Some thoughts. A software company that doesn't recognize that, except in the enterprise world, the $0.99 app model is increasingly eating the market will be itself eaten and spit out within five to ten years. Even ignoring the free apps that are all over the Android and IOS markets, I'm looking at a world where putting out a GPS solution for $99 caused an outcry ever hacker in Russia could hear, and where a $9.99 app is considered expensive. In that world, the days of four-figure prices for any software that isn't super-specialized are numbered, and that number isn't huge.
Next. Tom Ward correctly points out the difference in disservice potential between closed and open architecture baked-in access. If, Heavens forefend, Apple got lazy, it would be a damned sight harder to disrupt that market than it would on Android or other open markets. Even Narrator starts out at a huge brand disadvantage, because until recently, it has had the approximate usefulness of lace diapers, and it takes quite a while for that kind of brand disloyalty to be overcome. There is a thriving, open-source screen reader in the Windows world that has achieved parity with the big boys for the vast majority of users, and actually does better at some things.
On a side note, please let's not call NVDA free. In the sense that you don't have to pay for it, yes, but I would encourage every primary NVDA user to be contributing at least something, at least once a year. Given your alternatives, take that $25/year or even $50/year that GW wants you to spend on the useless excrescence of SocialEyes and put it towards the development of something genuinely useful. Oh yes, that's my review by the way, as a paying customer.
I'm pretty sure that if Google ever decides to give over development of accessibility for Android and Chrome, that someone will take up the flag and carry it onwards with their blessing and assistance, something that you would have a much harder time doing in a closed bubble. There are trade-offs, certainly right now, Android accessibility for example is about three quarters baked, with some basic tasks such as text editing requiring too much fiddling around, but every iteration does get better, and we're getting new iterations every four months or so.
So poor old GW has stepped in the tar pit, right along with Freedom. I give them credit for trying innovations that FS hasn't tried, like payment plans and stand-alone apps, but the asteroid is still coming for both of them.
