[Blindmath] Ai Squared joins VFO, home of Freedom Scientific and Optelec

[White, Jason J]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Blindmath [mailto:blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Joseph


> Not only that, but it also kills one of the main drivers of innovation and
> motivators for a company to do a decent job. That is, competition.
> Effectively, there is now exactly one source you can go to for screen reading
> software for windows. (I'm not counting NVDA here since it's open source and
> uses a different model) If the company doesn't want to support something, or if
> they decide to be nasty to their customers, nothing you can do. They can set
> prices however they like and you have no recourse. (Other than creating a new
> company, switching to open source solutions, or not using Widnows that is)

There is also Dolphin, but it isn't relevant for purposes of this discussion since, so far as I know, it has no support for MathML content.

Baum used to maintain a screen reader for use with their braille displays - but again, to the best of my knowledge, it never supported MathML and does not appear to be under active development anymore.

Those of us who use other operating systems extensively (Linux, Mac OS, Android, iOS or Chrome OS, for example) are used to the screen reader's being part of the operating system (either installed by default or as a package supplied in the operating system distribution).

Microsoft Windows was traditionally the exception whereby the user had to buy a screen reader from a company other than Microsoft in order to gain access. MS-DOS was the same in this regard.

IBM's OS/2 screen reader was freely available, so I'm told, but then IBM and Microsoft parted ways over the OS/2 project, which slowly died. I remember being given an OS/2 screen reader demonstration in 1998, but by that point, OS/2 was clearly on the way out.


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