Hi Travis Unfortunately, Freedom Scientific with Jonathan Mosen at the helm seems to have really decided to spend much of the money they rake in from American agencies, Australian agencies and UK agencies and individuals, in an effort to take over the accessibility world in the eyes of the law. If they can't get your money by fair means, as in making their software reasonably priced and as stable, optimal and usable as possible, not to mention as easy to buy as possible, they'll get it from you by playing dirty. It's natural that they should see other developers as competition. But to try and bully them to the point of driving them out of business is really a bit unpalatable to many, including me. On a personal note, Freedom Scientific and their UK dealership Sight And Sound, between them conned me out of a lot of money a few years ago. I bought a copy of JFW 3.0 from Sight And Sound here in the UK. I also bought a SMA (Software Maintenance Agreement) which should have entitled m e to the next two major upgrades free of charge. However, when the next upgrade came along, I didn't receive anything. I contacted Sight And Sound and was told that my serial number was no longer registered in my name according to their database. One of their sales people looked on another database and sure enough, he found my address and details attached to the sale of my serial number. However, when he contacted his line manager and also Freedom Scientific, they refused point blank to honour my agreement because the upgrade had been sent to the new owner. So essentially, I lost my access and I determined there and then after a heated discussion with the then president of Freedom Scientific that I would never purchase a product from that company again. I did speak to my legal adviser and he told me that although I could probably take action against Sight and Sound, ultimately it came down to Freedom Scientific's responsibility to rectify the problem and, since they we re based overseas, it would cost me a great deal of money to pursue legal action against them even if I were to win. So reluctantly I had to cut my losses and walk away. But to this day I remember how I was treated and will never deal with that company again no matter how good their products become.
On a more general note, I think it's really sad, although not particularly surprising, that accessibility has become more of a battle ground these days at least in the Windows market. Perhaps that's why Apple is so rigorously determined to keep everything in-house. Gordon On 4 Jun 2012, at 15:23, Travis Siegel <[email protected]> wrote: I would just like to point out (for the record) that everyone seems to use the capslock these days as a modifier for the screen reader. That in and of itself isn't a major deal. However, it seems that freedom scientific has been jumping on everyone it can lately for the slightest encursion into what it considers to be it's territory, including anything with the word freedom in it's name. This isn't new, but it does beg the question, what would they do if I decided to slap a suit on them for stealing the capslock idea from windowbridge, the first windows screen reader, to which I now own the rights. Of course, I'd probably not bother with such nonsense, but it is an interesting intellectual exercise. ======================================= 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> ---------------------------------------
