I definitely agree that going through a learning curve every few years 
for improvements that are mostly not earth shattering is hard and 
inconvenient, as is spending money on a new version of various software 
packages. I also agree that there's no need to hurry out to buy a new 
computer, etc., if the old one is working fine and will be replaced soon 
enough.


What has bothered me about the whole Windows 8 / windows 10 upgrade is 
that most people in the assistive tech industry have not helped our 
community by providing information that is honest and balanced. Instead 
of pushing through the learning curve and saying, "Windows 8/10 does A, 
B, and C well. some problems are D, E, and F, and workarounds are ....," 
they put a lot of energy into spreading information that has ranged from 
the incomplete to the inaccurate and they've actively encouraged our 
community to keep buying Windows 7. We went through the same thing when 
Voiceover was introduced and are still going through it with respect to 
android.


As a community, I think we need to be more open to the idea that 
inclusion is often different from what we think it should be, that 
inclusion often asks us to behave and think in ways we're not used to, 
and that inclusion often involves an element of risk. The payoff is 
usually worth it, but we need to be willing to try new things, think in 
new ways, and take new action to address issues we honestly believe to 
need remedy.


For example, as a community, we complain about paying for a new version 
of Jaws every year, yet we don't learn or teach one another NVDA, which 
is now robust enough for use in many educational and professional 
settings. We and our advocacy organizations don't push Microsoft to make 
Narrator a full-fledged screen reader. Instead, we continue learning and 
teaching Jaws, encouraging our organizations to tell Microsoft to work 
with Jaws, and reaching into our pockets to pay for Jaws updates. I'm 
not picking on Jaws because its inherently evil. I'm using it as a 
symbol of the many things wrong with the assistive technology industry, 
which does as much to help people work and participate in society as it 
does to keep them from doing both.


I'll get off my soapbox. It isn't my intention to offend.


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