[gui-talk] {Spam?} Re: JAWS and Window Eyes Now Owned By the Same Company

Thu Jun 16 10:41:58 UTC 2016

Keep in mind that David Wu, the newly appointed Vice President of Software 
Management for VFO reports directly to CEO John Blake, who has demonstrated 
an unwillingness to offer more attractive pricing packages for VFO's/Freedom 
Scientific's  products, notably JAWS and Open Book.  Mr. Wu, on the other 
hand, seems much more idealistic, and I'm surprised that he has accepted a 
subordinate role in the merged company.  To be perfectly blunt, Mr. Wu seems 
to be more of a dreamer than a hands-on administrator.  By his own 
admission, he stated in the podcast that AI Squared has had difficulty 
increasing penetration in the assistive technology market because its 
products are apparently not very familiar to blind consumers, which is 
probably a major reason why he decided to sell out to VFO.  He did not rule 
out the possibility that the merged company would offer fewer product lines 
in the future.  In the end, John Blake who is more of a bean counter than an 
idealistic visionary will probably decide to phase out Window Eyes and 
transition its users to JAWS, regardless of what Mr. Wu thinks.  If Mr. Wu 
and Mr. Blake clash over policy issues, Mr. Wu can simply resign and live 
off the millions he received for AI Squared or even start another assistive 
technology company.  After all, he sounds like a very sharp guy.

Gerald

-----Original Message----- 
From: Edward Green via gui-talk
Sent: Thursday, June 16, 2016 2:10 AM
To: Discussion of the Graphical User Interface, GUI Talk Mailing List
Cc: Edward Green
Subject: Re: [gui-talk] {Spam?} Re: JAWS and Window Eyes Now Owned By the 
Same Company

Hi all,

I agree with the sentiments expressed here that this is likely to be bad 
news in the long term for the competitiveness of the Windows screen reader 
market, and is likely to mean a reduction of innovation and potentially 
higher prices.

I should say that I’m not a habitual Freedom Scientific basher.  I’ve used 
JAWS and Window-Eyes since version 4 of each product and still do.  At 
various times I’ve preferred one over another, but in each version one has 
been able to accomplish something that the other could not.

There are some concerning business practices in Freedom Scientific that make 
me believe this won’t be great news for customers, however much David Woo 
(outgoing CEO of AI Squared and new Vice President of Software Business at 
VFO) tried to convince us to the contrary on the FSCast podcast.

Firstly, Freedom Scientific prevented braille display manufacturers from 
creating drivers that would allow earlier versions of their displays to work 
with later versions of JAWS.  This rendered old but perfectly functional 
displays obsolete for many users.  For instance, the Baum Vario (called 
Rabbit in the US I believe) that I purchased in 1999 works with Window-Eyes 
9.4 under Windows 10, but it won’t work with anything later than JAWS 10. 
Now the cynic in me makes me think FS did this because they also manufacture 
braille displays, and someone who has been forced to switch will go with the 
display manufactured by their screen reader company for n easier life.

There’s also Freedom Scientific’s habit of releasing software updates at a 
particular point in the year.  The accusation has always been that this 
meant features were held back for inclusion in future updates to keep the 
money coming in.  This is of course a perfectly reasonable commercial 
decision, but it is not one taken in the best interests of customers, if you 
accept that those interests are to have improved accessibility and 
performance as quickly as possible.

Finally, there is the approach that Freedom Scientific purportedly used to 
take to making mainstream software accessible.  You can read about it in 
Chris Hofstadter (former FS employee’s) blog primarily on GW Micro, 
http://chrishofstader.com/remembering-gw-micro/.  The relevant heading is 
“The Great GW Micro contribution”.

Now Hofstadter appears to have left FS under a cloud and was largely 
airbrushed out of history by them in their various JAWS 20th anniversary 
reminiscences last year as far as I could gather.  But if the article is 
correct, GW worked collaboratively with the software giants to give us 
access to products, whereas FS wanted paying.  While again this might be a 
reasonable commercial decision, it would certainly have led to software 
becoming accessible more slowly, and these are the people holding the vast 
majority of the cards in the Windows screen reader industry.

It’s interesting that we are talking about Apple, Android and iOS as 
competitors to JAWS.  It’s obviously much harder to switch operating systems 
than screen readers because of the learning curve attached.  15-20 years ago 
you had a choice of JAWS, Window-Eyes, Window Bridge, Winvision, Automatic 
Screen Access for Windows, Hal 95, Protalk and Screenpower as paid-for 
screen readers.  I’m not saying that all of those made for an accessibility 
utopia, it didn’t and some weren’t viable, but the pressure to innovate 
because of the competition must provide greater incentives to do so than 
merely buying up all the talent.

Cheers,

Ed
> On 15 Jun 2016, at 23:09, Rafal Charlampowicz via gui-talk 
> <gui-talk at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>
> And how many screen readers are available for IOS? :-)
> I'm JAWS and NVDA user, but I agree this is a terrible news. Competition 
> is good.
> --
> Rafal
>
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: gui-talk [mailto:gui-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Mike 
>> Arrigo
>> via gui-talk
>> Sent: Wednesday, June 15, 2016 9:05 PM
>> To: gui-talk at nfbnet.org
>> Cc: Mike Arrigo <n0oxy at charter.net>
>> Subject: [gui-talk] {Spam?} Re: JAWS and Window Eyes Now Owned By the
>> Same Company
>>
>> I think this is a sign of the times that expensive screen readers are on 
>> the way
>> out. With free options such as system access and NVDA, and, at least at 
>> this
>> point, window eyes being free to Office users, there's really no reason 
>> to
>> spend that kind of money for a screen reader. Even narrator in windows 8 
>> and
>> windows 10 offers more functionality than ever before. This company now
>> has a monopoly on the paid screen reader market, aside from Dolphin in 
>> the
>> U.K. This makes me even more glad that I have left the Windows world and
>> use the mac exclusively, at least for home use.
>> Original message:
>>> I am afraid I agree with your speculation about Window-eyes being
>>> fazed out in consequence of this acquisition.  Even though I was a
>>> JAWS user back in my windows days, I’d hate to see window-eyes go away
>>> like it looks like it might now.  If this benefits anybody, I suspect
>>> we can predict that the folks over at NVDA will soon be quite happy as
>>> they will gain quite a few thousand users now.
>>
>>
>>> Sent from my Mac, The only computer with full accessibility for the
>>> blind built-in
>>
>>> Sincerely, The Constantly Barefooted Ray Still a very happy Mac,
>>> Verizon Wireless iPhone6+ and Apple TV user!!!!!
>>
>>>> On Jun 15, 2016, at 11:12 AM, Gerald Levy via gui-talk
>>>> <gui-talk at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>> For those of you who may have missed this bombshell, VFO, the parent
>>>> company of Freedom Scientific, which markets JAWS, has acquired AI
>>>> Squared, which markets the rival screen reader, Window Eyes.  This
>>>> development does not bode well for Window Eyes users, because such
>>>> mergers invaribly lead to consolidation of products and services to
>>>> reduce costs and eliminate competition, and Window Eyes, having the
>>>> smaller market share than JAWS is likely to be phased out and its
>>>> users transitioned to JAWS, although this is just speculation on my 
>>>> part.
>>>> But it would make no economic sense for VFO to continue marketing and
>>>> supporting two essentially similar screen readers.  .  And with
>>>> System Access already on life support and its future uncertain, the
>>>> demise of Window Eyes would leave JAWS with a virtual monopoly in the
>>>> commercial screen reader market,  which could lead to even higher
>>>> prices.  On the other hand, JAWS might eventually incorporate
>>>> features from Window Eyes that it does not already offer, making it 
>>>> more
>> attractive.  For more details:
>>
>>>> http://www.blindbargains.com/rss/latest.xml
>>
>>>> Gerald
>>
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>>
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