[nfbcs] The Mac Beckens

[Nicole Torcolini]

	Thank you. I was going to say earlier that I do not think
thatMicrosoft could buy NVDA, but I did not have the adequate knowledge of
the history of NVDA to support my claim.

-----Original Message-----
From: nfbcs [mailto:nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of John G. Heim via
nfbcs
Sent: Sunday, January 17, 2016 7:24 PM
To: NFB in Computer Science Mailing List
Cc: John G. Heim
Subject: Re: [nfbcs] The Mac Beckens

It's hard to say if Microsoft can buy nvda. Lots of people contributed code
to that project under an open-source license.  That didn't stop Oracle from
buying MySql, for example, but they can't just make that private. And in the
case of MySql, it was a corporation that created the product and made it
open-source. I don't think nvda was created by a corporation. I believe it
was created by a group of unpaid volunteers.

What Microsoft could do is throw buckets of money at the nvda project and
dictate how they spent it. Even if it's not legal to donate to a non-profit
and then dictate how the money is spent, as a practical matter, the people
running a non-profit know that their source of funding will dry up if they
aren't responsive to the requests of the donors.

I think it is more likely though, that Microsoft will put an improved
version of narrator on it's mobile devices in order to satisfy the
requirements of the 21VACC.



On 01/17/2016 05:12 PM, Gregory Kearney via nfbcs wrote:
> Everyone;
>
> I would like to address this matter from a wider perspective. I will not
engage here in a Mac vs. Windows debate which is a bit like arguing about
whose religion is better than whose. Rather I would like to look at some
history and long term trends.
>
> When Microsoft first envisioned Narrator, which was long before Apple's
VoiceOver. It was promoted as a built in full scale screen reader. Microsoft
at that time went to the NFB and presented the idea to various parties. What
they were told was that a built in screen reader would limit consumer choice
as having a screen reader as part of the OS would, in effect, wipe out the
market for third party screen readers such as JAWS or WindowEyes. This is
very likely true as later events would show.
>
> Fundamentally there are two approaches to screen readers. The first is
like JAWS where the screen reader is adapted the programs which are run. The
other approach, followed in the Windows environment by NVDA is to build a
screen reader that follows all the accessibility standard of the OS and then
expect the applications to be modified to meet those standards. This by the
way is the approach that VoiceOver employs as well.
>
> The problem for screen reader companies going forward is that the
computing market is undergoing a major change in the coming decades as we
move away from computers to mobile devices. The two major vendors of which
are Apple with it iOS platform and Google with the Android platform. In both
these cases the screen reader is part of the OS. No one builds a third party
screen reader for tablets and the ones that at one time existed for mobile
phones are no longer offered as the phones upon which they ran are not
offered either.
>
> Given this state of affair the decision by Freedom Scientific to not build
a Mac version of JAWS so many years ago (pre MacOS X) now looks to be a
particularly bad given that Apple and then Google would end up in dominate
market positions in the emerging platform.
>
> Another issue is one of the market for screen readers. While it is true
that the blind make up but a tiny minority there is a potential screen
reader market far greater in size. Persons with profound dyslexia are three
times as numerous as the blind yet this population of screen readers
consumers remains virtually untapped.
>
> It would seem clear that moving forward the market would move further and
further away from the third party screen reader and towards ones that are
part of the OS given that the future of personal computing lies in personal
mobile devices which have come to dominate the world's, and in particularly
the developing world's markets where the real growth in this century will be
found.
>
> At some point I would expect that Microsoft will either upgrade Narrator
to be the full scale screen reader they intended or buy out an existing one,
most likely NVDA given the technical design considerations involved. However
by that point the personal computer market will likely have shifted away for
the personal computer to the personal device which will have their screen
readers as a basic part of the operating systems of those devices and thus
will be the end of the screen reader market as we know it today.
>
>
> Commonwealth Braille & Talking Book Cooperative Greg Kearney, General 
> Manager #320, 185-911 Yates Street Victoria, BC V8V 4Y9 CANADA
> Email: info at cbtbc.org
> Web: www.cbtbc.org
>
> U.S. Address
> 21908 Almaden Av.
> Cupertino, CA 95014
> UNITED STATES
> Email: gkearney at gmail.com
> Phone: +1 408-780-6535
>
>
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