I might add that Malcolm, who worked as a ranger at Yosemite near
Fresno where I lived at the time, initially called his PC
screenreader Vocal-Eyes and I was one of the beneficiaries. He had
originally designed it for a fellow ranger at Yosemite who was only
partially sighted. I still see his name on the lists
occasionally. Bill Grimm was then naming all his software releases
Whatever-talk, so when Malcolm teamed up with Computer Aids, the
program was renamed Screen Talk. When Doug Geoffrey took over
Computer Aids, he named his screen reader Vocal-Eyes. Apparently
Malcolm had no objection to that. Actually Doug wasn't even aware
that the name had been used by Malcolm. Later GW Micro released
Window-Eyes for Windows as, as you know, Vocal-Eyes was a DOS screen reader.
Dave
At 04:02 AM 10/17/2016, you wrote:
I don't have time to write a very long message, but here's a little
of the story.
In the early 1980s Bill Grimm formed a company, Computer Aids
Corporation, to create software for the Apple II family of
computers. They teamed up with Malcolm Holser to create a screen
reader for DOS called Screen-Talk, which was released in 1985, which
I bought and used. In 1986 Screen-Talk was linked with ProKey, a
macro program, and its functionality was extended. Somewhere in
there, Doug Geoffray was hired as a programmer. In 1988 Computer
Aids released the Sounding Board, an ISA-compatible speech
synthesizer that used the SSI-263 speech chip that was common in
those days. Dan Wyrick did major work on that project. Near that
time Bill Grimm died.
Dan and Doug put together a new company, GW Micro and marketed the
new-generation DOS screen reader as Vocal-Eyes.
The first Windows 3.0 screen reader was OutSpoken, released in the
summer of 1992. Later came Automatic Screen Access for Windows and
JAWS for Windows. Window-Eyes 1.0 came out quite late, in late 1995.
It worked with Windows 3 and 3.1, even though Windows 95 was already
out and had no screen reader support from anyone at first.
Window-Eyes 2 was the first W-E version to support Windows 95, and
came out in the spring of 1997, I think.
The revision history of Window-Eyes is on the GW Micro website,
going way back; it is instructive to read it to see where we have come from.
Lloyd Rasmussen, Kensington, MD
http://lras.home.sprynet.com
-----Original Message----- From: Drew Clark via Talk
Sent: Monday, October 17, 2016 3:56 AM
To: Window-Eyes Discussion List
Subject: history of window eyes
hi,
i am interested to find out the history of window eyes, who created it
and how it was started. is there any webpage/audio podcast that
interviews the g and the w behind gw micro?
thanks
--
Sent using window eyes.
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