Hey guys,  Another thing has occurred to me about this.  As you know, 
window-eyes has been under developed for several years.  You might not be aware 
that the personal computer is set to go on the long tail in 2016.  Sales of 
personal computers have been falling by about 30 per sent per year.  April 2013 
was the worst quarter for PC sales in 20 years.  In 2012 smartphones made up 
more than 50 per sent of all cell phone use in the United States.  In 2013, 
Tablet sales exploded and the tablet is poised to out sell the personal 
computer in 2014.  

It will take a long time for corporate and government to catch up, but they are 
both already in the mobile space.  Where do jaws, Window-eyes, and even NVDA 
fit in to the 5 year trend of the over all market?  Especially with IPhone and 
android being very high quality accessibility choices and new accessibility 
features emerging on Blackberry to compete with the other two leading mobile 
platforms.

Remember when windows 3.1 came along and people started competing for access to 
windows?  How many market leading companies raced to add accessibility 
features.  Let's see…  henter-joice, gw michro, synthavoice computers, artic, 
dolphin, AISquared…  How many of those companies, most of whom are still with 
us, have competed for anything in the mobile space?  AISquared, codefactory, 
that's all I can think of.  Humanware and AFB have stepped into the mobile 
space but their efforts have met with mixed success.

Very few of Our so called leaders in accessibility are hungry for shares of the 
new economy the way they were when windows 95 came out and blind people could 
somewhat use it.

Could it be that there is no money or not as much money as we think in the 
window-eyes for office move and that it's part of an exit strategy to keep as 
much value in the product as possible for as long as possible?  I'm sure Dan 
and Doug have rock solid RRSPs/retirement packages  So do Eric and the other FS 
bigwigs.  These people aren't showing the drive to innovate that they once did. 
 They are in fact, stodgy.  What has GW done for us lately?  Proprietary 
desktop applications  for skype and facebook, both of which are much more 
accessible in the mobile space to begin with and both of which are better 
suited to the mobile space than the desktop space IMHO.  It's GW's attempt to 
coast through for another couple of years until the pc space evaporates and the 
heads can retire.

All speculation on my part.  I loved  window-eyes when it was on the cutting 
edge.  I just don't see it now though.

Best,

Erik Burggraaf
Ebony Consulting toll-free: 1-888-255-5194
or on the web at http://www.erik-burggraaf.com

On 2014-01-20, at 5:45 PM, "Christina C." <blindmaclo...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I do not understand all of the ins and outs of this but overall it appears to 
> be a positive thing for blind and visually impaired as well as for others 
> with  various disabilities and challenges requiring adaptive software and 
> equipment. I did crack up at the line about being leaders. LOL! They are 
> behind the ball if you ask me. I love apple and my mac and that is where my 
> loyalties are at this point. I do think this opens doors and that can always 
> be a good thing. Maybe this will benefit me in some way in the future 
> especially since I’d like the ability to use a robust OCR  scanning software 
> with a camera instead of a traditional scanner. Maybe one day I will consider 
> putting windows on my computer with  boot camp or a virtual environment. So, 
> for me this topic is important to discuss even though I am a mac user.
> 
> Christina
> 
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