I see this issue from two perspectives. On the one hand, the sad reality
is that, due to the high price of access technology in general and the low
employment rate, there are blind people out there who are just not going to
be able to take advantage of all the benefits of the information age. On
the other hand, as someone who has been employed as a medical
transcriptionist for the past eleven years, I understand the importance of
having software that is well-supported and can meet the demands of the
blind employee in the modern job market. Believe me, I have my gripes with
HJ, particularly the stupid key system, but I also realize that finding
yourself stuck with inferior screen access software and horrible tech
support in an employment situation can be at least a nightmare and at worst
an absolute disaster. Therefore, I personally am willing to pay more for
software that supports the widest number of applications and is going to
keep pace with the real world as much as possible. Despite the great
respect I have for GW-Micro as a company, the fact is that they are now
just getting around to supporting IE4, which JFW has supported for at least
the last six months. If we want to remain competitive, we cannot always be
a year or more behind the rest of the world. With the high development and
marketing costs, and the small market, I don't see any easy solutions. As
far as NT is concerned, I have heard that Windows 2000 is going to be very
much like NT, so perhaps that investment will pay off in the end, and HJ
will be in a better position to deal with Win2000 when it comes out.
Lynn K. Schneider
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Visit the jfw ml web page: http://yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au/~nallan/jfw
