If JAWS and Freedom Scientific want to remain in business, then they need
to sharply improve the out of the box experience, stop releasing annual
versions which are buggy and take half a year to resolve, and put the
price at a reasonable competitive level. Freedom Scientific, like so many
others before them, have tried to rule the market with predatory legal
practices, monopoly thinking, and size. NVDA and System Access have proven
that a leaner more customer friendly approach can work. If JAWS wants to
compete in the long run, it needs to become competitive using it huge size
to put money into reliability, innovation, and reduced pricing.
-----Original Message-----
From: Visually Impaired Computer Users' Group List
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ana G
Sent: Thursday, October 10, 2013 2:40 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [VICUG-L] jaws 15?
I haven't tried Jaws 15, and I can't imagine it being better, stronger, or
faster than previous versions. My experience is that each version of Jaws
gets slower, that the new features are gimicky, and that bugs take a while
to get corrected, so I've been upgrading only when I have to.
For example, I'm using Jaws 13 on my Windows 7 machine because it works
just fine. I bought a Windows 8 laptop to learn Narrator. Narrator is
tantalizingly close, but it's not ready yet to be a screen reader. I held
off on buying Jaws 14 for it until I actually had a few scary moments with
my main computer, but I haven't installed it because I'm working on
getting better acquainted with NVDA.
At this point, I hang on to Jaws because it does a few things better on
some advanced features of Word, which I use a lot, and on a few features
of another program I use for translating.
NVDA handles other programs equally well, and it handles the web a lot
better. In fact, more and more, I find myself automatically switching to
NVDA for web tasks because Jaws frequently fails to correctly identify
items as things I can click, and it also fails to activate them even with
cursor routing and mouse simulation. When I was relying on Jaws, I'd go to
a website and find myself performing some tasks with Firefox and others
with Internet Explorer because Jaws wasn't letting me click, because Jaws
had focus issues, and because Jaws was inconsistent about refreshing the
screen. Since I've started using NVDA more often, I can go to a page in
one browser or the other and stick with a single screen reader. NVDA isn't
perfect, but the experience is smoother and more reliable over all.
I too am waiting for Narrator to finish growing up. True accessibility is
off-the-shelf at no additional cost.
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