Freedom Scientific is disgusting because it profits off blind people: Why is it disgusting? Is it because we are blind and in your opinion should be the recipients of charity? Is it because they are offering a paid product although a free alternative exists? Many companies profit off people. Is it "disgusting" that Microsoft charges for Windows, or that iPhones cost more than Samsung's flagship phone? Is it "disgusting" that medical treatments are out of the financial reach of some people?

NVDA is better: Please justify this statement if you intend for it to be read objectively. You may find it better for your needs, just as I find JAWS better for mine. There are features that both have that the other does not have, but this does not inherently make one objectively better.

JAWS has so many conflicts: Please give an example of this problem in JAWS 2020. I've found JAWS to be versatile and usable in many different use cases.

People are still taught that JAWS is the only screen reader: Please provide evidence of this other than from the marketing department of Freedom Scientific. And even if this were the case, it is not unreasonable to expect blind people to conduct their own research, which would not be an unthinkable idea considering that people often like to "shop around", which is greatly aided by the internet.

Why the BrailleNote costs so much: Braille notetakers cost a lot of money because of the piezzo-electric braille cells and the Android launcher that they run. PCs cost less money because of the very basic economic principle of supply and demand.

Rather than sparking a debate, you have provided subjective statements and falsehoods, making this post a rant that, due to your unsupported claims, is unlikely to influence anyone's opinion.

Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with Freedom Scientific or any of the worldwide JAWS distributors.

I get it. Really I do. As someone who's been in that rut of frustration I understand how aggravating it is to be denied access by unfair barriers to entry. Screen readers are expensive. Braille is either expensive or huge and expensive. Every major OS and even many Linux distros, all include their own screen readers but it's never the same as being able to look at a program with your eyes. Not even close. Not to mention the plethora of developers that make your screen reader useless by ignoring accessibility guidelines and conventions.

I understand that frustration. That anger how anyone else can pop into their local bigg box retailer and walk out with a $200 Chromebook and be up and running within minutes but you had to take weeks or possibly months memorizing keystroke after keystroke so you could use the screen reader. I get it doubly so because I used to be in the sighted camp. I know intimately how far the conventional interfaces and tech are ahead of their adaptive counterparts.

My first instinct was to rail against companies that profit off of this. Yes, it's unfair. Is it disgusting? That depends on your views. It's a product of capitalism, scarcity, and Human nature. We want to be compensated for the things we create because resources are finite and our effort and energy are also finite. As long as all of that continues to be true, which it will unless we start mining asteroids with automated robots or something, then we'll continue to expect compensation for the things we make.

We all have to pay for stuff, regardless if it's Mx. Consumer buying that $200 Chromebook or a blind user purchasing a screen reader. It's not wrong for people, or companies to charge money for what they make. I think that the high prices are wrong but that's a story for another time. I agree that a lot of this stuff is way too expensive, but here's the thing. Nobody's going to listen to you if you're just ranting. There's probably a myriad of things that could be done to help bring down the cost of adaptive tech, a lot of them involving subsidies in place of major institutions shouldering the high cost and making it available to its members. It's an uphill battle that no one person could ever hope to accomplish. Trouble is, ranting is even less productive than accepting the status quo. We know. We know this stuff is expensive. We know only schools and governments can afford it. Posting up a rant about it might make some people feel good or whatever but it's probably just going to piss the rest of us off and it won't help you or anyone else.

Am I happy with the status quo? No. Absolutely not. It's bullshit. I can buy a 4K gaming monitor for less money than the cheapest Braille display. I bought a laptop, flagship smartphone, two bluetooth keyboards, and 3 pairs of bluetooth headphones and even a custom core i7 desktop for less than what some Braille notetakers cost. Sadly this is the way things are.

What you do about is up to you. Personally I've gone down the road of adapting and making do with what's available. A high-end Android phone with a bluetooth keyboard and some headphones along with a Laptop with NVDA suits my portable computing and content creation and consumption needs well enough. When I need the expensive stuff I turn to government agencies to sponsor it for me. Perhaps you would rather try another way like campaigning to reduce the cost for the end user somehow. Does that sound corny? Probably, but not as bad as posting an angry rant about it on a tiny part of a website that gets sporadic mainstream attention at most. People here and in other online VI communities are often happy to help and provide solutions to problems where you can't have the expensive stuff. Again, posting an angry rant isn't the way to do it.

TL;DR Almost anything you do is better than sitting around and being mad about it..

Dey wawn dat gummint munny!

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The only problem is that there are a lot of people who can't get vocational rehabilitation agencies to pay for the equipment we need. So, it often falls on us to find a way to pay for it.

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I will say that they have been making strides with the $90 a year home license program and it's rolling out to other countries besides the US. But still, i totally agree, they come off as greedy and money grubbing to me.

My biggest issue is that logical things, like the existance of generations of braille-displays bringing down research and dev costs, doesn't affect the price of things. It shouldn't cost the same as a small car every 10 years to get a newer model of braille display with minor changes, especially since we've seen that 500 dollar models are viable.

I was also personally only offered training with Jaws, even after I explained that I couldn't understand it. Only after I purchased myself a Mac did I finally get offered training with their Mac expert... the same person meant to teach me Jaws.

I honestly hate the idea that if you're not working or in school, you deserve no help. My other disabilities leave me unable to ever work, and school's a hard maybe at best, but I'm expected to carry a standard class load if I ever want to get anything I want, including just a regular Perkins brailler. It's stupid.

Instead of dropping thousands of dollars on tech for blind people that many of us end up using once then relegating to the back of the closet because it's not really useful, like the 200 dollar audio recorder I didn't want that they wouldn't take back, they could absolutely put some of each state's budget toward helping companies lower prices, letting blind people purchase them for themselves rather than forcing us to rely on the state.

I agree my job just deployed Jaws in every facility (6000+) for accessibility for our customers...

I don't think they actually asked our customers who have accessibility needs what they would prefer, because JAWS is tuurrrible and nearly every customer complaint says, "I don't even use this at home why would I want to use it here"

Apple don’t charge more for the iPhone just so that we can use voice-over, it is built in. So why profit to access windows

I completely agree with this. To the person who mentioned MS releasing narrator, I’m sorry but that thing is a joke and doesn’t have half the things even basic computer users might need in a screen reader, and I shouldn’t even need to provide evidence to prove that fact. FS are greedy not because they milk money out of people, that’s something most companies do and will continue to do, they are greedy because they take advantage of blind people and governments and bullshit them into buying their products. They have done a lot of other things too, but I’m not even going to go into that at the moment. Well, there’s my rant for the day over. Carry on, lol.

Hi, JAWS is a program that will be used in most agencies by default because of their licenses. NVDA is an open source system, and it will be quite difficult for any agency with a network system to allow the installation of NVDA on one of their computers; the same goes for computers at school.

Good thing I always pirated JAWS then, back in the day when JAWS was the only best option.

ZoomText fully doubled the cost of every computer my blind grandmother ever had. Those people should be in jail.

I agree for the most part but I need to point out that JAWS is quickly moving in a pretty good direction where it concerns price. Right now it's restricted to people with a US IP address, but you can get it for $90 / year now. That's $7.50 a month and a whole lot nicer than the full cost. I do agree that it is clearly marketed toward government organizations who will happily fork over the $1000, which leaves out the people who don't have that option.

Oh, and don't get me started on the ridiculous cost of note-taking devices.

Whenever anyone asks me what being blind is like, the first thing I always say is "expensive." Or possibly sometimes "really tiring," but that depends if I thought I was being smart by booking both a daytime and evening job that day, which possibly isn't much to do with being blind, but anyway.

Mainly the thing that annoys me is having to book cabs for distances that I would totally walk, but which I just can't do solo. I spend a lot more on that than on software.

I'm not here to justify the cost of Jaws but the cost of stuff made for a small market is always going to be high, and nobody has to be a bad guy for that to be the case. It's easy to get frustrated with people who have lots of sight and don't get that this is my normal, but it's just as easy to slip into the idea that it's not only normal but common. If everyone wanted a braille display they would be cheaper.

And I'd have one.

And I'd have learned braille. I feel bad about not having done it, please no bully.

I don't have the time nor the energy to comment on this post, but the only thing I have to say is, start doing some advocacy rather than posting on reddit. Make it so these companies don't have to milk us dry. Hint Hint. Aira has a business model I wish all would adopt. Make the big companies and businesses pay for our free minutes and usage.

Who’s making money can we make money I’m broke

Wait, so you would have them not make any profits? How is a company supposed to operate that way?

I’m not trying to tell you that they aren’t overpriced but The more money they make the more money they will put into development and it’s not like they have a large market

My new team got me Jaws on my laptop when they were preparing for me (great people).

But Jaws on a laptop!? A complete disaster. I could barely get anything done (mind you my performance was being evaluated...) and then I’d get the blue screen of death at least twice a day.

FS, or whatever they're calling themselves this week, is a business. NVAccess is not. Which is why you can *optionally* donate to NVDA. IF you don't want to pay for an OS, install Linux. If you don't want to pay for a screen reader, install NVDA. It's not rocket appliances.

It's worth pointing out that the first iPhone capable of running Voiceover was significantly more expensive than the generation previous. You're kidding yourself if you think the addition of Voiceover wasn't a large part of that jump. Don't let the fact we now expect to pay too much for an Apple anything today fool you.