[nfbcs] The Mac Beckens

[Nicole Torcolini]

	Thank you for the information. Although I do not know how soon these
events will happen, particularly in the United States, this was much needed
information.

-----Original Message-----
From: nfbcs [mailto:nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Gregory Kearney
via nfbcs
Sent: Sunday, January 17, 2016 3:12 PM
To: NFB in Computer Science Mailing List
Cc: Gregory Kearney
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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