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!