2019-03-07 15:49:20

Before I start, any one who has them out, put away your flame throwers, your A K 47s, Your nukes, or any other weapons of mass distruction you may have laying around. We as the audio Games.net community do not need to be held responsible for the start of World War III.

With that said, I’ll continue.

I want perspectives on jaws. I will be honest, and not hold any thing back, from the perspective as an nvda user. I see very little reason to use or pay for jaws. Now, I will say, for 1 web page, it worked, wile nvda didn't. But why the heck pay 1000 just to use your computer? Perhaps things were different back in the 1990s but nowadays, we have multiple screen readers, some of which are free. And yet schools spend money on something they can easily get for free. Perhaps they have a discount. Someone enlighten me if that’s so.

I once asked one of the teachers at school if there were any advantages to jaws over NVDA. They couldn’t really think of anything, and I believe they were proficient in using both screenreaders.

So why spend all the money. Jaws is not only needlessly expensive, but if I remember properly, close sourced, which there may be some advantages to. But I like NVDA for its customizability. Nvda is open source, free, and flexible. This is not an advertisement for nvda. It is my perspective.

I’ve heard people say that they still use jaws because they are used to it, which is understandable. Along time ago I heard something about jaws using a technology that in a matter of time would be obsolete, I cannot verify this.

My goal in creating this topic is not to start a flame war. I want honest opinions, reasons, and discussion. Many of the people I’ve met hate jaws with a passion. It reminds them, and me, of really old crappy Windows 7 hp computers from school. My experience with said computers has been far from the worst,  and that’s probably not jaws fault either.

I would rather listen to someone who can actually play the harmonica than someone who somehow managed to lose seven of them. Me, 2019.

2019-03-07 16:09:28

I agree. Although now, in Hungary, we have a kind of license program, and we can get jaws for free. But still i don't want it. Firstly, because it's only for a year, and then you need to apply for it again. Jaws just doesn't deserve this much. NVDA does everything that jaws can, and it's free.
In my opinion it makes no sense that every time you wanna upgrade your screen reader, you need to pay for it. That is one of the hugest disadvantages of jaws, too.

2019-03-07 16:13:14

For me, it really is only that I'm used to Jaws so much. I've used it for more than ten years now and I know that NVDA does some things different, so I didn't change my working system. But I'm not one of those people who would defend Jaws with their lifes, no matter what. I do see many shortcomings, the most anoying of them is that Jaws isn't letting some keystrokes through to some games. If I had to buy a new jaws version or even an upgrade now, I would seriously consider switching.

We are pleased, that you made it through the final challenge, where we pretended we were going to murder you. We are throwing a party in honor of your tremendous success. Place the device on the ground, then lay on your stomach with your arms at your sides. A party associate will arrive shortly to collect you for your party. Assume the party submission position or you will miss the party.

2019-03-07 16:15:38

hello
the reason behind sticking with jaws is,
their is so much of pyracy around, people are easily getting payed softwares.
and they think that payed things are better that's why they are payed.
nvda is good, flexcible, and jaws doesn't deserve this much caust but,
it is no longer payed because of pyracy,

allow me to speak more,
catch me on Twitter
or, Mastodon

2019-03-07 16:41:07

Yes. I agree with 1.
Nvda is flexible, with all the addons, Jaws has scripts, but not as many as NVDA, and the cost, and open source, if you know how to and you know py py, python, you can make NVDA perfect for you.

----------
“Yes, sir. I am attempting to fill a silent moment with non-relevant conversation.”
“You don’t tell me how to behave; you’re not my mother!”
“Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing.” – Data (Star Trek: The Next Generation)

2019-03-07 16:56:54

Lime Aloud, Sonar, and the Quickbooks scripts are 3 Jaws scripts professionals use every day that NVDA does not have. The fact NVDA is GPL means that any NVDA addon needs to be open source. This means that Dancing Dots or My Blindspot can't charge for the addon because someone can just copy the code and make it free.
As for schools, I'm pretty sure the company behind Jaws lobbied and worked with the testing agencies to make Jaws work for all their tests. Now the only screen reader the tests work with is Jaws, so every single TVI needs to teach Jaws so the students can complete their tests.
Otherwise, NVDA would be in every school hands down.

2019-03-07 16:58:46

NVDA being open source can actually hurt it, as it poses something of a security risk in certain environments.
NVDA does most things that Jaws does, but Jaws still has wider recognition in today's market, which means you're more likely to run stuff in a business environment with Jaws than NVDA. The gap is quite small here, though.
Also, Jaws has been forced to reassess its pricing structure for precisely this reason, which I completely understand and agree with.

Check out my Manamon text walkthrough at the following link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z8ls3rc3f4mkb … n.txt?dl=1

2019-03-07 17:01:40

I never liked the Jaws interface, always felt clunky to me. Yes lots of options, but it always felt clunky and not well organized. I do like the snappiness though. You can't deny it's freaking snappy, but NVDA is starting to lose out on performance. They're starting to go down hill fast. When they lost Jamie as the co-founder, they lost a lot and they never recovered; even though he is still working with them, he's not to the capacity he was. This has hurt them badly, maybe even more so than they realize. So not just me, but others have been having performance issues with NVDA.

Now, you get what you pay for. NVAccess really has over 2,000 open issues on GitHub. When I run Jaws, the thing is on it and doesn't lag and doesn't hang, and doesn't microstutter or crash. NVDA will do those things to me now. NVDA is also really bad with Microsoft Office products at the moment. They've released a feature to help alleviate this, and said feature was available in the configs for a year or so, but I think this is really a patch effort at best. Why does Jaws not suffer this, why does Narrator not suffer this.

I love NVDA, I've been using it for nearly 10 years, and it sucks to see it going this way. I'm a realist though, I look at all sides of the issue and call it as I see it. I don't make up stories in my mind about how it will be OK, I don't make excuses for them to other people. NVDA is very configurable. You can set per-app profiles that get switched on whenever your focus enters an app. I do this for notepad++ and vs code. When these two apps are on, my punctuation level gets set to most, and my indent reporting gets set to tones. I like NVDA's revised settings dialog, it's sort of all centralized now, and still better than Jaws's settings center.

Addons are what make NVDA awesome. The fact that anyone could code them really makes you feel as if you can chisel out your own solutions. This flexibility though, comes at a cost. That cost is what we are currently facing right now where corporations and governments do not wish to view NVDA as a screen reader candidate for their low vision or blind employees. They feel this way both in ignorance, but also a very real sense that NVDA is not secure. I have to side with them on this, as it isn't secure. Think about this, NVDA addons have the entire Python language behind them. They can literally do everything. They are not sandboxed like Jaws scripts, they have access and can get access to any part of the system they want. This makes them a huge security risk. NvAccess could fix this, by making an enterprise edition that disabled addons, but they do not. Why that is, that's anyone's guess, but there it is. I can't blame people for seeing the issues putting NVDA on a system presents, because I see them for myself.

I see the prices they charge for Jaws, whatever they are calling themselves now, and my knee jerk reaction is to get pissy about it. What price gouging little gits, I think to myself. My theory has been for a long time that they encourage the enterprise customer or even the home customer who has the ability to have Jaws purchased by an agency for them. They want that government money. But really, do I know what it costs to do what they do? I'm saying me personally. Do I know what it costs to pay for their headquarters, other offices, wages for all their employees, air fare for shows, conferences and the like? I really don't. Then you have servers, server maintenance, equipment upgrades and maintenance and so on. So can I come up with a realistic figure for all that, not without doing a lot more research than I'm prepared to do. Do I still think they're doing quite well, yes, but I'm not so sure they're price gouging for the sake of it anymore. Maybe they are, but then again, maybe they aren't. Either way, they have a hell of a higher obligation to fix things that break, being a corporation under the law than NvAccess, which is a charitable organization does in Australia.

All I can say is don't get so stuck on one that you can't see the benefits of the other, make informed decisions. You may look over the fence and see that the grass is greener, but then you may leap over the fence and see why, when you get blasted in the face with the sprinkler system that runs at odd intervals all throughout the day.

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End racism
End division
Become united

2019-03-07 17:19:14

@ 7 and 8 and this is exactly why I said it may be better that jaws is not open. Sometime ago, there was some controversy regarding nvda remote.

And yet, I can't bring myself to shell out a thousand bucks on something I can have for free, even if it does lag and crash, that's what older versions of nvda are for, my friend has one from 2017 infact.

I would rather listen to someone who can actually play the harmonica than someone who somehow managed to lose seven of them. Me, 2019.

2019-03-07 17:29:48

hi,
I don't agree with the open source less secure argument. Linux is open source, and is used more widely than windows on military and other systems, precisely! because you know there isn't some secret backdoor built by  the government for spying on national systems, because you can examine the code.
NVDA has performance  issues, mainly because devs are insisting on keeping legacy support, are not upgrading to 64 bit, and are using the object model instead of UIA for many things. However, NVDA has dramatically improved performance for office, and with latest snaps, I find it generally more responsive than jaws. I wish it didn't hog CPU though. And also, the dumb command prompt reading letter by letter bug has been around for ever, and is so because devs won't fix it.

A learning experience is one of those things that say, "You know that thing you just did? Don't do that."

2019-03-07 17:32:15

If JAWS was more intuitive I would probably use it.
@jade, security risks? To get a modified version of NVDA released, you have to go threw NVAccess, and they have to merge the files, I think that's how github works?

----------
“Yes, sir. I am attempting to fill a silent moment with non-relevant conversation.”
“You don’t tell me how to behave; you’re not my mother!”
“Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing.” – Data (Star Trek: The Next Generation)

2019-03-07 17:40:37

well, it really depends. I have not experienced performance issues with NVDA; probably because i rarely use word now or any office products (they are nice to have around for the occasional job letter or whatever, but that's it) and still, no huge lags.
And well, now, here we go:

Lime Aloud, Sonar, and the Quickbooks scripts are 3 Jaws scripts professionals use every day that NVDA does not have.

really? firstly, I have never heard of quickbooks in my life, have no idea what that is. I am a professional musician and use reaper every day, and most of my other colleagues (including industry professionals use protools, not sonar, every day-- most blind folk nowadays use reaper too)
Lime aloud.. tried it a few times for classes I gave and was very inaccurate, no matter their claims, its much better if you transcribe or write music yourself and stick to more open, flexible formats which even the legendary famous commercial music notation package (used almost every day by most editorials), finale, uses to convert things into music braille (if its been still used at all)
point is, there are a growing number of  available tools (lilypond comes to mind) with which I have been doing much professional sheet music work(every day) from duo to full big band arrangements, things that have been played either on recording sessions and bigger local festivals and so on. They do not cost a single penny. True, there is a  lot of mental and brain muscle work involved with some of those, but its reliable, efficient, always there (and I am not implying that dancing dots is not) but if one day it decides to quit I really doubt they would let those programs live--true you get a bit better support, but then again we have mailing lists and forums, and the opening of the community as a whole really helps when coming up with creative workflows and the like, something that is really seldom seen in commercial solutions.. so all of this just leaves me with a thought and that is:
companies should of course charge for their stuff, and they can make it closed source and the like if they wish which is fine, but they should never leave out the community aspect of things, including their user base. Only companies I know that have been successful at this are cockos, which is a small business that makes and maintains reaper, and pg music. The key to the success in their products is that they give the user as much flexibility as possible without really compromising their formulas or products, and they actually do listen to user feedback, they do have forums for the discussion and improvement of their products with more flexible payment policies.

A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station…

2019-03-07 18:20:28

All right. First things first, I find NVDA to be more customisable, despite JAWS having a terribly layed out settings center, which is so cluttered, you literally gotta search for your stuff. While it has a million plus 10 times the options, some of the real basic NVDA customisation abilities aren't there. Sadly narrator pretty much has none of that kind, (still can't locate the punctuation slider for instance) and I get driven crazy with default verbosoty. The fact is, narrator needs more love these days. That thing just works, and not surprisingly, doesn't lag. So I think the real question here is, is it worth paying for JAWS, even the $90 when we have NVDA, with it's own issues, constantly improving narrator, and potentially voiceover on the Mac? (Never played with a Mac, can't speak to it's reliability.) I mean, we all know why JAWS price got decreased. They lost market share, and they tried getting back customers whom they've lost. And it worked, many have went back. As post 8 said, ever since Jamie has left, NVDA is just not what it was. Regarding the enterprize addition, I recall there being talks about a Microsoft store version of NVDA, which wouldn't allow add-ons, exactly for that reason. Wonder what, if anything, was ever made of that? And yes, JAWS is snappy, more often than not, snappier. But it still fucks with my display settings, it still has a keyboard overlay on my PC. So what I need to decide myself is, should I continue investing in JAWS with all it's luxurious features, such as a keyboard overlay, where as others have mentioned it as well, keys won't directly go to applications? I have 2 screen readers along side, and if NVDA lags real bad, I can fire up my built in narrator. Apparently windows 10 is this latest and greatest operating system, and it apparently has no performance impact on older hardware, (my results claim otherwise), not to mention most new comps come with win10 now, so I just don't see what JAWS would offer me, that the other 2 wouldn't.
Regarding free JAWS for hungarian's, I I thought of trying to apply, am still a citizen and what not, but I think I'd be rejected because of the fact that I don't live there for the last 10 years. Would be entertaining to try, though.
Also, post 6. While it is true that JAWS is the industry standard, but companies, at least the ones that bother to do accessibility testing, do those guys also use JAWS? I somehow find it hard to believe they'd purchase a license just for that, and I recall reading somewhere that NVDA was the primary web testing tool somewhere once upon a time.

2019-03-07 18:40:43

I'm just used to jaws, and I don't plan on ever getting rid of it. without jaws I would have never been able to get my spotify playlists set up correctly, seeing as NVDA does nothing when you press enter inside the menus there when right clicking a song. and yup I'd pay the full price for jaws again if I had to. no doubt. only reason NVDA was ever installed on here anyway was thanks to RTR forcing you to either use that or the tts voices that came with windows. also I have to use a ton of addons to get NVDA to act the way I want it to. all I have to do is load up jaws and I'm set.

2019-03-07 18:59:48

Honest answer? It works for me. If it works for me without freezing, causing my CPU to rocket up to 90+(note: I'm running a celerone here, never personally had any issues with JAWS, been using it since last 5 years or so, and 5 years before that on my computer  and the school's computers), I'm willing to pay for it. And now, since the 90 USD thing is out, it's become quite affordable, not too much strain on the pocket. I still hate the JAWS's  with games, I'd choose NvdA's sleep mode to play games over any day. If NvdA comes back on track with minimal performance issues and a lag-free experience, I'd be willing to make it my primary. Hell, I almost ended up doing that way back in the end of 2018. Then the issues popped up, and I was forced to come back to JAWS. Why would I use something which makes the use of my computer miserable? You got the idea, I'm sure. I have no  security concerns, as post10  quite eloquently told about the benifits of an open source software. I'm learning python, so I'd soon be able to  work on my own add-ons... Provided that the damned thing's performance improves.

2019-03-07 19:15:33 (edited by Chris 2019-03-07 19:19:07)

I agree with post 10. So what you're saying is that we should throw out all the servers that run Linux which makes up about 90% of the Internet because they could be security risks? Tell that to the tons of companies that use Linux to run their systems.

If anything, open source is even better. Those who know what they're doing can look at the source code for any NVDA add-on or the screen reader itself and see exactly what it does. With Freedom Scientific, you're given a product and told it works a certain way. However, they could be doing all sorts of nasty things behind the scenes that no one is aware of.

I think the issue is also a lack of awareness. People don't know that other options exist because they either aren't told, or aren't curious enough to investigate for themselves. Freedom Scientific is still trying to use a business model that's over 20 years old. They're going to get a rude awakening in a few years once Windows 10 has become the primary desktop operating system for consumers and businesses. If Microsoft continues to improve Narrator, why pay for an expensive solution like JAWS when you can either use the free and open source NVDA or Narrator which will be built into all new Windows installations? Microsoft will also offer free support for Narrator users and companies that's better than Freedom Scientific. I'm sorry, but Freedom Scientific technical support is a joke. They have always been less than helpful when I contacted them. Granted, I'm not a JAWS user and I've only done that a couple of times, but the responses and attitudes I got from them were less than satisfying.

Would someone please inform me what kind of security risks NVDA could pose? The default installation with no add-ons works very well, and you shouldn't have too many issues if you're running from a limited user account with limited permissions( which is what you should be doing if you're working for a company anyway). Use a little common sense here. Don't install random add-ons from unknown or untrustworthy places or people.

As for scripts, let's stop using band-aid solutions to fix problems. There are tools and guidelines out there on how to make software accessible out of the box. If one piece of software doesn't work well and the developer is unwilling to improve it, there are a hundred others out there that do the same thing.

Grab my Adventure at C: stages Right here.

2019-03-08 01:01:11

A few things:
@post 4, I fail to understand what you are saying about piracy and free software.
@post 12, quickbooks is a widely used accounting program. While I can't say I've ever used it, I have seen it in action at severall local businesses and it seems to be an easy solution for most places to keep records.
And while I also can't say I've ever used jaws, I can't get my head around this whole open source = bad thing. It doesn't make sense at all. I mean, NVDA is just a screenreader. And while it is open source, allowing you to install addon solutions written in python, that doesn't mean that by using it, you're computer's security will be brieched. This may not be true, but it seems to me that if you don't install an addon, there just doesn't seem to be much of a way anyone could do anything fishy.

-
That Guy. Serving those people since that time. To contact, use that info.

2019-03-08 01:52:15

16, while you brought up the topic of accessibility, am I the only person who feels accessibility is going downhill rather than getting better?  This excludes most microsoft apps though. So many websites,  apps, with each version seem to be braking accessibility. We need some type of regulation, and we need it now.  Another thing,  for NVDA development, I know of a very successful sighted python programmer who loves to code. I  think I could ask him if he would like fixing afew  of the thousands of  issues on gitub.

A learning experience is one of those things that say, "You know that thing you just did? Don't do that."

2019-03-08 02:11:19 (edited by Chris 2019-03-08 02:12:00)

Enes, go for it! Here's yet another advantage of open source software. That's the other great thing about NVDA. Even if the founders of NV Access closed their doors tomorrow, the project would continue. If the few folks at Freedom Scientific decided they were done, it's game over. In fact, I didn't care for someone's statement that "NVDA was just two guys in a garage." This is an extremely ignorant, incorrect, and disrespectful statement.

Grab my Adventure at C: stages Right here.

2019-03-08 03:00:29

What it eventually comes down to is support. I’m a student- I need access to the ability to quickly and efficiently format text in very specific ways including color and very specific spacing for cover pages and the like. I can’t be doing this in notepad- you cannot reasonably submit academic papers in notepad, and Jaws is just better at office support than NVDA, there’s no denying it. On top of that, Jaws has technical support during normal business hours, so if something goes wrong during an exam, or I need to prove that Jaws doesn’t support a particular application I’m being asked to work with (I had a teacher who wouldn’t let me just use a different, actually accessible stats package without a lot of back and forth), there’s a number I can provide to be like, here, talk to them, it’s not just me making things up here.
And as previous posters mentioned, NVDA’s addons are a security risk. In the age of what sometimes feels like daily data breaches, are you seriously surprised that any company is worried about letting someone accidentally  leak confidential info? The problem isn’t the open sourceness of NVDA, it’s that you could write an addon that on the surface checks the weather, but secretly logs every keystroke and thereby collect a password or other confidential info.
Honestly though, for me it’s a bit irrelevant. As long as I am either a student, actively seeking a job or employed, I get Jaws for free, at which point why not just use it? It’s faster and snappier in most cases. I have NVDA installed mainly for games, if I’m being honest though.

2019-03-08 05:08:24

I use NVDA at school and at home and I don't have issues with it. In fact, Word support is getting some major overhauling from what I've heard, and you can turn on UIA support for Office to speed things up if you wish. I've not noticed any issues with Word sluggishness on version 2018.4.1, although I've seen it on earlier versions.

Also, the argument that nvda is a security risk is laughable. All you need to do is run NVDA without add-ons or access to the python console, which can be added to program shortcuts like this:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\NVDA\nvda_slave.exe" launchNVDA -r -s --disable-addons

Now you have a secure version of NVDA running on your machine, and you don't have to worry about malicious add-ons.

frastlin wrote:

Lime Aloud, Sonar, and the Quickbooks scripts are 3 Jaws scripts professionals use every day that NVDA does not have. The fact NVDA is GPL means that any NVDA addon needs to be open source. This means that Dancing Dots or My Blindspot can't charge for the addon because someone can just copy the code and make it free.

I don't think so. Can't companies make add-ons that are compiled and still be within the law? Not sure about this one. Also, doesn't Lime Aloud come with Goodfeel so you don't have to pay extra for the scripts?

The Beast continued its studies with renewed Focus, building great Reference works and contemplating new Realities. The Beast brought forth its followers and acolytes to create a renewed smaller form of itself and, through Mischievous means, sent it out across the world.
from The Book of Mozilla, 6:27

2019-03-08 05:41:09

@6, you are misinterpreting the GPL. The GPL states that you can charge for your software, so long as you make the source code available in some way. They do not put a cap on that amount (which is discouraging IMO) so you can charge a dollar or ten million. Also, add-ons can be licensed under different software licenses; they do not need to be licensed under the license that NVDA was licensed under.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

2019-03-08 05:41:55

NVDA seems to have issues with windows explorer these days, sometimes even crashing it. never once had that problem with jaws. also it's not just me that has an issue on windows explorer, a few others I know do as well.

2019-03-08 05:50:50

@22, Are you sure? The NVDA license seems to state that addons are considered derivatives of NVDA, therefore they must be licensed under the GPL.

Oh no! Somebody released the h key! Everybody run and hide!

2019-03-08 06:10:25

@24, I never read that anywhere. But the GPL does allow you to sell software.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github