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AudioGames.net Forum → Off-topic room → Leasey has been released! Every JAWS user should have Leasey!
No guys, your ears did not hear you wrong... (Does That even make any sense?) Anyway, Leasey Central , is now open!
So for you "sharkies," have a swim in the water, and rejoice!
FYI: For those who never heard of LEASEY, its "J-Tools, Dolphin's Guide, and the "defunked" GW Connect, all in one, and then some, all for you JAWS users!
Have fun peeps, have fun!
Meh, I might get flamed for saying so, but it feels like a scam. Its basically a repackaging of things that already exist into something new to get people to buy it. Beginner mode/advanced mode functions? leasi connect? All that already exists free of charge for the most part. I may recommend this to total computer beginners, but even then, i'll hesitate to do so.
Hello,
I wouldn't go so far as to call it a scam, we're talking about two quite respected individuals who blog about tech here. I would have to agree with your point though, I'd recommend it more for beginner computer users or those who are new to the net.
The reason why I wouldn't recommend this for instructional purpose is that if you're so used to leasy's custom hotkeys for doing stuff and do not try to learn the actual keystrokes for commands, you'd be left floundering when using someone else's computer, or an employer's computer without leasy installed. It is a crutch that may be helpful to the very beginner, but beyond that, I see little value for anyone else.
+2
Hi,
It'd be interesting if they made a version that allowed the hotkeys to be used to start with, but then after a while would then start introducing the actual commands, and eventually it'll say OK, you've mastered this, and will just use it's program-based scripts rather than different menus all the time. That way people could learn how to do the actual commands and such.
I have to agree with the statement, meh. As an advanced user I don't see what I would gain for £100. Were I a beginner I'd be paying £150 for something that would either unintentionally lock me in to its own shortcuts or else become fairly superfluous once I got to know the computer properly.
I'm sure the developers had good intentions but still, meh is the best I can come up with as a response and that's not good.
+1
In that case, ya may want to take a look at the LEASEY Documentation , as its quite extensive. 184 "headings" extensive. For the spectics, you can always Download A Demo to try, and if you do wish to Purchase It , its around $155 for the US folks. That $155 by the way, is for the "Advanced" version, which does "not!" have "LEASEY's" voice herself. Another thing to keep in mind with LEASEY Advanced, is you are able to "leave" the leasey interface at "anytime," by doing your "normal" Windows commands. Keyboard commands can be changed via the "LEASEY Manager."
Still not convinced? Audio Demonstrations can be found via the link among this sentence.
I know folks in the UK are quite wondering why LEASEY's around now since ya have Dolpin Guide already. If the folks at Dolphin Computer Access released their "Bookshelf" ever make their Booksehfl found in Supernova and just about every other Dolphin product a "stand-alone" Windows app, LEASEY will for sure have some "competition!" Dophin is "still!" the only screen reader manufacturer, which has "NLS" and "NFB Newsline," plus "many other!" services baked in to their products.
Full disclosure: I was a ""public" beta-tester of Supernova 14, when I "was" on Windows. 
PS. J-Tools, is "no longer" available. Not sure if Brian will bring it back. Most likely not.
This is a terrible idea. We should be working to fix the training system's inability to teach basic computer concepts because of the overly narrow focus on knowing specific tasks that make you employment-ready for working in a call center, not making up for them by making more commercial "this makes your computer simple so you don't have to learn" software. As an advanced user there is no point; that's not about features, either. As an advanced user, anything you're doing for me can already be done by me and just as quickly-so why am I buying software? All that claiming that it's good for advanced users does is convince people that they can become advanced users using it, something which I have no reason whatsoever to believe is the case-among other problems, using such systems just locks you down to your specific machine.
As for baking services into the screen reader, that is the worst idea I have ever seen anywhere. This is not a good thing. If those services are not accessible enough or easy enough to access with that screen reader, they should be fixed properly; at most, there should be a reader-neutral application. The world is already really tiny for us. We don't want or need to start cutting it into little islands of functionality, and we don't want or need to give the impression to sighted devs (already notoriously incapable of getting it even when explained and even when they mean well) that writing a blind-specific version or getting the screen reader to integrate is a good idea. Because it's not.
Hang on a minute. Why _shouldn't_ we adapt our computers to our requirements? Isn't there something intrinsically wrong with the fact that we are adapting to our computers, rather than the other way around? Sure, we don't live in an ideal world, and I'd agree that the actual value proposition of the functionality is close to a convenience than a requirement, but I'm not sure I see any value in the "We must be one with our sighted peers" logic when the only reason we're not is that, let's face it, software accessibility sucks.
So rather than attack the people who wrote LEASEY, I propose we question why our computer experiences aren't already good enough that we don't require this kind of software. I have no doubt that the shoe would be on the other foot if we were looking at a platform that was known for its inaccessibility, and lots of us here use NVDA add-ons, so let's challenge the functionality and not the reasons for having it.
JMO.
Respectfully, I disagree.
This isn't saying that it provides me with functionality I didn't have before or couldn't get before, nor is it saying that it makes applications that weren't accessible become so. It is saying that it makes computers easier to use for the new blind user, with a pretty heavily implied emphasis on not actually having to learn.
What happens here is that you teach the user to rely on a system that is narrow. Nothing outside the system will be looked at because it is too much trouble. You might get more blind people on the computer, but you intrinsically limit what they can do to whatever tasks you're specifically wrapping. No one will look further for exactly the same reasons that this kind of software exists in the first place: in general, people don't want to actually learn things with expected gratification at some point in the future but requiring only work now until such time as the perceived value (not the objective value, and I think this distinction is important) is great enough. I don't rate this as particularly important in the grand scheme of making things accessible: it makes the stereotypical call center employee's life potentially easier, possibly makes the lives of some beginner to intermediate users easier with the possible (I'd say likely) cost that they never finish the transition to advanced, and has no impact on people who actually know the computer really well. I'm not claiming that we should all be like our sighted peers, but in the long run this is yet another piece of software that could be replaced by a "here's a list of things that are known to be accessible" page, at least for the user who actually knows the screen reader-in at least this way, the objection I have is the same as that which I have for VIPMud.
The world we have now, or at least the world that this software claims to fix, exists because of basically everything in the other thread about schools for the blind. Nearly every organization that trains blind people wishes to prepare you for one specific, narrow job. To that end, we replace understanding with rote memorization of keystrokes and steps, creating a market for this kind of software. The blind people who leaves these programs know the minimum for one job and maybe a little bit extra, were never shown that there's a whole world of things you can do only because of technology, and will cling to this little tiny island. The rest of us are on the continent of understanding by comparison, but the people on the island aren't going to believe in the concept of the boat. It's kind of like those stories about people who have never experienced things that most of us consider necessities, and thus never want them-but in this case it would be pretty easy to argue that it's not a luxury after all.
Back in the day, Freedom Scientific had a great business plan. They'd find broken software and fix it by whatever method they could, which usually meant writing custom scripts. Since then, we have gained accessibility standards and APIs, standardized on some common GUI frameworks, and the world of software has become 100 times larger. Yet this clearly unscalable solution exists and is still pretty standard. I strongly believe that this is because we ourselves perpetuate this mentality of "if blind people really need it, one of those SR devs or someone will fix it." But suppose that we could do two things: First, get blind people to actually understand the computer enough for it to be abundantly clear to naive sighted people that computers and accessible software help blind people. Second, convince sighted people to start fixing their broken stuff and not assuming it's the job of someone like Freedom Scientific or Leasey. Then we'd have an actually accessible world, not this world with a set of mutually exclusive giant bandaid software packages in which your expertise don't transfer because you learned to perform the task on a screen reader specific app. Furthermore, the viewpoint would perpetuate at least to some extent, causing a much longer term improvement-I'd be willing to bet that Leasey does not make it 10 years or probably even 5, not unless they've got a large source of funding from somewhere and Jaws suddenly stops looking like it's going to be killed from the outside soon.
And finally, the mentality of "I shouldn't be like my sighted peer" is dangerous. I'm not saying you're saying this, but i'm not sure how to articulate what you are saying in anything less than a paragraph. But while it is true that we can't always be like sighted people and still be efficient, it is true that at least knowing how a sighted person does it eases communication with a sighted person by an order of magnitude. One of my most useful skills is my ability to translate instructions aimed at the sighted into something I can do myself. Perhaps we can be more efficient in some cases by working in our own UI paradigm, but being at least somewhat comparable to a sighted person is really important in a lot of ways. I don't see how Leasey does this, either.
I think we can argue a whole lot about the fact that Leasey is basically, as victorious says, a crutch for beginning computer users. We can argue that it is an overpriced scam or that it might not be a scam but is still overpriced. And I do agree with the opinion that Leasey Advanced isn't very suited towards advanced computer users. But you must remember that we on the audiogames.net forum are not the primary targets of the Leasey advertising. None of us here are beginning computer users, not remotely so. We should not be the people arguing about whether Leasey is useful for the people it is targeting. In fact, it is extremely difficult for the people who would probably end up buying leasey to know whether they need it before buying, because they would not be adept at self-evaluation when it comes to computer skills. I listened to the Leasey audio demo for Tech Talk and I feel that the program was marketed not only toward people who are inept at computer use, but people who are in an older generation, perhaps the baby boomer generation. It is probably about the same age group that RNIB advertises Azibad games for; Dark should know. The similarity between the RNIB marketing azabid games and Hartjon Consultancy marketing Leasey is a stark one; both market targets are people who probably don't know better and are probably ignorant about the basic operations of the computer, and also are afraid of breaking something due to their ignorance. In fact, the Leasey audio demo I listened to mentioned that people who were likely to want to buy leasey would be afraid of breaking something, and would be extremely glad for the structured menus and the safe environment provided by Leasey Basic. In conclusion, I think you would really have to trial run Leasey with someone who was completely ignorant about computers in order to see its effectiveness. Finding a blind person who is completely ignorant about using a computer is hard enough. Finding one who is old enough to potentially benefit the most from Leasey, and who is willing to risk installing Leasey in the first place (remember, they are scared of doing anything that they are unsure of due to it breaking), is nigh on impossible.
Now I want to rip on the developers a bit because yeah, they kind of annoy me. I want to start with Lulu because she is, according to both Brian and herself, the brainchild of the project. I feel like she is pretty ignorant about using her computer. I have the feeling she can do basic things on it but I don't think she can do anything beyond that. I observed her absolute bubbling over with excitement when Brian asked her whether she was excited about the Leasey development process. In fact, her excitement seemed almost too energetic to be true. Her breath came faster, her voice got higher, and she kept on saying Leasey this and Leasey that in an articulate yet babbling stream of words, something that makes me want to doubt her enthusiasm. I definitely think she could use help with computer tasks, but she is too good for Leasey. Even Leasey advanced is a crutch for computer users who don't know any better. And brian went along with it because yeah, he has to, because he is the catilyst. I am curious about the relationship between Brian and Lulu. Are they dating? That would explain a lot.
I have said so much negative stuff that I think I should end on a positive note. From what I heard on the demonstration of Leasey, there are a couple of actually good things in there. One thing that caught my attention was Leasey Tags, which allow you to select multiple files from multiple folders and copy them all to the clipboard at once. I don't know of other programs that can do that, and it integrates right into the windows explorer window. That is way cool, especially if you have a ton of different things in different folders that are all jumbled up and stuff and you want to cut them or delete them or something. And if things continue according to plan, the company plans to release Leasey spotify, which is actually good because yeah, I think accessible spotify is still hard to find. I think I remember reading on twitter somewhere it had either been released or was in the works, but it is so obscure nd you'd expect it to be floating around a lot more if it actually had been released. If Leasey can get in first on the Spotify front, it will definitely gain a lot of notability, and if it continues pushing to get more traditionally inaccessible apps accessible, it could grow into something really powerful and worth buying.
In conclusion, Leasey may, for now, be a scam, but if the developers keep on chuggin away at it like they have, it could grow into something great. So keep your eyes peeled, and check for user reviews from people who actually need Leasey. I have no idea where those testimonials on the website came from; they don't have any sources cited which makes it utterly impossible to figure out who wrote them. Look for reviews by people from an older generation who are not good at computers.
Wow, I don't think I have ever written a longer post. Thumb me up if you're still awake.
Ah, not just dating, they got maried not too long ago in fact!
Sometime in October, the week of October 24th.
Yes, Spotify and iTunes support will be coming soon to LEASEY. When that is, not sure.
Speaking of Accessible Spotify,
http://www.spotifyblind.com/
Last update to the site was in September of this year.
If they can make alternative interfaces for inaccessible services then that has some value, though a screen reader agnostic program would have been a better option for that. I will concede that some people with no computer knowledge may benefit from this though a few may end up being closed in from it.
What I'm concerned with is the usage of the term advanced. It sounds like their definition of advanced is someone who knows the difference between google and wikipedia. For someone who is truly computer literate Leasey in its current state is effectively £100 for a marginally more convenient way of doing things you already do. That said many of the things it mentions such as youtube, BBC iPlayer, audible books and so on I now use on my iPhone instead of a full computer anyway so for me it's rather behind the curve.
Hi.
I personally wil not be downloading a demo or buying this program, as has been said before, I feel it's useless to me.
Yes this might be aimed at the older generation but I know of people who are 70 who can use a computer. OH they're not blind but they can do it.
I don't like these kind of programs because they kind of shut you in a box and say, here, here's your tools and here's what you can do.
I don't like that aproche because; 1. It limits you. Yes you might have this stuff but you will be stuck when it comes to updating your computer, doing virus checks and so on. 2. It makes you rely on a couple of shortcuts, when in actual fact there are quite afew more thatthe blind computer user needs to learn. 3. Yes the voice is nice, I'll saythat, but i'm not going to pay for a voice. IF it was a symth that might be another storie...
OH and one more thing, IF you like the idea of spotifie being accessible, that's cool but I'd personally not pay 100 pounds for that.
Another point about the market audience for Leasey is that as time goes on, there will be fewer and fewer computer-illiterate people out there. Technology has ensconced itself immovably in the world; people can no longer afford to ignore it. So you see that an extremely high percetnage of houses in first world countries have at least 1 computer. There are very few people, let alone blind people, who have never touched a computer in their life. So i wonder just how many people would gain anything new from Leasey basic. Leasey Advanced is a different matter and I bet there would be a far wider market audience for it than for Basic due to the fact that it is meant to automate or speed up a tasks that people already know how to do.
Indeed, we'll have to see where this goes, to see whether it will have appeal to "Advanced" users; perhaps if they start relying on APIs to do stuff, it arguably could be the next Chicken Nugget or whatever.
@Camlorn: I see what you're saying, and I'm not arguing with the essential merits of equality. It's very important. But I also think we should be reluctant to overcome problems that are only there because the world doesn't care. As you said, designing to native UIs and APIs has enormously helped to put FS out of business, but as long as there's something we just can't do, or can't do as efficiently, they'll still be around. We of course must try not to perpetuate lock-in, but we must also be mindful of the reality. There are two ways to do this: get the software fixed, or bodge around it. And what I'm saying is that as long as bodging around it is a viable strategy for making people happy, there's somebody who needs a smack for not having fixed it, or developed a free alternative to the LEASEY functionality. I don't like it when the horizons of some potential computing landscape, where computer systems know how to handle their users while allowing them to advance to whatever levels of proficiency and comfort are desired, are impeded merely on the basis that we should conform to the one modality which just happens to be the most common, on account of the fact that it's the one most people (i.e., not us blind) use. That is a terrible tragedy that must be fixed. If products like LEASEY make it possible for people to enjoy the use of their computers while not interfering with their potential, I can't see any harm in it--certainly no more harm than we now endure from products like JAWS or, in some cases, NVDA with the relevant add-ons installed. The real concern, as you intimated, is that this product will turn into yet another "Walled garden" which I agree really would be a Very Bad Thing™.
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