Re: Honest discussion, why pay for and use jaws over free screen readers?
For me, JAWS has a few good things about it.
* The developement team are full time, paid employees with at least some structure, I'd hope. They also probably haven't changed much over the years.
* JAWS is a single package, that has enough scripts to do most things an employee needs to do.
* JAWS stands for Job Access with Speech. This means, to m at least, that it is more geared to employment and use by people on the job. This means JAWS can't be sluggish with Microsoft Office, should read things in an *efficient* manner, and should be as configurable as possible for meeting the needs of employees who use it.
Now, to me, NVDA works fine because I know how to use it well and what addons to get. I load it with good sounding voices, because Microsoft's Windows 10 voices have aweful pauses and boring entonation, and all they have done so far is patch Narrator to not pause for so long. I have the clock addon to keep up with the time, and use programs that work well with NVDA.
But a JAWS user, some one who may have just gotten hired, would want to be *productive* and *efficient* in their work, not hunting down an addon and using an obscure program to get something just about good enough. No. They want to get to work, and they need a screen reader that is ready to work as hard as they do.
Now, I don't agree with their pricing, they just love to have money and they know that bisunesses and governments will give it to them. But for home use, NVDA. Jobs, use what wis effective for the job.
One thing I've learned, through giving my computer multiple operating system disorder from switching from Windows to Linux to another Linux and Windows to Linux... Is that you shouldn't use something just because of ideology, especially if you have a disability. Sighted people could use Linux just fine, even in work situations most likely, if they stick with Debian or something. But for blind people, use what is effective and efficient and gets the job done well, not something where you have to fiddle around and learn markdown or LaTex or Org-mode and set up Gnus or Mutt or Seamonkey or fiddle with Thunderbird's compacting settings and make it not hog resources and such, taking valuable time when you could just be getting your work done.
This is why I used a Mac during my internship as an Assistive Technology Instructor: I knew it well, could fly through email, write documents well in Pages, and had a Windows machine to use NVDA with Google Docs with because Google and Apple aren't on such great terms.
All in all, at home, use NVDA, give them some money if you can, and learn stuff. But on the job, focus on the job, use what makes you fast, effective, and efficient.
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