I certainly do remember the days of optacons. I tried
getting one myself, but by that time, they were no longer making them, and you
couldn’t even get parts. That was about 28 years ago. LOL
Sent from Mail for Windows
10
I agree with you, David, 1,000 percent. On one of my jobs,
one of the doctors said that I worked in two languages, because I had Braille
notes, took Braille short hand, but used my Optacon a lot more than I did
Braille.
On that particular job, a requirement was that you had to
make any corrections or modifications to reports. There was a blind guy that
worked downstairs in Medical Records, and his wife had to do all of his. I
worked up in Surgical Pathology. This was in the 70's, when we had multiple
carbons, different colors. So, I had to keep those little slips that you use
for the carbons and keep up with the colors. I had to carefully roll the
typewriter to check with the Optacon about where to make the change. I could
do them or would not have kept the job.
There is an Optacon Users List, sporatic traffic. A guy in
Canada is trying to develop an Optacon that is more in line with today's
technology.
I, for one, think that technology can be a sort of other
god to some. For what the Optacon does, I think its technology is state of the
art. The only improvement I could suggest would to be to see if the noise it
makes could be reduced.
Best From,
Carolyn
-----Original Message-----
From: main@jfw.groups.io [mailto:main@jfw.groups.io] On
Behalf Of David Moore
Sent: Friday, June 9, 2017 8:54 PM
To: main@jfw.groups.io
Subject: Re: A history of Jaws and Windows, was: training
modules
Wow!
I still have my Optacon, and I read mail with it.
I read the computer screen with my Optacon,and it went very
well. I had a job where I did just that, The Optacon allowed me to feel
everything that was on the screen. Wow, that is so great! The Optacon was one
of the best assistive technologies ever, in my apinion. It is sad that most
blind people do not know what the Optacon is, but I used it to read all of my
math and science textbooks, so I could get a degree in math. I could trace all
calculus graphs, charts, feel how the equations were set up, and on and on. I
could feel, under my finger, what a sighted person sees. That is still so
exciting to me. OCR does not compare to the Optacon for small little things
that you want to read like a tag on a package, a piece of mail, or read what
is on a computer screen. I really wish that someone could bring it back, or a
entire community would bring it back. I would be right there, fighting and
doing all I could do to bring it back.
Have a great one, guys!
Sent from Mail
<https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=550986> for Windows
10
From: Randy Barnett <mailto:randy@...>
Sent: Friday, June 9, 2017 8:15 PM
To: main@jfw.groups.io <mailto:main@jfw.groups.io>
Subject: Re: A history of Jaws and Windows, was: training
modules
I too started with a Comadore 64 but I culd still see back
then. My first experience with Jaws was v3.7 and have been useing it ever
since.
I thought my serial No was old being in the 40,000's. LOL
On 6/9/2017 10:14 AM, Bob Hicks wrote:
Oh my gosh, I still have my Opticon!
Have a great day!
Bob Hicks
From: main@jfw.groups.io <mailto:main@jfw.groups.io>
[mailto:main@jfw.groups.io] On Behalf Of Richard Turner
Sent: Friday, June 09, 2017 10:25 AM
To: main@jfw.groups.io <mailto:main@jfw.groups.io>
Subject: Re: A history of Jaws and Windows, was: training modules
I started out with a Commodore 64 using an OPTACON to read the screen in about
1983 or so. Hard to remember back that far
Richard
From: main@jfw.groups.io <mailto:main@jfw.groups.io>
[mailto:main@jfw.groups.io] On Behalf Of Sieghard Weitzel
Sent: Thursday, June 8, 2017 3:39 PM
To: main@jfw.groups.io <mailto:main@jfw.groups.io>
Subject: A history of Jaws and Windows, was: training modules
I probably have most of you beat, my Jaws serial number is 1056. I first
bought Jaws for DOS in 1989, I think it was version 1.1, when Windows 3.1 came
out in 19992 I used it alongside DOS.
Jaws for Windows was actually first released in January 1995, it was JFW 1.0
with support for Windows 3.1/3.11 and Windows for Workgroups 3.1.
JFW 2.0 was released in 1996, not sure when, it had support for Windows 95
which was released in August of 1995. Back in those days there usually was not
support for a new OS version at the time of release.
I am looking some of this up in a Wikipedia article, for some reason they skip
JFW 3.0.
In between, in 1998, 1999 and 2000 we of course had the release of Windows 98,
98SE and Millennium.
Windows XP was first released on August 24, 2001
JFW 4.0 which came out in September 2001 and I am pretty sure it support
Windows XP.
JFW 4.5 came out in August of 2002 and it was the first version which had
quick nav keys for IE.
JFW 5.0 was October 2003 and then there was a longer gap as JFW 6.0 didn't
come out until March 2005, it introduced the ILM licensing scheme.
JFW 7 was released later that same year (2005) and 7.1 is listed with a
release date of June 2006.
Windows Vista was released in November of 2006 and I'm pretty sure JFW 8 which
was released in November of 2006 had support for it as well as introducing
Realspeak Solo voices. From here on it seems to go to the annual release
schedule in late October/early November.
Other milestones:
Jaws Tandem was released with Jaws 10 in November 2008
Windows 7 was released in July of 2009 and JFW 11 came out in the fall with
support for Windows 7 and it introduced Research It
In 2010 JFW 12 replaced the old configuration manager with the Settings
Centre
Jaws 13 in 2011 introduced one of my favourite features, Convenient OCR.
JFW 14 in 2012 came with Windows 8 support and Flexible Web
JFW 15 in 2013 had Windows 8 touch screen support and introduced FS Reader
3.0
JFW 16 in 2014 introduced command search in Settings Centre and Convenient OCR
which in V13 only applied to graphics on the screen was expanded to handle
entire PDF documents
Windows 10 first was released on July 29, 2015 and an update to Jaws 16 from
the previous fall had initial support for it.
JFW 17 in 2015 introduced smart navigation for tables and Liblouis, an open
source braille translator
Finally JFW 18 in 2016 (last fall) introduced mouse echo, audio ducking and
Settings import/export was reintroduced.
Here is a link to the Wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JAWS_(screen_reader)
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JAWS_%28screen_reader%29>
Regards,
Sieghard
From: main@jfw.groups.io <mailto:main@jfw.groups.io>
[mailto:main@jfw.groups.io] On Behalf Of Tony
Sent: Thursday, June 08, 2017 2:52 PM
To: main@jfw.groups.io <mailto:main@jfw.groups.io>
Subject: Re: training modules
I had an early demo version that was something like 0.76 with a serial in the
3000s.
I should have stock in the company since I have owned every version since DOS,
either purchased or through paying for skipped updates.
Tony
From: main@jfw.groups.io <mailto:main@jfw.groups.io>
[mailto:main@jfw.groups.io] On Behalf Of Ronnie Hill
Sent: Thursday, June 08, 2017 4:32 PM
To: main@jfw.groups.io <mailto:main@jfw.groups.io>
Subject: Re: training modules
Well I can't remember which year I did stgarted with JAWS Version of 3.3!
I guess it was around 1998
I thought that the first JAWS version was started from 3.2 it amazing to
know it started from version 3 but I'm not sure.
Cheers everyone.
Ronnie from London.
----- Original Message -----
From: Bob Hicks <mailto:bob@...>
To: main@jfw.groups.io <mailto:main@jfw.groups.io>
Sent: Thursday, June 08, 2017 8:37 PM
Subject: Re: training modules
Hard to believe I started on JAWS 3.1 isn’t it!
Have a great day!
Bob Hicks
From: main@jfw.groups.io <mailto:main@jfw.groups.io>
[mailto:main@jfw.groups.io] On Behalf Of Carol Smith via Groups.Io
Sent: Thursday, June 08, 2017 3:24 PM
To: main@jfw.groups.io <mailto:main@jfw.groups.io>
Subject: Re: training modules
If you open the FS reader, you should be able to access tutorials from there
by pressing control+J. There are links to tutorials. If they are
not already downloaded and placed in the appropriate place, the program will
do this for you. These are in Daisy format and you can use control+P to
toggle play and pause.
This is a global key command, so as long as the reader is open, it takes
presidence over other programs using that key command. This makes it
very handy if you want to practice what you are reading in an open
program. This information should be enough to get you started.
Carol
On 6/8/2017 2:46 PM, Bob Hicks wrote:
I downloaded my version of Jaws 18. How do I git the training modules
into FS reader? tia
Have a great day!
Bob Hicks
