@Assault
Your statement that there are "always ways to get around" missing information on the theoretical OK button is that this isn't strictly true.  I've found dialogues that will simply show the button as well as the menu bars above with no text in the window to indicate what the buttons relate to, for example.

Just thought I'd clear that up.

Also, This article is skewed in the sense that all Microsoft edge or NVDA need to do is to communicate behind the scenes regarding browse mode, then everything should work as expected, I'd hope.  Glad to see that Edge is more accessible and will hopefully be fully within an update or two of NVDA though.

@sightless, true. But for windows like that, even if NVDA reads that information once and you miss it, you can always get it to read it again with NVDA+B. I meant that as a worst case scenario situation, but I do like the fact that Narrator lets you read the text again. I'm going to give it a try once I update my computer, though whether my laptop can handle it remains to be seen... my desktop is not moving off windows 7 until I absolutely have to. lol

I think your basing the ranking on how long the other two have been around isn't really fair to narrator, either. If Narrator does indeed work better with Microsoft Edge, that currently puts it above the other two in at least that area. I haven't yet tried it myself, however.

This ranking was obviously done with the latest versions of NVDA, that being 2016.2.1, and JAWS 17.whatever the new build is. NVDA 2016.3 will indeed pass Narrator as it relates to Edge accessibility, as there are fixes in the Master snapshots relating to this. Notifications are also read. It should be out by next Friday. Narrator is improving though, can't argue about that.

A little off topic, but are those of us who are on Windows 10 still able to get the upgrade for free? If so, how? I've been wanting to do a refresh to clean up any messed up settings or glitches, and it may be good to do it and get the big update at the same time.

Do you have a link to the guide by any chance? Would appreciate it!

@Assault freak,
Here you go!
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/accessi … s10upgrade

While i believe that narrator has improved greatly in the anniversary update, I think it might be too little, too late. The major screen readers have been in this game way longer than Microsoft, who have had years and years to build a screen reader, and yet it's only now that they're starting to care. My theory on this is that they see the large screen reader companies are struggling. Why else would they all need to merge? And, since Microsoft wants as many people to adopt Windows 10 as possible, they're now scrambling to catch up with Apple, who at least built a good screen reader into their OS. It's clearly a marketing ploy, and I don't like it one bit.

This ties into the article that was referenced, because clearly, some blind people will rave about the improvements in narrator, giving it far more credit than it frankly deserves at this point. yes, it's getting better. yes, it actually can work with both Firefox and Thunderbird, I tried it, so I guess third party support, though patchy at this stage, is there. But people like the author of this article should really be careful about singing its praises too soon. First of all, more rigorous testing needed to be done. I get the feeling that the author basically just tested all three of the screen readers with Edge and called it a day. he does say in passing that he tested other applications, but he didn't go into enough detail for my liking.

If you want to make bold, sweeping statements about how great Narrator is, you've got to do a lot better than that to convince me. Had it been me, I would have done a very in-depth review, putting all three screen readers through their paces with common applications and web browsers, comparing how each one handles working for a day to day user's needs. I feel that this article was misleading in the sense that it gives a bit of false hope, and that's unacceptable.

As I said, much to my surprise, I actually got narrator to work in both Firefox and Thunderbird. The support was rudimentary at best, and I admit that I didn't test it fully since there are no commands yet for links list and so on. But I was able to perform a Google search with Firefox and view the results. I then opened my email, where I was able to tab into the list of messages, then I proceeded to enter browse mode to read one. That impressed me, but it sure didn't want to make me switch to Narrator as my primary screen reader.

Then, the real test. I've said before on other topics that NVDA has a bit of an issue scrolling through large folders. it lags a lot, so I decided to see if Narrator could do better. I opened the biggest folder I have, my music folder, which is literally just about 4 terabytes in size. Narrator couldn't handle it at all. It kept saying unknown object or something like that. I could occasionally get it to read an artist's name, but it was so hit and miss that I decided that it definitely needed a lot more work before it could ever compete with NVDA.

Those two short paragraphs alone that I wrote are more compelling than anything in that review. I'm not trying to be a complete asshole, but honestly, considering the usual content that cool Blind Tech offers, this felt lackluster and rushed.

I agree with turtlepower here.
I tried Microsoft Narrator on the windows anniversary update. Although I was surprised with the progress, I don't think it's as high as the guy describes it. On my pc, I couldn't get it to work with firefox or microsoft word, but it worked well with microsoft edge. On windows explorer, the problem where narrator doesn't read names of files is slightly gone, but not completely.
In my opinion, jaws is the best performer in windows explorer. It doesn't lag, nor crash. But jaws has other problems, one of them is the inability to read combo boxes in the settings app.
What surprises me the most though, if Narrator became his primary screen reader, why didn't he then, make the next podcast using Narrator?

Someone can help me for Narrator? I've Windows 10, and I've actived accidentally the option in general that blocks the capslock key. I don't know how can disactive it. When launch Narrator I can't use the computer. Is there a way to restore narrator settings to default?
Thanks!