Jaffar Sidek <jaffar.sidek10@...>
ah yes! that is true.
On 3/4/2019 12:20 PM, Sarah k Alawami
wrote:
toggle quoted messageShow quoted text
You forgot narrator, it's an upcoming screen
reader but it to me deserves a place in the standing tall
category.
On 3 Mar 2019, at 18:37, Pascal Lambert wrote:
Thank you. Eloquently stated. Ditto.
Blessings
Pascal
-----Original Message-----
From: nvda@nvda.groups.io [mailto:nvda@nvda.groups.io]
On Behalf Of Jaffar Sidek
Sent: Sunday, March 3, 2019 9:32 PM
To: nvda@nvda.groups.io
Subject: [nvda] NVDA the miracle of modern assistive
technology
Hi all. In 2006, when Michael Currant conceived the idea
of developing an open source screen reader to neutralize
the high cost of commercial screen readers, and when he
and James Teh founded NVAccess, The feeling going around
was that sooner or later, this upstart in the screen
reader industry would shortly be gobbled up by the more
recognized players. Well, Window eyes has gone down the
proverbial plug hole. SaraTech and Dolphin has gone almost
quiet, and the two left standing proud and tall in the
boxing ring is JFW and NVDA. These are the facts, not mere
conjecture, and the facts are clear enough to see. Why am
I writing this? Financial reward is a big factor in
motivating a company to work towards improving a product.
However, the demand for immediate rewards can also lead to
a product being rushed out in the hope that it will
satisfy the needs of the customers as well as filling up
the company's coffers. But hope is one thing, delivery is
another vital factor. I do not have to revise the recent
debacle experienced by the end users of Windows 1809. Jaws
is now into it's 2019 version. Yet their new driver is not
as stable as it should be and there are complains about it
from users and Jaws scripters alike.
And what about NVDA? O yes! NVDA does have it's quirks, No
software can avoid that. But there is an almost daily
alpha version released that tries to fix reported issues.
Then we must not leave out a dedicated community of users
who do their very best to help in the form of advise and
tutorials, some even dedicating part of their website to
put up materials for reference for those who need them.
And then there are those from the community who help with
NVDA's development, Translators who help translate NVDA
itself and it's numerous addons into the many languages,
and the addon developers who develop addons that make NVDA
more than just a mere screen reader, All these done in
their own spare time and without the apparent rewards in
dollars. Which reminds me, Is there a clock addon for JFW?
Which brings me back to motivation. I did earlier allude
to the fact that monetary reward is a big incentive. But
you know, humanity can be a bigger incentive than finance.
For most blind people, and especially for those living in
the poorer countries, just getting a working computer
makes a dent in their pockets. Add the cost of a screen
reader and the dent could be astronomical. NVDA has
provided us from rich and poor regions of the world with
another alternative, and that in itself is a modern
miracle. And, most important, NVDA, as I said earlier is
not just a mere screen reader. It goes way beyond basic
screen reading tasks like browsing the web or checking
emails or formatting documents. It works seemlessly with
programming IDES like visual Studio, and Android Studio,
just to name a few, and then musicians use it in
association with DAWS like Reaper to make music as a hobby
or as a profession, and broadcasters benefit from addons
developed for Station playlist studio. I use both Jaws and
NVDA, and I had to pay almost 2000 Singapore dollars to
get my new version of Jaws. And after all that, I had to
pay for some scripts by independent Jaws Scripters to make
jaws work with some applications. NVDA is open source and
free, it's addons are free, and therein lies the
difference.
How then can a thread about NVDA dying be ever posted is
way beyond my understanding. Negative posts like this are
rather disturbing because it could put a huge dent into
the efforts of all concerned with NVDA's development. And
one must not forget the extraneous update routines put out
by Microsoft which not only affects NVDA but JFW as well.
Pardon this long and rambling email, but I felt that I had
to pen my thoughts onto paper, as it were, just to remind
ourselves that we do owe these people dedicated to ever
improving NVDA a huge debt, and to remind us all that as
long as this great effort continues, NVDA will be far from
dying a slow death or disappearing into the ether. To me,
NVDA is, and always will be a modern miracle. Cheers!
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