Hello; I understand your frustration and feel your pain. I'm a mac
user because i was frustrated by the quality of windows laptops and
having to convince one of three different vendors that it was their
fault when something didn't work. but the truth here is different
positions in the marketplace and different philosophies. JFW has a
screen reader specifically for blind people a small market that the
number dictate you must charge high prices to make good profits.
Whether that is correct or not is not the subject here. but in
apple's case they aren't offering the voiceover because blind people
are a large market that spends lots of money they do it because their
company philosophy is to believe that offering universal access will
lead to long term growth as the population gets older and people with
failing vision, hearing, or motor functions will come to or stay with
mac. There are very few companies in any industry taking the long
view any more but that's the difference here. Good for mac and lets
pray for freedom that they can reevaluate their mission and approach
and become a better stronger company in the future. for all of
apple's progress, windows still dominantes the market on computers and
a good economical screen reader for those machines will always have a
future. thanks and take care, max
On Jun 6, 2010, at 4:57 PM, Yuma Antoine Decaux wrote:
Honestly, sincerely, from the bottom of my heart and soul which have
both seen heard and experience many horrid things in life, this
whole freedom scientific thing is monstrous.
I was sighted not long ago, and believed that accessibility tech and
other handicap related accessories were subsidized, given by right
by governments or organizations.
After my accident, and looking for access solutions with my friend
at the hospital, i first tried a free but weird screen reader which
name i can't even remember. Then came window eyes, then JAws
appeared on google.
It seemed ok when installing the trial. Remember that at that point,
anything that would allow me to still use the computer was nothing
short of miraculous. I didn't even know how a screen reader worked.
I then decided to purchase it and thought it would be priced like a
microsoft Office or even a windows OS. Boy i was wrong, and suddenly
frustrated, angry and bewildered by that 900USD price tag.
So i immediately looked for an alternative to this ridiculous and
stupid purchase. Consider that adobe products do far more complex
things, that a full 3D package with over 2000 paremeters features
including modelling texturing animation special effects rendering
and post rendering, plugins, tools extensions, extensive manuals,
network solutions for renders and awesome rendering engines for
various 3d styles of drawing cost just a little over a screen
reader, the latter which can be downloaded with a modem with all its
features. you can stick Jaws on 6 floppy disks. You need 6 DvDs to
have the Autodesk 3D studio max 2010 edition properly installed on
your systemm.
I tried to make abstraction, think that screen readers were
extremely complex things with totally insanely arcane code under the
hood, that all these gigabytes and gigabytes of data from
professional softwae i used pre accident were just being overpriced.
That Quality of the software was in compact elegance and not bloated
media stuffings. In short, that i got screwed with all my previous
graphic intensive software and that Jaws was written by the hand of
god. OK i was just being utterly sarcastic :)
Then my father came to visit me at the hospital, and vraught over
his macbook 13 inch late 2008, and told me that he found out it had
a scren reader, though the voice was seriously whacked.
When Fred came up, somehow my dad decided that was the best voice in
the bunch LOL, i wasn't impressed, but gave it some patience and
learned bit by bit all of what blind computering would be.
And i installed a cracked copy of Jaws which i then used for less
than a month because my mac experience was so much better. It wasn't
even worth trying with a free version, if you technically looked at
it. Believe me, i have made the round of manuals forums and tips for
jaws stuff. I still got all the nuance voices somewhere. But the
jaws itself is just crap.
Now i have a macbook pro 17 inch, learning the mac server
environment and about to get my hands on a mac mini server for my
own business, and have all my devices synched perfectly with mac
software that does way more than a screen reader and costs a
fraction, a bite of what Jaws costs albeit being more essential to
my work environment. These arses at FS thought they could play with
a blatant fact of life in blind individuals and make them believe
that they couldn't work properly without their software. Its
freaking backwards communism. It's dope dealing, its stealing pure
and simple.
I don't want a freaking pack mate that probably hulks around like a
satellite phone unit. I don't want an OCR that i can't carry around
and that costs 1000USD. Seriously, a thousand bucks for an OCR? I
got the iphone and its beautifully integrated for my business card
reading..
And i would never, not for a long shot, not if i was stuck with
scrabble on saturn, consider installing JAWS. I hate the limitations
on its spatial navigation anyway. TO put it simply, i need a cosmic
experience when i use the computer otherwise it depresses the crap
out of me.
One thing i always opposed in life is injustice. I have seen it
everywhere since i was a kid, because we travelled a lot in the
family, and during documentaries and reports i would interact with
subjects from various communities and ethnicities. I have grown to
love the environment and its people, no matter how they are or looked.
And i have a sensibility to people with lesser advantages by
genetics or fate, than me.
And when i see that these people from FS try to suck out all the
money they can from blind individuals whose median has a high
unemployment rate, and to find out that those who are skilled,
positive and professional in their work, are set back by all the
bugs and bullshit that FS gives them, whetehr through the software's
rigid feeling navigation concept or its dodgy tech support line. I
get a gigantic whole in my chest. This level of unfairness is
prehistoric. It's like the days of miracle potions that cost a
fortune to Ladies of the victorian age which were little jelly fish
collagen drinks laced with cherry flavor. These now cost something
like40 cents at any convenience store.
It's like playing with inflation to justify artificial costs and to
lobby around like its gold standard when its an overpriced over
speculated and obsolete means of combustion. Think BP the oil spills
and hybrid cars of the future.
I'm happy someone else is taking over, happy that they are loosing
the quote unquote market share in screen reader tech, i'm happy that
macs are so stable. Happy that this mailing list exists.
I'm happy to be sitting under my apple tree.
But being human, i hope they get their acts together and shift the
paradigm to serve their customers who paid them dearly for a half
baked system they don't even know how to use. Its not fair to keep
this mental slavery going, and blind users have more important
things to do than to worry if their screen reader is going to hold
in a critical situation or when they need it to simply speak out
what they want it to speak out. Computers are here to serve us we
are not here to nurture the computer with bug reporting and fighting
for jaws after getting the cold shoulder from its creators. This is
sickening to the bone and it has to change.
Yours truly,
PS: sorry for this long post, i will make sure to drink coffee
before getting on the terminal next time.
Best regards,
Yuma DX®
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