I had initially been a user of the JAWS screen reader since version 1.0
began shipping. I didn't purchase it at that time but the product came
out while I was working for Blazie Engineering in the 1990s. Blazie
Engineering was a distributor of many third-party products, such as
screen readers and speech synthesizers, and the company had been selling
JAWS for DOS when I first began working there. When JAWS for Windows, or
JFW as it was sometimes called, began to ship Blazie received a copy
right away. In January of 1995 I had to have my tonsils removed and was
out of work because of this for two weeks. During those two weeks I had
the pleasure of unboxing, installing and learning JFW 1.0 while I was
recovering and really liked the software. After I left the company I
bought my own license but I let it expire while running version 6. Later
I began using NVDA<http://www.nvaccess.org/>and discovered that it was
quite a nice screen reader. In the summer of 2009 I began using NVDA
exclusively on my home computer and was very happy with it. It continues
to offer some nice features and benefits not found in JAWS and, for my
needs, I found it to be more than satisfactory.
During this time I was working as a trainer for Associated Services for
the Blind<http://www.asb.org/>where the agency kept their license of
JAWS up to date. New versions of JAWS continued to be released and I
kept up with what was added. When I left ASB and began working at
Comcast as a member of their accessibility
team<https://corporate.comcast.com/our-values/diversity-inclusion/accessibility>I
was able to continue using JAWS with a current license, which is always
kept up to date.
As I continued to use and learn more about the newly added features
introduced in each annual update I began to encounter features which
JAWS had added but which were not available with NVDA. With products
such as Office offering a subscription model with their Office 365
packages<https://products.office.com/en-us/compare-all-microsoft-office-products>I
really wanted to see Freedom Scientific offer a similar package to its
users. With the release of JAWS
2019<https://www.freedomscientific.com/Downloads/jaws/JAWSWhatsNew>FS
(now part of Vispero, formerly VFO Group) announced that subscription
packages would be
available<https://www.freedomscientific.com/About/News/Article/199>for
some of their software packages, with JAWS being the first.
I was quite excited about this as I’d now be able to pay just $90.00 (a
bit more with local sales tax) to immediately upgrade from my old
license to a new, shiny JAWS 2019 license. This morning I visited
Freedom Scientific’s E-store,<https://store.freedomscientific.com/>found
the page offering the JAWS annual
license,<https://store.freedomscientific.com/collections/software-annual/products/jaws-home-annual-license>placed
it in my shopping cart and then completed my purchase. I immediately
received two emails, one confirming my order and the other email
containing a link for me to download and activate my software.
I went to the link and downloaded a tiny file which then allowed me to
download and activate my software. I opened the program and, with no
drama, JAWS was downloaded, installed and activated on my machine. The
process was incredibly simple and, upon a restart, my desktop contained
the JAWS 2019 icon to start my screen reader. As an added bonus, people
who subscribe early as I did actually receive more than one year of use
as my subscription officially expires on January 31, 2020, giving me
almost fourteen months of actual use.
Now I’ll talk about why I actually decided to start using JAWS at home
again. While I was always very happy with NVDA and will continue to
recommend and endorse it there were some features and benefits which
JAWS offers which are presently not found within NVDA which I really
wanted on my home computer. Specifically, these features are:
·The ability to copy a portion of a Web page into an email message with
the formatting retained, including links and headings. I often repost
various news articles and press releases to the mailing list for the
Philadelphia Computer Users’ Group for the Blind and Visually
Impaired<https://davidgoldfield.wordpress.com/bpc/>. These articles
usually contain links and headings which I’d prefer to have preserved in
the email message. JAWS is able to preserve the formatting of portions
of a Web page which are copied and then pasted into other documents or
email messages. Currently, NVDA does not possess this capability. For a
while I would use Window-Eyes as a backup screen reader to complete this
task but this product is no longer in development. This was a decision
made by VFO last year which I still strongly disagree with as it has
diminished the screen reader landscape.
·The ability for quick navigation keys to wrap. As an example, suppose
that a Web page contains five headings and my virtual cursor is at the
bottom of the page. With NVDA, pressing the letter H causes NVDA to
inform me that no more headings exist on the page. This is, of course,
correct. However, pressing the letter H using JAWS would cause the
navigation to wrap back to the top, moving my focus onto the first
heading. I believe this feature can be disabled for users who don't want
navigation to wrap but I found it to be a useful (though not a
necessary) feature.
·Responsiveness. Using Espeak, which is still my favorite synthesizer,
NVDA is quite responsive. By responsive I'm referring to the delay
between pressing a key and hearing the letter, number or character which
was pressed. Even more important is the delay when pressing arrow keys
to review a Web page, email message or a document. Again, in nearly all
cases NVDA is pretty responsive when doing this when using Espeak. When
I use the legally obtained drivers for Eloquence and
Nuance<https://codefactoryglobal.com/app-store/voices-for-nvda/>voices
(such as Tom and Samantha), the responsiveness improves even more,
providing performance nearly as good as what you get with JAWS. Notice
that I said "nearly." When using NVDA with Eloquence or with Nuance the
responsiveness is quite good and would be fast enough to satisfy nearly
any speech user. However, if I'm going to be honest I have to say that
the responsiveness with JAWS is just a bit snappier when reviewing a Web
page with arrow key navigation. Is it significantly so? Not to me. It's
still somewhat noticeable. However, reviewing Word documents with NVDA,
at least on my home computer, is a slightly different matter. The
responsiveness when navigating using arrow keys is noticeably slower
than what I see when performing the same commands in other programs. My
work computer, which has far more RAM and more high-end specs, does not
exhibit this type of delay. My admittedly slower Dell OptiPlex, with 8
GB of RAM, exhibits delays that I find annoying and, to be frank,
unacceptable. When I compose documents using the open source Libreoffice
Writer<http://www.libreoffice.org/>, performance is what it should be.
Using JAWS 2019 on my home system the performance in Word, while still a
tad bit slower compared to other programs, is quite good and definitely
acceptable, making JAWS an attractive choice for me when using Word.
·Text Analyzer. For me, this is one of the features which makes JAWS
worth paying for. If I’m composing a document where correct formatting
is not only desired but essential then I’d prefer to use JAWS with
Microsoft Word. It allows me to easily track formatting changes and
errors such as changes in font, color, mismatched spaces and other
punctuation, etc. It’s very customizable and easy to use. NVDA currently
does not offer this capability.
If we’re going to compare the two screen readers to determine which one
contains more features I feel that JAWS is the clear winner. It’s not
worth debating; JAWS is, at the time of this writing, more feature-rich
than NVDA. I’ve always known and accepted this. However, while I am not
at all dissatisfied with NVDA the fact is that there are just a few
features which it currently lacks that could really benefit me as a JAWS
user. I’ll also say that NVDA continues to offer features which are not
currently being offered in JAWS. Examples include:
·Free of cost. This is pretty obvious. I’ll also admit that just because
a piece of software is free doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s good.
However, in the case of NVDA the screen reader, while lacking some of
the more advanced features of JAWS, is still a verygood and capable
screen reader. This also means that subsequent updates, of which there
are four per year, are also free of cost to the user. This means that
there are no SMAs to pay for or keep track of.
·It can be run portably. NVDA can be run from any folder on your hard
drive without installing it. It can also be run from any external drive,
such as a USB drive, in the same way. This means that you can take NVDA
to just about any Windows machine and run it without the need to install
it first.
·Progress indication tones. This is something that NVDA has had since
its early days. Window-Eyes eventually added this feature and it’s a
feature that I wish JAWS would add. Essentially, if you’re performing a
task such as downloading or copying a file JAWS is able to periodically
read the progress in percentages, such as 20 percent, 40 percent, etc.
When you hear JAWS say 100 percent then you know that the task is
complete. This is fine and NVDA can do this as well. However, NVDA can
also report this as ascending tones. Instead of hearing verbal
announcements you hear quick tones which raise in pitch as the task
nears completion. When the tone gets to its highest pitch then you know
that the task is complete. Admittedly, this is not effective or helpful
for users who are deaf or who have severe hearing difficulties. However,
I have grown used to this feature and really wish JAWS would implement
it. Now that I’m becoming more of a JAWS user I will suggest this to
Vispero.
·Works with Kaspersky. Those of you who don’t use or who want nothing to
do with Kaspersky’s security tools won’t care about this. However, I use
Kaspersky Antivirus and, while it doesn’t work perfectly with NVDA, it
works reasonably well enough in that I am able to control the program.
JAWS is, frankly, totally blind to any controls within the Kaspersky
window, making it completely inaccessible to a JAWS user. This is
another issue I want to bring to Vispero’s attention.
·A more simplified interface. JAWS is running into the same problem that
Windows 10 is now running into. Windows used to have all of their
settings available via the Control Panel. Windows 10 still offers the
Control Panel but now has their new Settings app with most features
you’d want to access and change. However, some settings haven’t been
migrated over into the Settings app yet and so you still need the
Control Panel for some settings, although the Settings app does try to
link to Control Panel items where it can. JAWS has a Settings Center,
formerly known as Configuration Manager, where many of the JAWS settings
are located. Like the Windows 10 Settings app you can even search for
items that you’re looking for. However, like Windows 10 JAWS doesn’t
have quite all of the settings you might be looking for contained within
their Settings Center, such as changing voices or speech parameters,
along with other settings. Instead, you need to open the JAWS window and
open either the Options or Utilities menus for these items. By contrast,
when you run NVDA you press insert-N for the NVDA menu, arrow down to
Settings, press enter and all settings for the screen reader are
available. To be fair, NVDA is a much newer and admittedly simpler
screen reader and so you could argue that these two factors make the
interface more manageable. JAWS has been around since 1995 and so
they’ve had an additional eleven years to add extra features.
·Pressing Home or End echoes the character at the cursor. When you use
NVDA, pressing the Home key always speaks the first character on the
current line, which I find very helpful. JAWS does this when using
Microsoft Word but it doesn’t seem to do this in other applications and
I think that it should. In fact, I can find no way of changing the
behavior of the Home key unless you know scripting.
Many JAWS users will want to point out some feature of JAWS that I
haven’t mentioned which is not available in NVDA. Of course, there are
many but I’ve mentioned the ones which I would personally want to use.
Placemarkers is a feature that I might wind up using but I have no real
desire to use it but I may change my mind as I begin to use JAWS more at
home. NVDA does actually have a Placemarkers addon but it’s not as
intuitive or easy to use as it is with JAWS. Flexible Web is another
JAWS-specific feature that I don’t feel a real need for but which I
might use more often now that I’m once again a JAWS user at home.
I guess the real question is whether I will switch screen readers and
use JAWS as my primary screen reader. My honest response, right now, is
that I am not certain. However, even if I do switch over to being a JAWS
user there will likely be tasks that I’ll still need NVDA to assist me
with, such as accessing Kaspersky. In fact, it’s always good to keep at
least two screen readers, along with several Web browsers, on your
system, if possible, to deal with accessibility challenges or barriers
that you might encounter where one combination of screen reader and
browser might prove to be more effective than another. I will also
continue to support and endorse NV Access, both with financial
contributions as well as continuing to spread the word about their free
and excellent screen reader.
For now I am enjoying the process of using and getting reacquainted with
JAWS. I will continue to blog more about this as I continue this journey
and would love to read your comments about this post.
--
David Goldfield, Assistive Technology Specialist Feel free to visit my
Web site WWW.DavidGoldfield.Info
