<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
I don't make a habit of posting all of my blog entries to this list,
as some of them don't involve technology. However, since my latest
entry is about the 20th anniversary of JAWS, I thought that some of
you might enjoy taking a brief stroll down memory lane. Here it is.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Episode 102 of Freedom Scientific's FSCast podcast reminds us that
2015 marks the 20th anniversary of the JAWS for Windows screen
reader. In fact, Jonathan Mosen reminds us that January is, in fact,
the month in which JAWS turned 20. I remember installing and using
JFW 1.0 back in January of 1995 and I thought I'd dedicate this
short blog post to some of my early memories of that product and of
that time in general.<br>
In 1995, I was working for Blazie Engineering providing technical
support. Windows 3.1 was a fairly well-established operating system
with several Windows screen readers already available, including
Blazie's own Windows Master which I believe was already out at that
time. While I had used Windows 3.1 and was familiar with it on a
very basic level, I was a dedicated DOS user. While I was very
familiar with Vocal-eyes and JAWS for DOS, ASAP from Microtalk was
my screen reader of choice, along with a trusty Braille 'n Speak as
my speech synthesizer. <br>
It was during the end of 1994 or the very beginning of 1995 when we
received our boxed copy of JAWS for Windows 1.0, with January 19,
1995 being the official launch date of that product. If you really
want to read a piece of classic assistive technology history, you
can, courtesy of the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, read the <a
href="https://web.archive.org/web/19961105222131/http://www.hj.com/news1294.txt">December
1994 Henter-Joyce newsletter </a>which, among other things,
contains the big announcement regarding JFW 1.0.<br>
Around this time, I found out that I had enlarged tonsils which
needed to be removed. As I constantly used my voice to do my job, it
was recommended that I stay home for two weeks during my
recuperation. This was, I decided, the perfect time to finally dive
into Windows 3.1 with our new copy of JAWS for Windows, version 1.0.<br>
The box contained a collection of cassette tapes with tutorials
recorded by Eric Damery and Ted Henter. Eric's voice is very
familiar to JAWS users as he annually introduces the new features
which are being added to new JAWS versions. Eric has participated in
these recordings since the very beginning of JFW and, even in the
1.0 days, was a fabulous and professional presenter. I think that
the product was often referred to as JFW or JAWS for Windows more
than it is today as Henter-Joyce wanted to distinguish it from the
other JAWS product which ran on DOS machines.<br>
Once I listened to some of the tutorials, I installed the product
onto my Windows 3.1 machine from the included 3.5 inch floppy disks,
followed by the authorization key, also on a floppy, a form of copy
protection I had previously never heard of and was having some
difficulty wrapping my mind around. After all, in those days most
software packages never had any sort of copy protection; you
installed it and then used it.<br>
Well, the installation and authorization process went smoothly and,
soon thereafter, I had JFW working with my trusty Bns 640. After
all, for the most part we had no software-based synthesizers at that
time and so you needed a bns, Accent, Artic, Audapter, Dec-talk or
Doubletalk to get speech, with no Braille support at that time.<br>
They wanted JFW to feel like JAWS for DOS by giving it a PC cursor
as well as a JAWS cursor. It included the insert-G hotkey to label
graphics and the insert-T hotkey to read the window title, two
features we didn't really need in DOS. Insert-down arrow was the
"say all" key and the other keys on the numeric keypad tried to
emulate what we were used to with JFD. I remember that first version
crashing quite a lot but this was quickly fixed in an update which I
probably downloaded from the Henter-Joyce BBS.<br>
If you're curious about what was added in JFW 2.0, you can go to
their <a
href="https://web.archive.org/web/19961105222322/http://www.hj.com/jfw95_n.htm">announcement
</a>on an old version of the Henter-Joyce home page, also courtesy
of the Internet Archive.<br>
Those early versions would have seemed so limited to us compared to
what we have today, but back then it was cutting-edge technology.
The JAWS cursor could only move within the active window. When using
the Internet, you had to press insert-f5 to reformat the page, which
you read using the JAWS cursor. You couldn't freely navigate through
a Web page using standard reading commands with the PC cursor the
way you can with any screen reader today. If my memory is correct,
that capability didn't get implemented until version 3.31. In fact,
the ability to use single letter navigation keys, such as pressing H
for heading or N to jump to the next block of text wasn't even
implemented until a later version, probably around 3.5. <br>
What more can I say, except a happy 20th birthday to JFW, or JAWS as
we now call it. JAWS has certainly come a long way in the past 20
years. I wonder what it will be like 20 years from now. I'm sure
that it will be supporting Windows 43 or whatever OS Microsoft will
have pushed out to us and we'll all have fond memories of running
our screen readers on those ancient, primitive Windows 7 computers.
It's too bad that the Internet Archive doesn't supply us with
snapshots of pages from the future.<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">-- </pre>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Feel free to visit my new Web site
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.DavidGoldfield.info">http://www.DavidGoldfield.info</a>
Feel free to visit my LinkedIn profile
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.linkedin.com/pub/david-goldfield/12/929/573">http://www.linkedin.com/pub/david-goldfield/12/929/573</a>
Visit my blog
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://davidgoldfield.wordpress.com">http://davidgoldfield.wordpress.com</a>
Follow me on Twitter
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.twitter.com/davidgoldfield">http://www.twitter.com/davidgoldfield</a>
David Goldfield,
Founder and Peer Coordinator
Philadelphia Computer Users' Group for the Blind and Visually Impaired
To learn more about the users' group, visit
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://davidgoldfield.wordpress.com/2014/04/20/updated-faqphiladelphia-computer-users-group-for-the-blind-and-visually-impaired/">http://davidgoldfield.wordpress.com/2014/04/20/updated-faqphiladelphia-computer-users-group-for-the-blind-and-visually-impaired/</a></pre>
</body>
</html>