[nfbcs] The Mac Beckens

[Ronald Smith]

Well, I thought I just recently read an article that the American Council of 
the Blind is now working with Microsoft to turn Narrator into a full fledge 
screen reader?

I guess they now want to compete with Apple with their free VoiceOver.

If so, now we won't have to be bitten by the shark for a thousand dollars 
for their screen reader in addition to buying a computer...

ronsmith131 at gmail.com

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gregory Kearney via nfbcs" <nfbcs at nfbnet.org>
To: "NFB in Computer Science Mailing List" <nfbcs at nfbnet.org>
Cc: "Gregory Kearney" <gkearney at gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 17, 2016 3:12 PM
Subject: Re: [nfbcs] The Mac Beckens


> 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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