Hi listers:
All the stuff going on in the AT market made me think back to the 80's. Anyone remember the Speech Plus calculator from Telesensory Systems? Back in the late 70's, it blew many of us away. We had seen calculators, and had our sighted friends and family members demonstrate them to us-of course, we couldn't read the display. Then, here came TSI with a calculator that we could use. Sure, it was a little big, but, we could hold it in our hands, and it had a comfortable keyboard that was easy to learn, and, most important of all, it talked! It cost $395.00. Fast-forward to 1981 or 1982, I can't remember which. Suddenly, Sharp came out with the EL-620. Here was a smaller, lighter talking calculator, with a better speech chip. It did everything the Speech Plus did, and then some. It could read numbers as words, like (four thousand three-hundred forty-five" instead of 4 3 4 5 point oh oh. It You could tell it which way you wanted to hear the numbers. Sure, there were some shortcomings. The keyboard wasn't as comfortable, but, it could be learned. There was no headphone jack, though, Sciencde For The Blind Products sold a model they retrofitted with one. It didn't have rechargeable batteries, but, you could buy an AC adapter. And, most attractive of all, it cost $69.95 retail. Telesensory held onto the Speech Plus for a while longer. But, they stubbornly refused to lower the price-in fact, the price went up to $445.00 before they finally dropped it and went to other things. Could the same thing be about to happen with regard to screen readers? After all, the 2 big players in the market here in the U.S. have been Freedom Scientific and GW Micro. Their products had a similar price point, though, Window-Eyes price was a little lower and you didn't have to pay a higher price depending on which version of Windows you used. Now, we have NVDA, and Microsoft could be stepping up the gain with improvements in Narrator. Could things go in a similar direction? Like the Speech Plus calculator, could the price on the main screen readers actually go up, due to lack of sales, and, one day, could they disappear altogether? I doubt it, for the present, but, it may be something to think about. _______________________________________________ Any views or opinions presented in this email are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Ai Squared. For membership options, visit http://lists.window-eyes.com/options.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com/archive%40mail-archive.com. For subscription options, visit http://lists.window-eyes.com/listinfo.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com List archives can be found at http://lists.window-eyes.com/private.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com
