I used both ASAP and ASAW and they were very interesting
screen-readers.
I have no idea how well using AI as ASAW did would have worked as
Windows and Windows programs continued to develop. It gave pretty
good access in Windows 95 and it was an interesting approach. .
Gene
On 7/24/2022 4:16 PM, David Goldfield
wrote:
Brett, as the focus of the article seemed
to be on Windows screen readers it’s somewhat understandable
that Larry Skutchan’s contributions to the field weren’t
mentioned. He did develop a Windows screen reader called ASAW
which I did use but it never lasted past the Windows 95 era.
If an article on screen leader history
doesn’t include window eyes or ASAP, as well as some of the
international screen readers we’re hearing about from some
of your great folks, this article cannot be that great. I
know, I need to go read it. I will. But, just looking at
this thread, I’m feeling already that this article is not as
good as it could be. I will go read it now and shut up.
Because it doesn’t work anywhere near
as well as window eyes, and it keeps crapping out. I’ll
be in the middle of something, and it will shut up like
somebody pulled the plug. Part of it is because I’m used
to window eyes, and the rest of it is just because it
keeps malfunctioning. Pam.
Sent from
Mail for Windows
From: Gene
Sent: Tuesday, July 19, 2022 8:08 AM
To: nvda@nvda.groups.io
Subject: Re: [nvda] Article on Screen Reader
History (including NVDA)
Is that because you are used to doing
some things another way such as use the WE cursor? Most
of what you do with any screen-reader is to issue program
and Windows commands and certain screen-reader commands
such as read to end, read title bar, and quick navigation
keys on web pages.
In short, since most of what is done with a screen-reader
doesn't involve screen-reader commands, why do you dislike
it so much?
Gene
On 7/19/2022 7:02 AM, Pamela
Dominguez wrote:
I used window eyes from about 2002
until a couple of months ago. I still have the
windows seven computer that has it on it. I like that
screenreader. I have jaws on this windows ten box,
and I hate jaws with a passion! Pam.
Sent from
Mail for Windows
I was a user of Window-eyes for
several years before they sentenced that screen reader
to death. Window-eyes is one the only screen reader is
far I know of ever made a deal with Microsoft so this
way it’s user can use Office for free. Heck, that was
the screen reader my school taught me to use when I
was in seventh grade because they have the latest
version of Office. Right now I’m a heavy user of Jaws
in Windows, and I just recently getting in to Voice
Over on the Mac. I do use NVDA but I’m not a full time
user of it. It is good for an operating system to be
open sourced so this way the end user with vision
problem can have multiple choice to what screen reader
they choose to install on their machine.
Best regards
Michael H> Munn
Yeah, I couldn't get that because you have to have a
Brazilian bank account in a certain bank to get it. I
thought it would be cool to try it. I did have DosVox
though for a while and played around with it some
years ago. There were some cool games, I especially
liked the one where you have to try to land on the
moon. But I had to use a different voice, the native
voice was incomprehensible to me as it was just made
up of a bunch of syllables in wav files. Sounded like
an alien robot. For native speakers it wasn't a
problem, but for me I hated it. Luckily you could use
a Sapi voice with it. It was basically a screen reader
for people who didn't want to have to learn windows.
It had loads of parts like a word processor,
dictionaries, a telnet type client, and a file manager
and I forget what else. Lots of people say it makes
its users lazy for that reason, and they don't bother
learning how to do things with windows and other
programs.
Shawn Klein
On 7/18/2022 6:35 PM, Rui Fontes
wrote:
And everybody have forgoten a screen reader
developed in Brasil, named Virtual Vision...
Rui Fontes
Às 00:28 de 19/07/2022, Gene
escreveu:
the article is interesting and
it has good information about JAWS and NVDA. But
it has problems. It should have said something
about Window-eyes because a lot of people used it
and it was a good screen-reader. It helped in
development of screen-reader innovations in ways
that should have been noted.
But a serious problem in the article is that it
gives the reader the impression that there
shouldn't need to be independently developed
screen-readers if developers of software built
accessibility into them. This is erroneous for
two reasons.
First, yes, accessibility should be built into
programs and operating systems but we have been
better served by screen-readers being developed
outside of operating system programmers. We are
much better off having choices when it comes to
Windows screen-readers. It is a constantly stated
truism that some screen-readers work better with
some programs than others. If Microsoft had
developed a good screen-reader from the outset, we
would probably only have one screen-reader and
even if we would benefit from having more, we
wouldn't.
The article doesn't discuss this at all and the
author is evidently completely unaware of the
arguments about which is better, one screen-reader
developed by the developers of an operating system
or what exists regarding Windows.
I think we are much better off as things are.
Gene
On 7/14/2022 10:06 PM, Laurie
Mehta via groups.io wrote:
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