Re: [Audiogames-reflector] The Death Of ScreenReader Innovation an article by former FS employee
Re: The Death Of ScreenReader Innovation an article by former FS employee You know, the chief reason I stopped using JAWS was when I discovered that it lacked intonation with its Eloquence voice. Some of you may know that OpenBook supports this feature, and so as NVDA. But JAWS does not, and I do not like hearing the robotic voice of that screen reader. I just wrote Freedom Scientific to make that suggestion and they told me they passed it onto their products management team.Also, it seems to me that vocationl rehabilitation agencies say they support a screen reader as long as it is JAWS or Window Eyes, but not Supernova (Hal), NVDA, or Thunder. These last two screen readers are free and although Ido not like Thunder and System Access as much as I used to, still, there are a ton of screen reads but one gains more popularity over another. NvDA takes up much less space than JAWS or Window Eyes put together, yet many who ae authorized to stay with JAWS stay accustomed to it. When I first started using JAWS I went with the flow. But when I was exposed to a lot of other voices, I realized that there had to be a solution. So I stopped using JAWS, and if they included that inflection feature I might reconsider.URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=155101#p155101 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com http://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: [Audiogames-reflector] The Death Of ScreenReader Innovation an article by former FS employee
Re: The Death Of ScreenReader Innovation an article by former FS employee Thought this and another one of Mr. Hofstader's entries were posted elsewhere on here, but oh well. I won't reiterate here the comments I posted on his blog because I think people can just read them at their leisure. But suffice it to say I honestly have to agree with him, for the most part. I have frequently spent time at my folks' house for various things, and a sister of mine who is visually-impaired lives there. She is pretty much a beginning JAWS user, and I have been helping her out with various computer-related tasks. I can honestly say that I have been less than impressed with the overall functionality of these most recent JAWS versions. For example, it seems that just to change a voice setting now requires multiple somewhat convoluted steps whereas in early versions it was a simple task to adjust all these settings to one's liking. I'm by no means saying that my sister should be forever banned from using JAWS again even if she did use another scre en reader alongside JAWS, or that anyone else for that matter should be banned from using it. Please note I did say "alongside" and not "in conjunction with," as only one screen reader should be run at a time to avoid mixed messages. At least this is what I've been told. Regarding the price of these things, I am of the opinion that FS charges weigh too much for their software. I've never really used any of their hardware products so can't comment on those. I did own a Braille n' Speak and then a Type n' Speak, each for a rather brief period of time. They worked very well for me. I love the 2 screen readers I'm using now, those being NVDA and System Access to Go with access to my SAMNet account. I have since had computer issues, but those I've mentioned on here previously. But I really do think both SA and NVDA are the wave of the future. Serotek has some very good purchasing options, and my experiences with their support both vi a phone and email have been very positive. Although there is currently no US-based phone support in place for NVDA, I've been extremely happy during the short time I've used it. Regarding the supposed name-dropping, I don't really know what to think. I guess as long as he hasn't said anything bad or untrue about these people, it's okay.URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=154876#p154876 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com http://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: [Audiogames-reflector] The Death Of ScreenReader Innovation an article by former FS employee
Re: The Death Of ScreenReader Innovation an article by former FS employee Thought this and another one of Mr. Hofstader's entries were posted elsewhere on here, but oh well. I won't reiterate here the comments I posted on his blog because I think people can just read them at their leisure. But suffice it to say I honestly have to agree with him, for the most part. I have frequently spent time at my folks' house for various things, and a sister of mine who is visually-impaired lives there. She is a JAWS user, and I have been helping her out with various computer-related tasks. I can honestly say that I have been less than impressed with the overall functionality of these most recent JAWS versions. For example, it seems that just to change a voice setting now requires multiple somewhat convoluted steps whereas in early versions it was a simple task to adjust all these settings to one's liking. I'm by no means saying that my sister should be forever banned from using JAWS again even if she did use another screen reader alongside JA WS, or that anyone else for that matter should be banned from using it. Please note I did say "alongside" and not "in conjunction with," as only one screen reader should be run at a time to avoid mixed messages. At least this is what I've been told.URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=154876#p154876 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com http://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: [Audiogames-reflector] The Death Of ScreenReader Innovation an article by former FS employee
Re: The Death Of ScreenReader Innovation an article by former FS employee Small quibble: I believe the manufacturing cost for an Iphone is about $220, but otherwise excellent analysis. My point was simply that this is not news and happens in every sector of the tech business.URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=154864#p154864 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com http://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: [Audiogames-reflector] The Death Of ScreenReader Innovation an article by former FS employee
Re: The Death Of ScreenReader Innovation an article by former FS employee On a slightly related note, is the battery for the PACMate QX400 supposed to be electrical-taped to the PC Board? The guy at radio shack immediately concluded someone had tried replacing the battery once before, based on how it looked, though we were given the impression it was new when we got it.(It's like FS went out of their way to make it non-user-serviceable. )URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=154855#p154855 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com http://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: [Audiogames-reflector] The Death Of ScreenReader Innovation an article by former FS employee
Re: The Death Of ScreenReader Innovation an article by former FS employee The actual computer components in the PACMate, by today's standards, the entire sum of the processor and memory, I can buy that, as a consumer, for $35, or less and get it running Linux in a snap. A Raspberry Pi is more powerful. The computer components, with equivalent power of a Braille 'N Speak, including the buttons to have some sort of rudimentary input, the needed support circuitry, and everything including file storage except the integrated speech chip (no one uses these anymore, save for products like calculators, so i discount it): maybe $20. To get storage, add an SD card, any model will do, the equivalent of a PACMate is the lowest end one you can find. The keyboard is most likely just a premade laptop keyboard, easily also ordered from somewhere else, probably also for $10 or so. Plastic molding can be automated, involves a mold, and can easily be made accessible given FS's size. Besides, who's to say that b lind people put the actual device together, or that they even designed it i the first place? Given the inexpensiveness of plastic and the fact that the shape isn't significantly exceptional, they can probably outsource it for a few bucks per case, so long as they order in bulk. Is 400 the exact value? Probably not. Is 400 close? Definitely. If you don't believe this, or want to disprove me, I'm sure that a bit of research can yield the needed information to do so. In all honesty, given that the keyboard for the BX model is custom, that one might have a higher cost, but again, not significantly. If human labor is needed, it can easily be minimum wage, too. The circuit boards are probably printed, which means that there's only exactly one slot for everything, with a little card and a picture. if you can solder, someone can teach you to put them together with no prior technical knowledge; if you can't, they can add the training for the soldering iron and make it take a day, possibly with a week of supervision to ensure quality. These devices look complicated, amazing, and etc. The manufacturing process is cheep.After this point, I elaborate, support, and expand on my above explanation/argument. You may choose to stop here if you don't care.Consider for a moment the iPhone. They're selling it to you for $600. They have to fold in the support costs for all stores and employees. The manufacturing cost is low. how low? I don't know, but easily only a 5th or so of the actual price. They are now much, much more powerful in terms of computing resources than any blindie note-taker I know of. The companies that make these need only hire 4 or 5 tech support staff, do not need to maintain stores, and don't necessarily even need to continue fixing bugs after a point. To elaborate on this last point, we can consider software development, or development of any sort, a bit like the military. If you are passionate and money does not factor into our decision to a high degree, this analogy breaks down. Most companies are not. Consider countries and their armies. My army (product) must get better to counter your army, so you can't kill all my citizens (customers). But if I'm the only country on the planet, I need a very small, ineffective army; merely enough to handle internal conflicts, and keep order. Without any army, any other citizen can single-handedly take over the government, after all, but I don't actually have to worry about anything else. These companies are a bit like that. I would not be surprised to find out that one or more of them don't have programmers all the time, or hire programmers on contract when needed. There is no other army taking a hit at them, so it merely needs to be "good enough" that someone will buy it. After that point, only passion causes continued development, and any continued development is an immediate loss. I think this is why we see the cycle to some extent: Humanware releases Braillenote, Freedom Scientific releases one that's slightly better after a few years, Hims (or whoever it is) comes out with the BrailleSense that does all these things and happens to be smaller (easy because of major technological improvements since the last new one on the block)...yet, none of these suddenly get announcements of 5 new software applications in the next update, and they have spans of 5 to 10 years with no improvement. The companies behind them need only maintain a minimum presence and convince to buy them for their clients. This is, obviously, extreme; in truth, it's probably a bit better than this. But it is closer to this than to the other extreme: all companies care, doing their best for their beloved customers.URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=154831#p154831 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com http://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listi
Re: [Audiogames-reflector] The Death Of ScreenReader Innovation an article by former FS employee
Re: The Death Of ScreenReader Innovation an article by former FS employee If we take this narrative as accurate, something I am moved to be skeptical about, given the author's experiences, then this is nothing more than the story of a technology company going along its normal life cycle from innovator to coasting conservator to fossilized shell. Apple did this, then got a reprieve. Microsoft has arguably done this as well, going off on to side projects that weren't part of their core competency while their main market coasts along. Google's innovation trajectory is beginning to flatten, though with the specifically visionary nature of its founders, it may be that the Goog will continue throwing moon shots into the innovation space, some of which may have legs.URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=154686#p154686 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com http://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: [Audiogames-reflector] The Death Of ScreenReader Innovation an article by former FS employee
Re: The Death Of ScreenReader Innovation an article by former FS employee I don't know the details of working with plastic-molding, but I don't expect it's inaccessible. (*Grumbles about not realizing how to get useful information from the internet until it was too late* ... *''Cause otherwise I could tell exactly how accessible plastic-molding is* )If I could just get out of the house/buy things/avoid making a ridiculous electrical engineering error, I might have modded an Android tablet to have tactile feedback by now. For $200, tops. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=154655#p154655 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com http://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: [Audiogames-reflector] The Death Of ScreenReader Innovation an article by former FS employee
Re: The Death Of ScreenReader Innovation an article by former FS employee Interesting Camlern. Can you make things like the Pacmate in your own factory? Lol. I think I get what you wrote, but I'm not sure on how to make a device on your own as portable as the Pacmate. A computer, a keyboard and a braille display have to be melted in a plastic box. I have never melted plastic as blind, but I could imagine that would be hard to master.URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=154642#p154642 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com http://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: [Audiogames-reflector] The Death Of ScreenReader Innovation an article by former FS employee
Re: The Death Of ScreenReader Innovation an article by former FS employee camlorn wrote: The way OSX works does allow for another screen reader, and one that presents similar to Jaws could be an improvementexactly my point!it's not about if "x" is good enough, but could FS have done a better job, had it persued the idea?URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=154605#p154605 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com http://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: [Audiogames-reflector] The Death Of ScreenReader Innovation an article by former FS employee
Re: The Death Of ScreenReader Innovation an article by former FS employee The way OSX works does allow for another screen reader, and one that presents similar to Jaws could be an improvement. The point here isn't that it would work like jaws from the programming perspective or even that it would work like jaws at all; the point is merely that FS could probably have done a better job. What people seem to forget is that FS is now a bad company by the opinions of many including myself, but used to be much, much better. They were the first to think of a lot of original and innovative ideas, and even NVDA emulates concepts that jaws was once on the cutting edge of developing. mr. Hofstader is on a mac almost full-time by choice, and agrees with my opinions on the subject-if all you need to do is e-mail and some routine tasks, you can get by. Let's not turn this thread into another Mac vs. Windows thread, however.As for the PACMate, well, yes. It can easily cost only $400. I purchase the equipment and raw materials, and run it through my own factory, and I can cut costs a whole lot. In truth, given demand, you could probably tack the needed equipment onto your main office building-it wouldn't even need to be a particularly large room to manufacture braille displays in. The original research costs more, but manufacturing? Yeah. Even if it's $1 per dot, giving us $320, leaving $80, well...the hardware that's in the PACMate can easily be obtained for $80. I can get an equivalent computer (see Raspberry Pi) for $35. Add keyboard ($10, maybe $20), and plastic molding (mold yourself, and you only need the plastic, which is cheap), and you come out to $400 or barely, barely over it. It costs so much because there is no law saying they can't charge as much as they like, people need it, the companies that develop it aren't interested in causing prices to spiral down and, in short, you or your supporting organization buys it.&nb sp; if everyone stopped buying them, by which I mean really everyone including the people who aren't on this forum and the people who run schools and etc, it would suddenly become much less expensive. We're at the end of the age of the note taker anyway, so the point is probably moot.URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=154584#p154584 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com http://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: [Audiogames-reflector] The Death Of ScreenReader Innovation an article by former FS employee
Re: The Death Of ScreenReader Innovation an article by former FS employee I didn't like it. Thank God the damn thing's obsolete. And, as far as I'm concerned, it can stay that way.URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=154526#p154526 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com http://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: [Audiogames-reflector] The Death Of ScreenReader Innovation an article by former FS employee
Re: The Death Of ScreenReader Innovation an article by former FS employee At Chris: Something about the pricing in the article is totally wrong, otherwise that's the price for a pacmate without the Braille display.At Chandu: What features in Mobile speak do you want as you see in Jaws? Please give some more details on that. Well, the pacmate is Freedom scientifics version of screenreader for Windows Mobile. Do you like the Pacmate?URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=154504#p154504 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com http://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: [Audiogames-reflector] The Death Of ScreenReader Innovation an article by former FS employee
Re: The Death Of ScreenReader Innovation an article by former FS employee at SLJ,yes, a math tool for blind would have been extremely useful, and personally, "mobilespeak for windows phone," is nowhere as good as "JAWS for windows." and I believe, if there where a "JAWS for windows phone," it would've made a huge difference.and yes, the way he mensions the names of his former coworkers, seem, um, a bit, irrisponcible?at CAE_Jones,even if "$1/dot" is the case, still there is a rather large profit involved, right?URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=154494#p154494 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com http://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: [Audiogames-reflector] The Death Of ScreenReader Innovation an article by former FS employee
Re: The Death Of ScreenReader Innovation an article by former FS employee That does seem unlikely. Costs for braille display production are usually measured in dollars per dot. At $1/dot, it'd cost 320 dollars to build a 40 cell display. I think $1/dot is still the goal that people have rather than reality, though. Maybe they're doing some kinda mass production discount?URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=154487#p154487 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com http://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: [Audiogames-reflector] The Death Of ScreenReader Innovation an article by former FS employee
Re: The Death Of ScreenReader Innovation an article by former FS employee Hi.So you're telling me it only cost $400 to make the packmate, braille display and all?This, well if this is indeed true then I don't get it.URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=154484#p154484 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com http://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: [Audiogames-reflector] The Death Of ScreenReader Innovation an article by former FS employee
Re: The Death Of ScreenReader Innovation an article by former FS employee I agree with what was said by Chris. Freedom Scientific is fueled by greed. A2l of them are.URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=154482#p154482 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com http://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: [Audiogames-reflector] The Death Of ScreenReader Innovation an article by former FS employee
Re: The Death Of ScreenReader Innovation an article by former FS employee what?How do they get away with selling the packmate for 5000 dolllars when they only paid 400 dollars? Does the 400 dollars also include the braille display?If so, why are they selling it for way more than that?What about other devices like the braillenote and braillesense. Are they just overpricing stuff so they can make money from the blind community?URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=154470#p154470 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com http://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: [Audiogames-reflector] The Death Of ScreenReader Innovation an article by former FS employee
Re: The Death Of ScreenReader Innovation an article by former FS employee I hear you, Exodus. If they can build them so cheaply, maybe I should just build my own? It might cost more than it would for a company with a factory, but if it's less than $3000, it's an improvement, right? URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=154448#p154448 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com http://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: [Audiogames-reflector] The Death Of ScreenReader Innovation an article by former FS employee
Re: The Death Of ScreenReader Innovation an article by former FS employee I was never too keen on commercial screen readers. Why should a blind person pay more than the sighted person for a screen reader?URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=154442#p154442 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com http://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: [Audiogames-reflector] The Death Of ScreenReader Innovation an article by former FS employee
Re: The Death Of ScreenReader Innovation an article by former FS employee reading the bit about the pacmate again... It just makes me want to puke my guts outURL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=154427#p154427 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com http://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: [Audiogames-reflector] The Death Of ScreenReader Innovation an article by former FS employee
Re: The Death Of ScreenReader Innovation an article by former FS employee Hi.Well, the only interesting project he mentioned which someone haven't looked at before is a great math tool for blind. Otherwise, others has already made something workable out of those ideas. Lol.Jaws for Mac OSX? No, way! The way Jaws works, the way FS works, the way Mac OSX works and finally the way Voiceover works would just make Jaws for Mac a bad screenreader. I don't agree that FS might be able to make a better screenreader for Mac, since the technologies which are still used in Jaws 15 is old school. I'm talking about the Jaws cursor and the video intercept driver.Jaws for Symbian? Oh, my gard. Code factory blow that idea to hell by releasing Mobile speak on more platforms than FS ever will make Jaws to work on!Then I don't like the way he is mentioning the other people from FS he was working together with. If I was one of those, I wouldn't like to have my name mentioned like this.Otherwise, interesting, really inte resting article. It's very well written, contains lots of nice information and I agree on many other things he's saying.Thanks for sharing this.URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=154404#p154404 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com http://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: [Audiogames-reflector] The Death Of ScreenReader Innovation an article by former FS employee
Re: The Death Of ScreenReader Innovation an article by former FS employee if you ask me, some of those canseled projects could have changed the whole face of blindness related technology.URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=154379#p154379 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com http://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
[Audiogames-reflector] The Death Of ScreenReader Innovation an article by former FS employee
The Death Of ScreenReader Innovation an article by former FS employee I'm so shocked by this article written by a former Freedom Scientific employee. What do you think?The Death Of Screen Reader InnovationBy Chris HofstaderJuly 20, 2013Note: The "talx" he was talking about is the nuance Talks that symbian uses today."On the Monday of Thanksgiving week 2004, I walked into my St. Petersburg office for the last time as a Freedom Scientific employee. I had, at that point, been at the helm of the FS software engineering department for six years but, as Lee Hamilton, then CEO of Freedom Scientific told me that day, I was, “no longer capable of managing the team.” He was right, I had burned out very badly and was in terrible physical and mental shape. My repetitive strain injuries (RSI) caused me constant pain and the Vicodin prescribed by my physician had too many cognitive side effects to permit me from having a clear enough mind to perform my tasks while the steroidal injections I received for the same injuries had intense emotional side effects that felt like I was on cocaine or methamphetimine.While my final few months at Freedom Scientific were a personal disaster for me and not too good for FS or its customers, I am very proud of the many things we accomplished during my six year tenure. During that time, Eric Damery, Glen Gordon and I invented a ton of new screen reader features now seen in all such utilities on Windows.What Did We Accomplish?In my time at FS, six years ending in November 2004, our little team released versions of JAWS beginning with 2.51 (a minimal update to fix an authorization problem in the 40 minute demo) to JAWS 3.31, the first screen reader to add what is now the essential virtual buffer on the Internet in all screen readers to JAWS 6 the last JAWS in which I participated. In those release we added new and interesting features with each revision and pushed the user interface of screen readers forward every six months or so.In that period at Freedom Scientific we:‧ Invented the virtual buffer concept for delivering web information to JAWS users.‧ Invented the idea of querying applications through a private interface to gather and present information to our users – a concept used today in JAWS, Window-Eyes, NVDA, System Access and Orca screen readers.‧ Provided the first ever ways of reading charts and graphs in a major screen reader.‧ Advanced usability of office suites in a way never previously seen in a screen reader.‧ Invented the now ubiquitous “QUick Keys” style of navigating web pages more efficiently.‧ Added the JAWS “Speech and Sounds Manager” for adding tonal augmentations to information, thus, expanding the number of simultaneous semantic dimensions enjoyed by users.‧ Added features to “intelligently” skip beyond repeated information on web pages.‧ Added features to recognize similar documents and spreadsheets and automatically apply a set of adjustments for reading the data.‧ And many more innovations in screen reading user interfaces that you can find by looking up the “What’s New” sections of the release notes for these JAWS releases..Returning To WindowsI hadn’t used a Windows computer or a Windows screen reader in more than five years but, recently have found that VoiceOver on Macintosh can’t provide the level of support I need so, I downloaded and installed VMWare Fusion, Windows 7 and NVDA. Once everything was up and running, I started exploring this terrific free screen reader.The first thing I noticed was that NVDA has adopted many of the ideas that we invented in JAWS. I breathed a sigh of relief when I realized that, thankfully, most of our innovations happened before FS became crazy about patent applications and aggressive lawsuits so our most important ideas seem to have made it to other screen readers and it’s nice to see my work so widely accepted in virtually all Windows screen readers and in Orca on the GNU/Linux platform.I continued to read the NVDA documentation to see what new and noteworthy concepts have been invented in the nine years since I walked out of Freedom Scientific on that November morning. The first thing I found was a gesture based navigation system, a notion first introduced by Apple in VoiceOver for iOS and adopted by NVDA first and, based on statements made at CSUN this year, will be added to JAWS this autumn. I looked further and found nothing new. I read up on JAWS, once the hands down leader in innovation and found nothing new there in many years either.So, in a decade, the only new ideas in screen readers have come not from a small, highly focused screen reader company but, rather, from a mainstream super power. Ted Henter’s prediction that big mainstream companies making screen readers would result in a failure to innovate seems to be partially true, Apple innovated at first but has allowed the OSX version of VoiceOver to deteriorate and they haven’t expanded on really good ideas that are present but incomplete but, contrary to
