Re: I'm kind of concerned about the culture surrounding usability
@Orko
I realize I may come off as being overly harsh on Freedom Scientific, really I don't have many problems with Jaws or their products and they have certainly done some good. But I also believe it would be naive to think that a for profit conglomerates intentions are altrustic, from a financial perspective they directly benefit by maintaining the status quo as primary accessibility distributors. I agree that standards are important for collaboration, but my concern was more that FS could use groups like The Paciello Group and their position as "professional" accessibility experts to push standards that directly benefit their proprietary products while excluding competitors like NVDA.
If being "compliant" in that case means favoring FS products, proprietary scripting, and standards it could help them gain a dominant market position, and you only need to look at [Mylan] and the Epipen for an example of how that could play out. Insulin Injectors save countless lives and were legally mandated to be on site in schools and public institutions, with Mylan's Epipen being the primary supplier. They've used that position to push out competition from the market and establish a monopoly, consistently increasing the price upwards to 600$ for a single 30$ device, gouging governent and insurance providers.
Now maybe VFO wouldn't do that and maybe The Paciello Group will continue to do good unbiased work, I certainly hope they do. But I'd keep a close eye on them all the same.
@brad
FS also has a [90-day trial bundle] for 179$ for Jaws & MAGic you can renew, although unlike the student payment program there's no mention of owning a full licence over a period of time.
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