Ann,

JAWS does indeed work with the programs which you mentioned.

Jarte is, essentially, a Wordpad-like program with a spell checker, along with some additional features. For an additional $20 or so you can upgrade to Jarte Plus, which offers even more features. It can detect the presence of a screen reader and enables what it calls screen reader mode, adding even more accessibility to the program. It is not as full-featured as Word but it may contain enough features which will do what you need.

Libreoffice and Openoffice are much more feature-rich and they do work with JAWS. However, the spell checker, while technically accessible, may not be quite as "speech friendly" as what you have with Word. I have also not tested features such as its equivalent of track changes to see how much audible feedback you receive, assuming that this feature is even included. However, it still may be accessible enough to meet your needs.

David Goldfield,
Blindness Assistive Technology Specialist
JAWS Certified, 2019

WWW.DavidGoldfield.org