Brian,
I have used WindowEyes on different occasions but primarily JAWS. WindowEyes has a "application" one can install to make it act like JAWS. This is very handy as many of the keyboard commands are similar. However, one loses a lot of functionality. If it is for personal, fun use or if cost is a major concern, WindowEyes is a great option. I am a transcriptionist by trade and depend heavily on the features of JAWS to get through a lot of clutter on a page or for sound schemes, which is unavailble in WindowEyes. Similar? Yes. Workable? Yes. To me it is like comparing a beach cruiser bicycle to a 21-speed racing bike. Both will get you there, it is just a matter of what you want and how much effort you want to put into it. Lee Anne From: Brian Vogel [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, December 30, 2015 12:34 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Are there any NVDA (or WindowEyes) and JAWS "dual users" or people who've used both here? Anyone who's been around here for more than the last few days and has been reading my posts already knows I'm a sighted tutor who teaches JAWS, among other assistive technology. I'm just throwing that out there for our newest members. As anyone who uses JAWS knows, it's a very expensive piece of software and since Freedom Scientific does not offer any discount or free license to people doing what I do (that I know of) there's no way I can justify the expense. I know that I can pick up a copy of NVDA, the open-source screen reader, from nvaccess.org <http://www.nvaccess.org/> for free. I already have fully functional (but without the high-end voice options) version of WindowEyes as well. What I'm wondering is how similar either one of these might be to JAWS? A friend of mine is a WindowEyes user who can and does occasionally use an older version of JAWS and she glides pretty effortlessly between them and has said that a number of the commands used are the same. There are those times when it would be handy to do some hands-on work by myself in preparation for certain "relatively hairy" systems when I'm going to be teaching someone to use those with JAWS, but since I can't get a copy that remains active for just that purpose I was wondering if either of these other two screen readers might be "parallel enough" to be of some use in getting a feel for how JAWS will work with a given website, etc. Brian
