Harry, look at the difference between the cost of a Mac and a PC. Mac users
are also paying for what they're getting in terms of accessibility, or to
say it another way, the PC users are getting their computers at a lower
price so there's money left over to purchase the accessibility tools we need
to do the computing we want to do.
And to make my point one final time, it's Microsoft that is letting us down.
They are selling us the equivalent of a car without a steering wheel that we
can use, so we have to go to a third party manufacturer to purchase
something that will allow us to drive the car we bought, so how is it that
the third party manufacturer is the bad guy here? Not withstanding the
matter that the initial cost is far too high in my opinion, the third party
manufacturer is at least allowing me to drive the incomplete device that
Microsoft sold me.
Thx, Albert
-----Original Message-----
From: Visually Impaired Computer Users' Group List
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Harry Brown
Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2016 10:10 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [VICUG-L] my conversation with Brian at Freedom scientific
Hi Bill,
Thanks for your great comments!
I will say once again, as I've always said, and I will keep saying it, and I
hope more people will say it as well.
A sighted person buys a windows computer, brings it home, gets it up and
running, and they can read a screen *FOR FREE*!
A blind person, buys a windows computer, brings it home, and has to buy a
screen reader, and has to download and install it, or, get the dvd, and
install it. This, is, immoral.
Even NVDA wants you to pay money, that's crap, too.
Until we can read the screen on a windows computer for free, just like a
sighted person doesn't have to pay to read the screen, we are still, at a
disadvantage.
Has there been progress with Narrator? Certainly, but not enough.
Harry
On 12/12/2016 7:25 PM, Bill Pasco wrote:
> Yep, that has always been JAWS' position. However, it doesn't explain
> how companies like Serotek and NV Access keep sending out upgrades and
> updates without charging additional money for System Access, or NVDA.
> They are not Microsoft either, but they have a more moral approach. I
> could see paying small upgrade fees for major updates, but this policy
> of paying $1,100 up front, then several hundred dollars every single
> year to update is solely based on the fact that they have lots of
> government contracts who don't mind paying it. Though it is an
> advanced screen reader, it isn't perfect. It is bloated, sometimes
> over complicated, and deffinitely over priced. When they were a tiny
> start up as Henter Joyce, I could see how they had to charge a lot.
> But, though they are not Microsoft, they are not small either. They
> have 70 percent of the world screen reader market and are plenty big
> enough to charge a reasonable fee. And, for the record, the blind
> screen reader market is not all that small. That is a red herring.
>
VICUG-L is the Visually Impaired Computer User Group List.
Archived on the World Wide Web at
http://listserv.icors.org/archives/vicug-l.html
Signoff: [log in to unmask]
Subscribe: [log in to unmask]
VICUG-L is the Visually Impaired Computer User Group List.
Archived on the World Wide Web at
http://listserv.icors.org/archives/vicug-l.html
Signoff: [log in to unmask]
Subscribe: [log in to unmask]
|
