Just as follow-up to my original post,
Honestly no, I do not believe that Narator will ever be able to
compete with Window Eyes, just as there are many imperfections in Voice
Over as well. System Access seemed to do the best on that windows 8
Narator demo recording I believe simply because it is simple, it doesn't
require an intercept driver and it doesn't use scripting. NVDA would be
in the same category except it doesn't have the mouse review that SA
does, and no, SA's mouse access is nothing like that offered in Window
Eyes or Jaws. I did say in my original post that I don't use SA on a
regular basis, only for access to computers which don't have a screen
reader on them and ones which I only require temporary access to.
System Access has no public scripting ability and none of the more
customizable features that Window Eyes does. Jaws failed so
spectacularly on that recording because it is so heavily dependent on
scripting, the scripts are based on pre-assumed information about
applications from previous version of Windows and because it kept
crashing when the author tried to run it. I really would have loved to
see Window Eyes on that and who knows, maybe I can track down a
pre-release build of Windows 8 to try it on for the sure sake of
curiosity, but I do believe that Window Eyes would very likely
out-perform the rest of the Windows screen readers simply because it
functions just fine without its scripts which instead of being an
essential part of its functionality like Jaws, rather just add
additional features. So I guess my best understanding of Window Eyes is
it is both simple and powerful at the same time. Even if Window Eyes
couldn't run on a pre-release version of Windows 8 does not mean it
won't function on the final build. It would be unfair to assume that
something won't work when it hasn't even been customized to work on
something. VoiceOver on the mac for all its flashy features and glory
has its own short-comings, for example only the most basic of PDF
support and out of all the podcasts on it I have yet to see anything
informative in regards to doing essential things like word processing.
Yes the Text Edit application works (which is a glorified Word Pad with
a spell checker) and it's rumored that ILife 9 applications work well
like Pages and Numbers but nobody has demonstrated this. Obviously,
Microsoft Office support is proven in Window Eyes. Also, the only
accessible version of any scanning solution to date I know of on the mac
is Serotek's Docuscan product. Mac for all its wonderful features
certainly is not that far along with many things. Apple has put
together some really nice accessibility, but its not perfect. Also keep
in mind that Apple like Microsoft are not specialized in accessibility.
With Window Eyes you have the backing of a company who has been in the
business of accessibility for a good 20 years. They are committed to
providing that accessibility in their products or else they'd be out of
business. Apple or Microsoft are adding accessibility to their products
because they are in competition with each other and because they are
under various pressures to do so, but that does not guarantee that they
will continue to do this, nor that their solutions will function well
for us in the future. They could suddenly decide one day that they
believe that Narator or Voiceover are good enough and stop work on
them. Also, Narator has never been much of a solution to anything
beyond the initial stages of getting in to a computer and getting a more
substantial screen reader going. People have also been asking Microsoft
to make their installation process accessible beyond some sort of
unattended setup for years and today we still have nothing in this
area. So just because Apple did this, doesn't mean that Microsoft
will. I will be sending them another Email and I'd urge anyone here who
feels that having a talking installation process for Windows is
important to do the same, but that doesn't mean that they'll listen. So
do I believe that Narator will ruin the screen reader market on
Windows? No, I really don't. Narator even if they add new commands and
make it able to read web pages, is still very limited compared to
something like Window Eyes, and if various government organizations
start trying to cheap out of paying for more expensive solutions by
saying that Narator is good enough for their clients, I have a feeling
that many visually impaired people will suddenly have a lot more trouble
doing their work in a professional setting. For example, in a corporate
environment you often have proprietary software that they've designed
themselves which may or may not be accessible at all, and in a situation
like that, you need a more powerful screen reader to get around those
problems, or you just may not be able to do the job. On top of that,
you have GW Micro offering a very reasonable solution for those on a
budget being the license to own program which should allow a person to
purchase their copy of Window Eyes on their own. Serotek is also doing
this, though again I feel that Window Eyes offers a lot more
functionality and complexity. The only screen reader vender who isn't
offering this is Freedom Scientific despite many people urging them to
do so, and this will likely be their downfall. On another note, you
have NVDA, which is completely open source and free, and it hasn't
ruined the Windows market. NVDA does an excellent job for what it is,
allows access to many popular applications with a very high level of
accessibility, but it's still got nothing on a program like Window
Eyes. So it comes down to the same sort of thing, you get what you pay
for. If someone chooses to use NVDA or the new Narator over Window
Eyes, that's their choice, but that doesn't necessarily mean that
they'll be as satisfied with those products as a higher-end screen
reader. Perhaps they will and perhaps not, but personally, I keep NVDA
around as a backup option only, not as a main-stream screen reader.
I have had a mac book for a year and a half now, and yeah it's a
very nice machine, you can do a lot of things on it, but I still needed
to have VMware Fusion to do some of the things that you can still only
do under Windows.
So I guess in conclusion here is I just wanted to point out again
that I was not trying to point a finger at GW Micro for not doing
enough, I just wanted to inform people about what is coming and that we
need to be prepared for change whether we like it or not. Personally I
went back to XP because I like it better, but I know the day is coming
that I'll have to move on to 7 whether I like it or not. I definitely
don't think Window Eyes is a bad product, but rather I think it's a
great product, and the level of support we get from GW Micro is
awesome. I pointed out some issues with web accessibility on this list
and we've been told those are being dealt with, yet when I did my review
of Pages and Numbers on my IPhone in my podcasts and then wrote to Apple
accessibility expressing my findings to them, it's been two weeks and I
still haven't even gotten an email back from them saying something like
"thanks for your feedback, we'll take it under advisement", or something
similar. So for those who read what I wrote and are now thinking of
switching over to Apple, I'd strongly advise you to think a lot about
that and weigh the consequences of it, because Voiceover is not the
be-all-end-all. I would not be quick to abandon a product who's company
backs it all the way and is focused only on its continued success,
because our success at accessibility and being able to do the work we
need to do effectively is also Gw Micro's success because they need to
produce a good product that can allow us to do those things.
Finally I'm sorry to those who feel that my post on this topic is
not appropriate to this list, maybe its not, but I feel that the future
of Windows development is a perfectly relevant topic for this list, and
I believe in the end that Window Eyes will function very well on these
new platforms, but for that to happen we all need to be aware of how
things are now and where they're going.
Cory
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