Hello Paul I'm not in a position to argue the exact stats and figures, so I wouldn't like to in any way contradict your quotes. However, Apple has shown what's possible if the developer is prepared to play ball, so to speak. The number of vision impaired people using their products is rising rapidly; even Freedom Scientific's own vice president is an iPhone user I believe. So although I see your point, I really think it's a case of milking the customer for all they can get.
Lynne On 27 Dec 2011, at 17:52, Paul Hopewell wrote: HI Lynne, Although WindowEyes may seem expensive it and other assistive technology products have a small market compared with mainstream software. Last time I looked the GWMicro team was about 20 strong and they all have to be paid. The cost of employing each person could be around 100 K dollars including costs like office space. to support this GWMicro has to make around 2 million dollars a year, which means they have to sell around 4000 copies of WindowEyes a year. Software pricing critically depends on sales volumes which will always be small for specialised areas like assistive technology. Now to someone like Apple or even Microsoft 2 million dollars a year is a small sum which they can easily absorb. the only way to get affordable assistive technology is for it to be included in mainstream products like Apple or for it to b provided in a not for profit way like NVDA and Thunder. The latter though cannot bring sufficient resources to bear to keep their offerings fully up to date with the ever changing user environment. So lets not be too harsh on GWMicro.! Best regards.... Paul Hopewell ======================================= The Techno-Chat E-Mail forum is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free To modify your subscription options, please visit for forum's dedicated web pages located at http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/techno-chat You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Techno-Chat group at either of the following websites: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/techno-chat/index.html Or: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]> you may also subscribe to this list via RSS. The feed is at: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml> --------------------------------------- ======================================= The Techno-Chat E-Mail forum is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free To modify your subscription options, please visit for forum's dedicated web pages located at http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/techno-chat You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Techno-Chat group at either of the following websites: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/techno-chat/index.html Or: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]> you may also subscribe to this list via RSS. The feed is at: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml> ---------------------------------------
