I understand what your saying. Apple must have an agreement with GW Micro and Window Eyes. About a year or so the Jaws users were complaining that they couldn't read the help files in iTunes. I went and looked at them and they read perfectly fine so I didn't understand why these other people couldn't read them. Then somebody asked what screen reader I was using. I said window eyes why? They didn't believe me when I said that I didn't have any trouble reading it so they demanded proof. Well you know how some of those people are on the list. So I did a copy and paste into a message and sent it to them on list. I will tell you that I've been a window eyes user all my computing life. I won't tell you jaws is second class in my opinion because I've never really used jaws so I have nothing to make a comparison with. I'm sure between the two screen readers they probably have most of the market between them and if one were clearly better then the other then people would be switching. Screen readers aren't cheap. I paid 12 hundred for window eyes 7.5 and 3 SMAs. They are already up to 8.2.0 and I'm minus 1 SMA. I do know that windoweyes lets you choose between a jaws layout or a windoweyes layout. I have no clue if jaws has both or not. Somewhere around here I have one of the free screen readers that will work on a thumb drive. I don't use it because it's laid out differently. Somebody told me it's more of a jaws layout. Be that as it may, other then a play thing, I've never seen any reason to change. I believe most people stick with what they started out with. A friend gave me a copy of window eyes and I suppose had it been jaws, I'd be a jaws user but I personally have nothing against jaws because I just started out with window eyes. And I wouldn't really be interested in a list wide discussion of the various screen readers out there either so thanks so much for writing privately. I really appreciate that. ----- Original Message ----- From: Sieghard Weitzel To: viphone@googlegroups.com Sent: Friday, July 05, 2013 9:26 AM Subject: RE: iTunes and Most Compatible Screen Reader
Hi Alan, I am writing to you directly since while using a screenreader with iTunes is on topic for the list, I didn't want to start a message war about the merits of Jaws versus other screenreaders. The fact is that I have never used another screenreader except just a little bit of System Access to Go when I am doing something simple on a computer which doesn't have a screenreader installed. If buying Jaws and spending $200 every 2 years for the SMA which allows you to always download the latest version is not an issue for you, then I would say that it is still your best and most advanced option unless you want to switch to a Mac in which case you get Voiceover included. I love my iPhone, but when it comes to computers I am a Windows and Jaws person and probably always will be . Jaws is extremely advanced and while it has its issues, so does everything else. If you only need very basic access for email, the internet and iTunes then maybe NVDA or System Access will even do the trick for you and they are either free or relatively inexpensive. In my opinion they are free for a reason and I just think that something that is free most likely is not quite as good as something that costs money which means paid experts are at work to make it better all the time. That is also the reason why I don't have a problem paying Freedom Scientific my $200 or $250 every 2 years to renew my SMA which then gives me access to the next 2 major versions of Jaws. I need this for work and to be efficient and I don't expect Freedom Scientific to add features and improve Jaws for free, no business can work for free and pay their employees to do good work. Yes, Jaws is rather expensive, but the argument that wit Apple you don't have to pay for a screenreader is only somewhat true. Yes, you don't pay more as a blind person to buy the computer, but any Apple user pays more for the computer than you would for a Windows computer. The difference may not be quite as bit any more, but it still exists and if you pay $500 or $600 more for the hardware then this already covers half or more than half of what Jaws costs. Anyhow, that is my 2 Cents worth and as I said, had I put this on the list I would probably have started a huge discussion on how unfair it is that Freedom Scientific dares to charge all these poor blind people to get the latest version of their software and so on. Oh, and by the way, with the exception of a few little things Jaws works very nicely with iTunes and in my book iTunes 11 is absolutely fully accessible with Jaws 14. Things like redeeming a gift card in iTunes are a bit challenging, you may have to turn off the virtual cursor, but since it's so easy to do on the iPhone, I just don't bother doing it on the computer. The main interface is definitely easy to use and I actually quite like iTunes. There could maybe be some more shortcuts, for example, it would be nice if there were a shortcut for activating the "iPhone" button when your phone is connected rather than having to tab around to find it, but they are not huge issues. I think most people who have problems with iTunes just have not taken the time to learn how to use it. Jonathan's FS Casts go over just about everything and I guess you could always go to www.FreedomScientific.com/FSCast and find them if you want to hear a demonstration on how well this does work. Regards, Sieghard -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the "VIPhone" Google Group. To search the VIPhone public archive, visit http://www.mail-archive.com/viphone@googlegroups.com/. To post to this group, send email to viphone@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to viphone+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/viphone?hl=en. --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "VIPhone" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to viphone+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the "VIPhone" Google Group. To search the VIPhone public archive, visit http://www.mail-archive.com/viphone@googlegroups.com/. To post to this group, send email to viphone@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to viphone+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/viphone?hl=en. --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "VIPhone" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to viphone+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
