Re: The Death Of ScreenReader Innovation an article by former FS employee
Thought this and another one of Mr. Hofstader's entries were posted elsewhere on here, but oh well. I won't reiterate here the comments I posted on his blog because I think people can just read them at their leisure. But suffice it to say I honestly have to agree with him, for the most part. I have frequently spent time at my folks' house for various things, and a sister of mine who is visually-impaired lives there. She is pretty much a beginning JAWS user, and I have been helping her out with various computer-related tasks. I can honestly say that I have been less than impressed with the overall functionality of these most recent JAWS versions. For example, it seems that just to change a voice setting now requires multiple somewhat convoluted steps whereas in early versions it was a simple task to adjust all these settings to one's liking. I'm by no means saying that my sister should be forever banned from using JAWS again even if she did use another scre en reader alongside JAWS, or that anyone else for that matter should be banned from using it. Please note I did say "alongside" and not "in conjunction with," as only one screen reader should be run at a time to avoid mixed messages. At least this is what I've been told. Regarding the price of these things, I am of the opinion that FS charges weigh too much for their software. I've never really used any of their hardware products so can't comment on those. I did own a Braille n' Speak and then a Type n' Speak, each for a rather brief period of time. They worked very well for me. I love the 2 screen readers I'm using now, those being NVDA and System Access to Go with access to my SAMNet account. I have since had computer issues, but those I've mentioned on here previously. But I really do think both SA and NVDA are the wave of the future. Serotek has some very good purchasing options, and my experiences with their support both vi a phone and email have been very positive. Although there is currently no US-based phone support in place for NVDA, I've been extremely happy during the short time I've used it. Regarding the supposed name-dropping, I don't really know what to think. I guess as long as he hasn't said anything bad or untrue about these people, it's okay.
URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=154876#p154876
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