Well to be honest what we really need to remember is why we got jaws, before freedom scientiffic became the real bad boy it is now, and other readers.

Back in the dos days there was no accessibility at all.

Nothing much came from microsoft's end.

This continued through to windows 95.

In windows 98, microsoft started the active accessibility libraries which improved things but not that much.

In 2003 or there abouts with help from gwmicro the direct chain manager was done so you could handle readers in a multiple chained process, before that you made your own chains but they were unstable.

Basically the first screen reader was your video card, which was part of the next reader up till the end, the last screen reader was your video card.

Start one out of sync, run 2 at once, remove and or uninstall things in an unordered fashion and you broke the chain.

There were 2 ways to fix this.

1.  remove the chain, reinstall the video drivers and make another one.

Or just reformat.

Which I did a lot of.

You needed technical experience to make the reg files for  the chain and while I got dolphin support to construct one, it was as fragile as a glass window, and not that good.

The dcm became mirror drivers in vista and 7 and then in windows 8 microsoft started the universal access librarys we all love and loath.

The reason jaws and others existed was simply because microsoft didn't come to the party till late.

Even when xp to 7 came up, microsoft never really put much into narator.

It was just after the laws came in going against those that didn't make stuff accessible.

It probably also helped that after the death of outspoken and all the new laws, apple not only showed that it could make an accessible reader but showed off that it could make something better than waht was about at the time.

Voiceover has its limits of course but it is in all the programs and devices now.

Google, same with talkback but there were others at first in droid.

So eventually microsoft had to move.

The reason we are seeing the reader industry shrinking now is possibly because microsoft is pulling its weight and attempting to catch up to all the rest.

Now narator is nothing against nvda but its close.

Narator is not jaws.

But its big enough as a bold new kid on the block, not fully grown mind you that it is shifting mountains if only smaller ones.

Time will tell with businesses if this means the death of jaws or other readers, sadly dolphin seem to be in no hurry to improve at any speed so sadly they may die.

I have used their stuff for ages now but still.

Of course the fact we are using a more or less web based interface both inside  of our oses now and online on websites and web based programs does help.

There was a time where anything went and while there are a few bad acters about its not as bad a landscape as it was 5 years back.

There is one end of the road in the screen readers though.

And this isn't actually jaws, either we have reached the inovation curve and thats not likely because nvda is still inovating things.

Its almost like the comercial guys can't be bothered either that or ms is moving to fast with their current model.

Or maybe we can accept that most of them have just about done everything they set out to do and who knows.

As an os, while I really like win10's ease of use, search, and a few other apps, and shortcuts, the only reason I wouldn't go back to 7 is simply because 10 in some ways needs less shortcuts to get things done and less key presses.

On the flipside without my hacking tweaking tools win10 would be quite hellish.

On the systems I admin which are not mine there are issues, and I hate ribbons.

Most everything else I can get used to.