I have been running my retail business successfully for 20 years now because I have Jaws. I graduated from University with a Bachelor of Commerce back in 1995 because I had Jaws (and other software and technology).

This was a long time before NVDA was even made possible because of the collaboration today’s internet allows and even longer before companies like Apple, Google and Microsoft suddenly made accessibility a priority.

“But, actually, you could ignore all my comments above and could keep on offering your gratitudes to Mr. Dammery and to his team for their "magical job" enabling us to use notepad!”

I am a great fan of sarcasm, but I wonder about the “magical job” the Jaws team did with features like Jaws Convenient OCR, now Picture Smart which allows me to often get a good idea of what is in a picture where before I always had to ask a sighted person to tell me, what about the amazing support for browsers like Chrome and Firefox which allow any blind person to independently look up information online, read newspapers online, shop online, do their banking etc?

Also, what about the dedication of people like Mr. Dammery who probably would be quite capable as well as qualified to land a job with any number of big software companies where they might even make more money yet they seem to be dedicated to Jaws and other Vispero products so that people like me and many others can be productive running their own business or holding down a job.

I would have assumed that our mysterious Soner who doesn’t sign his or her emails would be using NVDA, but he/she/it (let’s not forget those who want to be neither boys or girls) is on the Jaws list and apparently enjoys biting the hand that helped them for however many years they have been using Jaws. I kindly would ask why not switch to NVDA if you can’t appreciate how difficult it is to develop and maintain a product like Jaws especially nowadays when Microsoft seems to change things sometimes on a weekly bases which often can effect how the screenreader can get its information.

Do I face issues and challenges with Jaws? Absolutely. Do I sometimes complain and get frustrated about some set back which doesn’t make sense? Absolutely. Is it always the fault of Vispero when something doesn’t work in Jaws? Absolutely not.

I have been a Jaws user for 30 years and would consider myself to be a pretty advanced user of Jaws, computers and technology in general, but for the most part instead of bitching about it at every opportunity just because I enjoy being negative I decided to get on the Jaws Beta team so I can make my experience available and try and do what I can to help Vispero to make Jaws a better product.

Best regards,

Sieghard