[Ohio-Talk] Real life JAWS experience

[Cheree Heppe]

There are many hooks by which an organization might be held back, turned from its original purpose or made to push for something undesirable.

In this latest 2021 Washington seminar, there is a primary proposal by the National Federation of the Blind to get the federal government to support funding to embed a monopoly on the JAWS reading system, with language to block any other ways For blind people or agencies to purchase similar, better-working, reliable technological assistance.

This is how organizations can be skewed and twisted by financial and perceptual demands which May raise anti-trust concerns and obfuscate the larger, changing, modern landscape of universal design.

Members of the National Federation of the Blind are encouraged to contact Congress people to describe their experiences and how this JAWS technology worked for them.

My five year experience working for the federal government involved nearly daily contact with the helpdesk because JAWS could not cope with the products and projects at the federal agency where I worked. Days were spent while people rebooted and redid the computer set up, just because JAWS wouldn’t work.

This labyrinthine, fault-ridden blindness technology caused high levels of performance doubt among my colleagues that pointed at me instead of the Technology. JAWS created lots of unproductive downtime, incurred high levels of expense on the part of the agency re technical assistance and purchase of this supposedly miraculous software and performed significantly worse than available software which technological advisors for JAWS blocked by insisting that non-– JAWS reading systems would create security breaches if allowed into federal service.

The company who produces jaws worked to dismantle and then incorporate features of a rival reading program technology that worked significantly more effectively and smoothly, at far less expense.

At non-federal companies, where use of JAWS  screen reading technology did not present a  Blindness user interface monopoly, a more flexible, functional reading system seldom glitched, cutting blindness related technology  downtime and opening better outcomes with blindness computer interfaces at those agencies.

I have never had the misfortune to use jaws on my personal computers. I’ve been better off for it.

Of course, who in the non-blindness specific tech , governmental or HR communities is going to argue with technology specialists who must be trained for years in order to know all of the twists and turns of the jaws interface; or know enough to doubt and investigate?


Sent from Cheree's iPhone