In my opinion, sadly, it seems like Window-eyes has some sort of issue
with most, if not all Mozilla developed products. The other day I was
listening to a Blind Bargains interview with Gw Micro's Doug Geoffrey (I
apologize for the misspelling) who was specifically discussing Adobe's
flash technology as it relates to Firefox. According to Doug, there is
an ongoing issue there which Gw Micro already knows about but which Doug
said needs to be worked out between Mozilla and Adobe, the ability for
Window-eyes to switch languages on the fly doesn't seem to function at
all in Firefox, the Window-eyes page refresh rotor doesn't seem to work
or be obeyed by Firefox, the hotkeys to read by paragraph don't work at
all for me in firefox, there are probably other issues that need to be
resolved that I'm just not aware of because I'm not a developer.
Thunderbird (Mozilla's email client) which I use is usually extremely
sluggish on my machine, unless of course I manually lower the
Window-eyes process priority to either below normal, or low; It could
just be me, but I'm not very impressed with Window-eyes hotkey support
or functionality with Thunderbird at all. In short, I'm just sayin',
there's two Mozilla products that I know of right there and neither one
of them work anywhere close to exceptionally well with Window-eyes. Oh
how I do wish I were a programmer sometimes. If I were, I think I'd
develop my own screen reader, and it I think would be similar to, if not
the same as, NVDA in terms of pricing, but which would simultaneously
provide at least the same level of functionality as Jaws and
Window-eyes, but in truth I'd do my best to best everybody in the screen
reader industry? Is that the right word for the screen reader arena? Is
it big enough to be called a quote unquote, industry? Well anyway,
semantics aside, I saw first hand the other day via a list like this
that there are hard core (if not fanatical) supporters of Gw Micro, who
strongly dislike any criticism of Gw Micro. Well, guess what all you
hard core supporters, I'm not sayin' that I don't support Gw Micro, heck
I own, and daily work with, Window-eyes 8.2.0.0 professional! Having
said that, guess what, it's a free market and a free world, and
everybody in the United States of America is free to say whatsoever we
like, good or bad! The fact is, everybody blind who I know or work with
gives Window-eyes, and Gw Micro by extension, the cold shoulder and
doesn't want anything to do with either! I think that's unfortunate, I
also think it's unfair and unjustifiable, but it's a free market like I
said, and unfortunately Freedom Scientific for the time being continues
to maintain it's dominance of the screen reader arena. Not to mention
that Gw Micro I feel like should work more aggressively with companies
like Adobe, and Mozilla, and also with companies that have, up to this
point, not traditionally been considered like telephone companies, cable
companies, Satellite service providers, appliance manufacturers,
electronics manufacturer's, public transit system designers, Etc.. I
don't mean to sound mean Gw Micro, but you have simply got to do more if
you ever hope to have even a chance at competing with Freedom Scientific
in any sort of meaningful way. I genuinely do wish things were
different, and in this case more favorable to Gw Micro. The fact remains
though that if there are applications that sighted people use, that Jaws
can work effectively with but which Window-eyes cannot, well, that's not
going to do anything good at all for Gw Micro. Gw Micro, just so that
y'all know, I have personally submitted at least six or seven crash
reports to Mozilla regarding both Firefox and Thunderbird, in which I
mentioned you, and Window-eyes specifically, by name. I have not even
once received a response back from anybody at Mozilla, not even from a
third party developer or anything. I'm a user, I've tried submitting
crash reports to Mozilla, what have you done or what are you doing Gw
Micro? If the lack of compatibility is Mozilla's fault, I encourage you
to aggressively try to get in touch with someone in authority at
Mozilla, who can more fully understand, and who can then more fully
provide support within their company for, what you all at Gw Micro are
trying to do. Does anybody else here agree? Is anybody else willing to
offer Gw Micro some additional, but constructive, criticism? Now days
it's all about connecting right? Connecting via facilities like
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Skype, Tango, Heytell, Voxer, etcetera
etcetera etcetera. Right? So then, how would you personally advise Gw
Micro regarding their current standing in the screen reader arena, and
regarding the steps they should take to move forward and remain relevant
in today's society and economy? I know we're supposed to be helping one
another out with tips and tricks for Window-eyes, and various other
applications, but if the applications themselves are only partially
functional, even if there's not a lot that we can personally do, perhaps
there is something that the coders at Gw Micro can do. Perhaps you are a
programmer yourself. If that's true, please, write to Gw Micro and tell
them how to fix their app if you can. Write to app developers themselves
and tell them how to make their apps more accessible to Window-eyes. Gw
Micro, you most importantly I feel like, should focus in a big way on
making yourselves more relevant and visible in the software industry
world wide. Let more software development companies know that you exist,
and what your goals are, and see if you can't arrange a mutually
beneficial relationship with one another. I get the feeling that not a
lot of software development companies are even aware of screen reading
technologies at all, or only basically at best. Meaning that I feel like
at a lot of companies, if I broached the subject of screen reader
technology with them, they'd just say "Oh okay, I get it, it makes the
computer talk to you out loud.". There is however so much more that
happens behind the scenes so to speak that makes that possible. More
companies need to know more about the nuts and bolts of what makes
screen reading technology possible, and one unique aspect about Gw
Micro's development environment in particular is that they (Gw Micro)
don't require that developers learn any sort of proprietary programming
language to make software compatible with Window-eyes. Gw Micro, I think
if you were to emphasize that, that may be one major key to increasing
your visibility and to making software developers more amenable to
working with you. What I'm sayin' is, Gw Micro, you can get out of the
slump that I at least, as a relatively astute professional perceive you
to be in. Imagine what it could be like if you had the opportunity to,
finally, at long last, after all these years, work hand in hand with big
name, industry leading, professionally appraised and recognized software
designers and leading consumer brand product manufacturers, knowing that
your technology beginning in the year of 2013 helped to make access to
those services possible. Case and point? TVs. Why not approach somebody
like Samsung Gw Micro, and why not make Samsung TV features 100%
accessible out of the box, with your existing technology providing that
access, world wide. Why not? I know I know, you've never been associated
with anything like that before. Well get associated! As another example,
do you have any idea how many of us blind people would love to be able
to use our DVRs at home to program what we want to watch, when we want
to watch it but can't because they're not accessible? Get in the game Gw
Micro and make them accessible! You can do it! Freedom Scientific has
all but stolen the PC screen reader market, but you could dominate
emerging markets. Why not?
Respectfully submitted,
Brandon Dean Miller
On 6/29/2013 9:00 PM, GW Micro Product Discussion Listserv wrote:
3 Messages:
#1
Subject: RE: Firefox 22 Rocks!
From: <[email protected]>
Date: Sat, 29 Jun 2013 12:05:19 -0500
Reply-To: <[email protected]>
I wish I could get pages to stop randomly refreshing and booting me to the
top of the page. I had hoped NoScript or Webvisum would thwart this
unwelcome behavior, but nope. I'd also like to know why when FF locks up, WE
speech is affected. I use the Eloquence that ships with WE, BTW.
Lou N.
-----Original Message-----
From: Max G. Swanson [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Friday, June 28, 2013 7:02 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Firefox 22 Rocks!
The autoupdater just fed me the new Firefox 22. It's reading things I've
never seen before, albeit minor ones on my Web mail
It seems as though this one deserves its status as a major increment in
FF's development. Worth circumventing autoupdate to grab it, IMHO!
If you reply to this message it will be delivered to the original sender only.
If your reply would benefit others on the list and your message is related to
GW Micro, then please consider sending your message to [email protected] so
the entire list will receive it.
GW-Info messages are archived at http://www.gwmicro.com/gwinfo. You can manage
your list subscription at http://www.gwmicro.com/listserv.
