to pay it if it means getting a product that's more widely accepted.
Is JAWS a perfect screen reader? No. Not by a long shot. Are there valid points in the articles? Yes, there definitely are. However, to completely condemn JAWS, and the usefulness it has offered to blind people over the last decade plus is just not right. As was said, FS was one of the first companies that tried to put a screen reader out there for people to use. I will continue to use it, because despite some of its drawbacks, it's well-written, reasonably well-maintained, and most importantly, does what I need.
There are users and then there are programmers. Does every user have to be a programmer? No. And what isn't accessible about NVDA I really don't understand? I am not discrediting what jaws has done for people since its inception. But for years it's not been a secret that it's a rip off. Just because it's the most popular screen reader in the world doesn't mean they are a monopoly of a company. I mean, wouldn't you agree simple do to the fact that most people use jaws and pac mates and so on and so forth just drives home the point they are a monopoly. Sure there's GW micro, and system access. To me, it screams money. Everything is a deal, from politics, to wars, right down to companies like freedom scientific, and as I said and I will say again, supporting a giant company who knowingly on record rips people off is contributing to the issue. And once again, why have I not used jaws since 2010? Why has NVDA been more stable, more responsive than JAWS? And again I'll say it, it's because it's not chock full of shit. There is no innovation. And those who choose to use such a product like jaws in my opinion deserves to get ripped off. Oh yeah and by the way, the jaws users list I am willing to bet is supported and funded by FS. I have a friend on that list and if you talk about anything remotely outside of jaws, or ask a relatively difficult question, or mention apple, even if it is a question about installing jaws or whatever on a macbook with bootcamp, you won't get a response. There are over 600 people on that jaws users list, and David has collected thousands of dollars, and yet he says that he won't help anyone unless they read the documentation. Well I guess there is no discrepancies between older folks who just want a piece of software to work and power users, he just lumps everyone in the same category. That list has about 30 active users. My personal friend of mine has donated over $500 to his group yet the return he's gotten has been, you guessed it, zilch. It is absolutely incredible what this company gets away with, oh yeah, and did I mention Eric from fs is on the list and even when issues are presented, no help or answers are given. Those who knowingly support this company by purchasing or even using their products deserves to be ripped off. Blind people need to stand up, and perhaps we need to become more technically savvi in order to fight such a monopoly. NVDA is very comparable to jaws you can say whatever you want, but I see no difference. Ideally, NVDA needs to natively support applications out of the box just like jaws needs to, yet doesn't. Why do so many blind people use DAW's yet you have to pay out the ass just to use it. This should be a basic staple of modern computing. Why do I have to pay some jack ass $300 for scripts to use with sonar. I understand making a little money, and making money is not bad. But this goes beyond freedom scientifc. Blind people are being exploited and that is why I have a mac, and that is why I use NVDA. Yes jaws has been around since way back when, and it was good then. But it is 2013, not 1999 and I'm sorry, but look at the condition of the country, the economy. Agencies are going broke. If apple can produce a top notch screen reader like voiceover then why can't microsoft. Linux is great for what it is. But since Willie walker was fired/laid off which ever one it was, so I hear orca development has suffered. Orca is great for what it is, but not ready for consumers. Maybe these linux power users need to focus their effort in contributing their knowledge in NVDA because after all, Windows is still one of the most widely used operating systems, I can't truly say it's the most widely used because more and more people I speak with are using macs. I use orca since it's beginnings in 2006 and even at that time is was miles ahead of what was then gnopernicus, but orca crashes, freezes, so does gnome. If you don't know what you're doing, you could crash your system and you're left without speech. Learn what is right and appropriet, seek the truth, and demand to use something better than what is pushed. Don't just accept what you've been fed.
Just adding that NVDA is founded in Australia not in the UK!
And about the things Nvda doesn't do compared to Jaws I don't feel cheated because of the price I paid for Nvda but maybe a good idea would be to make a list and adding staff to it and send it to Nvda developpers!
Maybe instead of saying Nvda still has a lot to work before catching Jaws in quolity which I disagree but that's an opinion, we could make a positive work and write it down and kindly ask the developpers to work on support for such programs!
I know Nvda developpers are extremely kind and they do their best to make the software better and better.
I am honestly a bit sick of listening people saying Jaws does this and that and Nvda doesn't forgeting that there are also things that Nvda does which Jaws doesn't. And then they don't point out the what are those exact things that Jaws does and Nvda doesn't.
I don't mind Nvda can not do yet everything what Jaws does. Just for fun, think if NVAccess had half of the money of Freedom Scientific, what screenreadr for Windows the whole community would have.
Think about what those guys achieved in such period of time with such money.
So for the good of the comunity, let's write down clearly what Nvda still doesn't do and let's all send a small donation to NVAccess: maybe things will change for blind people in the whole world.
And sorry to disappoint you but your Alva braille display is not german! They are from the Netherlands!
Just also wanted to add that about reading the documentation like it or not, it is a crucial point specially for Nvda.
When we get a software or hardware it is essential that we read the documentation for working eficiently with it.
I can't count the number of times people told me, Nvda can't do this or that and I just noticed, if they read the manual they would never say just stupidity.
So yes programs have limitations but sometimes the biggest limitation is on the laziness of people who want everything without any effort!
oh my, jaws has been reading headers and footers since probably MS word 2000. Also, insert F to read font size type and justification has been around since oh, version 4.2 4.5 maybe. I'm all for choice, but knocking a product without really any founded reasoning, makes me wonder what one would do if there in a situation where employment is dependent upon using Jaws. Are we turning down a job based on principles? Doubtful. I'm on record saying I definitely agree much with the article that things are in decline at FS, and have been for sometime. That being said, I use the product because it helps to make a very good living, and in many aspects, that's what it does best for many users!
I normally don’t approach a discussion on this level, but I’ll do so now.
just-chillin, I believe you are confused on your points, and just ranting without reasoning.
Let me point out a point. You say Apple is the better device over Android, but you turn around and say Apple is hurting people in the suicide factories. Why are you using an iPhone?
You want to compose music with someone product Sonar, but you don’t want to pay. Now when your music is fully available, and ready, and it’s the shiit, are you going to give it away, or do you feel people should pay you for your work?
You are a student, and I imagine you are doing this so that hopefully you can earn a living doing something, or working for someone. Why? If free is the way, what are you doing in college trying to learn something to earn a living?
Blindies, as you call us, care about what we use and do. I would say that blindies are probably more involved with the devices they use, because these devices make life that much easier to live in the sighted world.
Sure sighted people benefit, but I believe we benefit greater from our tech.
Every blindy shouldn’t be forced to be a programmer, nor even know how much space a product is consuming on their system. What they want is to sit down, and use the product and have it work period. The how, and why is not important when all you want to do is communicate, receive, and hopefully earn just like others.
When your toilet doesn’t flush all are not concerned with becoming plumbers, so they can fix it, they just want to have the ability to call one and pay him or her so they can continue to shit.
Jaws allows me to do that even though I’m more skilled than most. Sometimes I just want it to work period, I don’t want to have to fix everything in my life all the time.
Well, it doesn't surprise me that JAWS is dying. Each version was shittier than the last.
Firstly, apple is not the only company that manufactures their products in that manner, in those facilities. Microsoft, dell, hp, sony, samsung, LG,and a great deal more consumer oriented electronics manufacturers all manufacture their products in plants owned by that company, and their partner companies. if you want a product that's completely free of manufacturing violations, good luck. Considering apple news drives page views, and thus leads to add clicks, its no wonder these stories got such a response. After all, they are the more or less top dog according to some metrics.
All the above aside, your posts are full of other inaccuracies, misconceptions and falsifications.
You make a few good points, but they're so lost in the clutter, I'm not sure what to honestly think.
To answer a question:
I honestly don't think Apple, or any other company sets out to mis use people. You've got cultural differents, mental issues, greedy people not at the top level, but at the factory level hiding things when the inspectors visit, and you've got jealousy, false reporting.
If Apple, and the others were really bad, how is it the products are so good, and work well when you receive it in your hand?
You can't be mis using everyone, and getting good work.
Why did you post that again? Firstly, there is no need to copy and paste your posts back into a topic in which you already posted them. Secondly, we've already disproved your point about word. Any other points?
You know, if I can get 5 people that tell me they do this job, or that job, and they use NVDA in a large company, and earn a living, I'll be a little more impressed.
Jaws can be written in to different languages, and I've seen it translate on the fly.
As was posted, maybe we should do a test as to abilities.
The problem with that, is we'd need to address different situations, and user needs. Freedom Scientific has done this.
Give me a product that has and can, I'm hooked.
I'm not knocking NVDA's abilities, but I'm not agreeing that it is far better.
The best argument I hear is that it is free. History has proved you get what you pay for.
With Nvda you don't get what you pay, you get much more!
I still would like to know what are the big limitations of Nvda that make it not usable in a professional environment!
Just so you know, there are blind people all around the world and they also deserve to use computers for education and employment purposes.
For example the support that Nvda allready gives for Office for example, allows allready thousands of people to studdy! Who says the oppousite can not be serious!
I have said it over, and over, some of you here, work with a software not used in a public setting, closed off and jaws does not support it out of the Box, you have to choices, look for a scripter or use the jaws cursor. As for your comment for Iphone voiceover beeing better then talkback, that is your appinion currently where talkback is now not a fact. Please, its best you not come knocking on my door for an arguement with voiceover and talkback at this time.
I personally never said Jaws was better, I said it was better for my needs.
I use office all the time and it works better. Some other things just work.
Now I have seen and heard many professional people, even in this topic, say Jaws works better for them. I have seen students even in this topic say Jaws works better for them. What I've not seen and that is no place is a professional say NVDA works, and they earn a living using it.
This site, and many others I use, have professionals from all over the world, and for whatever reasons, they like Jaws better.
I didn't create this, nor do I promote Jaws all over the place.
Even people that have and use NVDA and either can't afford Jaws for whatever reasons, or don't have it say they would like to.
Some people even run both, and still say Jaws works better.
I suppose some times a product earns it's keep, even though it also earns negative dislikes.
OK, then let me be the first to bring it right to you. I am a professional computer programmer. Right now, the team I am a part of uses the mac. Previous to that, and when I code in my spare time, I use windows exclusively (yes that's right) with NVDA. I still have a copy (registered) of JAWS, but never use it. I have no clue where you get this "NVDA isn't used by professionals" junk. I already know many professionals that use NVDA, and that number appears to be growing.
I explained why.
Admittedly, if I need to do complicated formatting in word, or really get a power point looking good, Jaws is the program i'd trust, no question. as a student, jaws was my go to. Is it perfect, hell no, but honestly in the professional setting, it seems to support many of the essentials better that you'd need to keep a job.
NVDA *remember your caps folks* is a good product for what it is, and its coming along well. it even did a few things before FS or GW did, but its still in its early years, compared to JFW, and WE. I think its got the potential to to become a product that's on par with the others, but I think it needs two things. More time in the oven, and more people giving it exposure in a professional way.
I think these things will come in time.
Does jaws have a lot of things I dislike about it, for sure. But if money is on the line, well.... Its almost a no brainer.
Its a lot like the iOS vs android thing. android is a great piece of software, but I know from my month of using it that I just couldn't rely on it to do the job I need it to do with 90 percent uptime or better. Where as my iPhone just works.
I'm seeing all these arguments about what works better, but it really comes down to what your needs are. Window Eyes works very well for me. There are times when I use Jaws, but Windows Eyes is is the primary screen reader that I use. Window Eyes isn't perfect, Jaws isn't perfect, and VoiceOver isn't perfect, so I think that to say that a certain screen reader is better than the other just throws things out of line. It's all about what suits your needs.
One of the reasons I now use a mac is because of the screen readers charging huge amounts of money to maintain them and to upgrade. I do like system access and think they could be the next big market for windows screen reader. But why pay $1500 when I can buy a mac with voiceover already on it?
While I really enjoy using my mac, i'll admit that voiceover for mac is a bit broken in some critical ways. Its really polished until you start using the more pro features most blind people don't really know exist.
and their are a few bugs that have existed from the days of snow leopard.
If voiceover just did a better job with a few more pro grade apps, i'd be set.
I can answer this, other then I have a mac loaded with bootcamp, if you can find an office program that holds a candle to microsoft office on the mac, something like munkey turm that will let me use sounds with my mud client, then I will gladly remove my windows7 partition. If any of you can not honestly give me a office program like MS. office and a mud client, then windows7 will stay bootcamped on my mac.
I have stated many times that what works best for you is what you should use. The problem is the NVDA camp wishes to sling mud.
For the last poster who is a programmer, I forgot to ask, why do you keep an updated copy of Jaws? Help someone out, and post it here on the Zone stating you will give it away. Smile.
It is no good to you, so why keep it?
Problems with all these arguement is that all of us, yes, all of us, treating every blind person has the means to purchase external software like Jaws, who cost around $1500US and another $300US for SMA upgrade or however much.
This may not seem a lot for those in developed country who can get thru different fundings thru different official channel.
This is not true for those who is in developing country, or non-develop country where, there is no, yes, zero (0( funding available for people with disability to purchase any technology, left alone software or hardware etc.
These people have nothing to compare but either to use perhaps windows 95 with Narator or with free open source programs or pirated programs.
When we can argue as much as we like with our personal preference as to wwhat we like, which program we prefer, what platform we desire, what about take a moment or two and consider those that don't necesarry have the choice to choose, because, they don't even have the choice to choose as to where they born or either they going to have enough food for tomorrow?
wel if it comes to food vs puters, that's a no brainer.
While I sympathize with those who are unlucky enough not to be able to get funding for JAWS or Window Eyes, I'm not really sure what that has to do with which screen reader is better. Price does come into play when selecting a screen reader, to be sure, but for the purposes of this discussion, I think that the features of the programs are more salient than peoples' ability to get hold of them. JAWS is overpriced, it is true, but that doesn't really add or detract from its value as a piece of software. And while NVDA being free makes it a much better choice for those who don't have access to funding, it doesn't make it better or wworse than JAWS by itself. I have seen many paid programs that are inferior to free ones, and vice versa.
I purchase other programs as well other than Jaws, and they aren't perfect either. Sometimes they require fixes and such things, but they are good for me for the most part, so I buy them.
Even the people that work on NVDA have to eat, and that funding’s coming from someplace. They aren't starving, and living on the streets so they can help the blind.
My Jaws didn't cost as much as you quoted, but it did cost at the top, but now is reasonable as far as I see it, about $10 per month, because I don't upgrade but each 2 years.
I have to purchase my computers, and any other assistive devices I use, because I am no longer eligible to receive assistants.
I don't mind, and feel I'm fortunate to be able to do this.
Because I am blind, and I need a computer that works well, I can't decide that Dell is an overpriced company, and that someone should build and give me new systems as I require them.
As with Jaws, I have no idea if they are overpriced, or not, but I am willing to pay the price of the systems I purchase.
Dell has money hand over fist, and could give every blind person a free system and not miss it at all in the world.
Many blind people own Dell computers, because for some odd reason, rehab, and other go and state agencies buy Dell.
If you are receiving something it is a gift, and helps you. If you think you want something different, because Dell is ripping off the blind, because agencies won't buy HP, say you want an HP.
Maybe your agency will grant it, providing they feel it is worth their money, but if not you are fortunate still.
Maybe I am seeing this debate from the wrong angle, but most that like NVDA are against Freedom Scientific due to money, and the price of the product, plus that fact as a company they are profiting.
That to me is an odd reason to be dead set against a product that is actually well made, and does it purpose well.
You don’t have to like, use, or indorse it, but knocking it over these reasons seem silly to me.
All you rich people with current copies of Jaws lying around, how about we start a give away drive to help these people in these places that can't afford it. Let us give them that choice you claim all blind people should have, and not be forced to use NVDA and not be told about Jaws, Window Eyes, because they can't afford it.
I don't object to the price of jaws, so much as I object to the prophet margins and the fact its set artificially high more or less because government agencies will pay for it. I don't even object to the fact that they're making money. But they're making 1000 percent prophet. in some cases. that is extreme to me. Though in fairness,their are cheeper alternatives. Our rehab agencies just won't buy them, or don't know of them. Or, they don't work quite as advertised. Most mainstream companies never make past 50 percent prophets. Pundits scream because apple is making 30 to 40 percent on many of its devices. For years we've been told these prices are the minimum of what can be charged, and the fact is that was about as close to the truth as France is to Australia.
maybe things have changed in this economy, maybe those numbers are a bit out of date, but I can only look at the numbers we know of.
I think FS is a privately held company, would make seeing their financial breakdown a bit harder. I think i'd feel more comfortable if I knew where the money was going, and I could see why things were priced the way they are, and where the cash from those purchases is going. But from everything i've heard, and read, most of the money doesn't go back to R&D, or other useful things.
TLDR FS is capitalizing on government deals to achieve a market leading position which it uses to sustain itself on prices that couldn't exist otherwise. Its just morally in the gray area.
Well James, i suppose company like FS and Humanware, or GWMicro, in fact any of the adaptive technology company are working on a very tight market clients tell. Therefore they got to find somewhare to charge as much as they can to get back the profit margin. Of course, you have some company that is more conchous and perhaps have more of a social value to produce a decent product with decent price in tact. What FS does in the business economic point of view is right, just worry about their profit but not so much of the clients economic status. They working on the profit rather than the product volume. Thus so far, the majority of window user are still very faithful with Jaws, regardless as to how great or bad the products are programed. What i don't understand is whh some company can charge cheaper and have a better product while others can charge what they charge, and make a half hearted product. all these company are working within the blind and vision impaired community, which lets face it, less than 1% of the entire population in the world, and maybe only 20 to 30% of those who are fortunate enough to own a piece of adaptive software or equiptment...
Hello, all.
What I don't understand is why Humanware charges nearly $5,000 for a piece of note-taking device which runs out-of-date software, even with the most current update. Yes, I agree that Freedom Scientific has not come up with anything innovative in the note-taking arena lately, but that may be due to the fact that IPhones and IPads are replacing traditional blindness specific pieces of equipment. For example, I received my BrailleNote, and for some odd reason, the cursor jumps all over the place. Additionally, at leastFreedom Scientific Tech Support is far superior to that of HumanWare. I have never been required to wait an extended amount of time to talk with FS. If I ever needed anything related to Jaws, Freedom was more than willing to assist me.
Secondly, as to whether or not Jaws or NVDA is better, I can't really make an accurate judgment. Admittedly, when I utilized NVDA, it was still in its early stages of development. One item I really appreciated, however, was the fact that I could execute NVDA from a flash drive without having to install Video Intercept drivers. Plus, I tested it out on school computers and it was able to bypass administrative rights! Now, in NVDA's defense, tell me that Jaws can be run from a flash drive, not require multiple licenses without additional drivers? An innovative feature that FS has introduced, I believe is introducing touch support for Jaws. After listening to FS Cast, however, it seemed as if Eric Damery disliked the Window tablets. I know, for instace, that NVDA has had Windows 8 support much longer than that of JFW. Plus, NVDA had touch support, too. I, too, have Boot Camp installed on my Mac, but really haven't had a chance to play with VO that much. A big disadvantage to the Mac is that M.S. Office does not wor with VO. You would think someone could script this? Not sure.
I think what screen reader people choose to use does not dictate how successful he or she will be professionally. Pinacolada,I tink there should be a Jaws give away.
FS hasn't come up with anything in the note taking department howehver maybe they are waiting for windows to be unified as one produt. hear that MS is working on making windows , windows mobile etc so that developers can make one app for everything. i thought how FS could do this, and jaws would work on Windows , and Windows Phone too. ++
Yes, it should be interesting for sure.
If jaws is so great, then why does window-eyes work with the labquest science software and jaws does not? if jaws scripting is so superior why is window-eyes now free for use by going to www.windoweyesforoffice.com and jaws is not? and don't forget window-eyes and nvda use mainstream programming languages, jaws does not. I'm imagining a future where we can finally play mainstream video games for the pc and maybe even x-box with an accessibility overlay provided by nvda or window-eyes or both. jaws? no probably not. I have a demo of jaws15 on here and am not really impressed at all.
Remove it! Why would you want poor software taking up space on your computer?
Yeah what wayne said.
Why keep software that you hate so much?
Way back in 1987, when I got my first PC and a Canadian speech synthesizer card, Slimware by Syntha-voice, I was in another realm altogether. Within six months, my corrected typing was up to 50 WPM and I was reading text files at around 200 to 300 WPM. Then, along came windows. Then, the blind owner of Syntha-voice died in 2001 and aI had to switch to JAWS. That because a friend gave me an old copy that had a couple of installs left. At first, I hated JAWS, then gradually got used to all the new key commands, many which were not as intuitive as those used in Windows Bridge. Ah well...
Now, I put together a new computer, installed Windows 8.1 with sighted help, and discovered that JAWS 15 wouldn't report the log-in password stuff. NVDA loaded and did it fine. Unfortunately, I can't seem to figure out how to navigate with NVDA (where is the screen review...PC to JAWS mode?).
JAWS still won't load properly on its own in Windows 8.1, so what I did is set up NVDA to log-in only, then I do the CTRL ALT J after NVDA reports 'desk top' and goes silent. I'd try using NVDA, but the British/whatever accented voices drive me up the wall. Hey, I'm old and cranky. For the log-on, I use the Windows API female voice, which acts loggy when used with keystroke echo.
So, NVDA logs me on, then I use JAWS. Only, JAWS review says a lot of nothing on many screens in Windows 8.1. What's up there? Some kind of screen writing that it can't intercept?
Also, when I click on APPS links, my keyboard and JAWS go mute. Nothing reported. Then I have to use ALT F-4 to get out and Win M to get back to my desk top.
My main issue with JAWS is the cost. NVDA is by donation, and free, and it installs like a sweet dream, and without a lot of complications. Six years ago, I got my wife a Toshiba lap-top and tried to install JAWS. It wouldn't load at all, but NVDA did so without any problems.
I have no problems with Jaws15 reading the log on screen in windows 8.1. I've never had a problem installing Jaws, nor do I have problems with reviewing the screen in 8.1 either. can you give me some example of what, and where you have problems with jaws15 and windows 8.1?
If I read that post right, the Jaws is a crack version. Might be the reason why.
I also have never had any problems with Jaws on 8.1 nor have I heard anyone that has there computer configured properly having trouble using NVDA either, so maybe it is your machine?
Josh, window-eyes scripts are just as good as jaws? So why are they epically felling in Microsoft Axapta and causing lag issues? Also why is it taking 5 years where I work just to get window-eyes ot work every where in Axapta from Microsoft? NVDA jaws scripted would have done and does this in half the time. yes GW micro is scripting Axapta where I work at this time. We were told to use window-eyes and at the time when I got hired it flat out fell on its face. Its gret for office, surfing but for custom scripting it sucks donky balls. They should have staied with the scritping language GW micro was using before switching to what is being used now. I hear from someone "name will be left out" how its so easy to script for window-eyes yet she can't even script herself.