Blind and Visually Impaired Community
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VoiceOver vs JAWS vs NVDA (self.Blind)
submitted by CosmicBunny97
I’, justcurious... I’m currently recovering and healing from a retinal attachment surgery (I have retinopathy of prematurity and glaucoma) and I’ve been using VoiceOver on my phone and ipad as well as trying to learn it on my laptop (I have 2 MacBook Airs, since i recently upgraded). VoiceOver on MacOS is a frustrating experience however. It’ll suddenly not talk, talk over itself, sudden volume changes. I’m curious as to what JAWS and NVDA are like on windows, perhaps it’s less frustrating even if it’s harder to learn
Laser_Lens_4 3 points 3y ago
I use all 3 regularly. There's a lot of command overlap between JAWS and NVDA. If you can learn one then you can learn the other. Unless you know you'll be working with JAWS, such as for a school or government, then I would use NVDA. I find it much better for light computing tasks, especially web browsing where it does great with Firefox on Windows 10. That's great because NVDA is free and JAWS is really very quite awfully expensive. Most of what you learn with the Windows screen readers are keystroke commands built into other apps and the OS, meaning a sighted person has access to most of the stuff you can do. The screen readers bolt on a lot of cursors which are used to navigate elements on the screen as well as giving you the option of tapping into OCR tools. Both of them have pretty good Braille support, though I've had pretty awful experiences with Grade 2 translation on laptops).
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Voiceover is very, very different. It's not a modal screen reader like the Windows ones so you have access to the same commands pretty much everywhere on Mac OS. It also handles in a totally different way. Instead of jumping the PC cursor around with keystroke commands you use the Voiceover cursor to interact with high-level elements which contain smaller elements. You interact with a table and highlight the option you want. Then you move out of the table and go about your business, or interact with another content area depending on the app. It's easier to learn and master but it can be... jarring compared to the experience on Windows. It also has its fair share of bugs that Apple seems to be oblivious to... like how the Quicknav toggle keeps breaking :(.
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You say you have a lot of freezing and stuttering issues and I think that may be a lack of power. I use the new 16-inch Macbook Pro and it runs quite smoothly so I think it may just be due to the limited performance of the Air. The audio issue is there though. I think it has to do with audio ducking. It'll just get quieter all of a sudden because another noise, possibly one generated by Voiceover itself, will play over the voice. It's really stupid and I can't think of a good reason why they haven't fixed it..
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Voiceover for Mac is not the glorious experience that is Voiceover for iOS but it's still decent and supports many of the gestures, including the rotor, that are present on iOS. Plus, you can do stuff like reinstall the operating system without any help since the recovery utility has Voiceover support which is nice. Hell, Voiceover will even speak when you set a firmware password for the laptop. Narrator won't run in Windows recovery and it certainly doesn't play ball with the machine's UEFI..
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Oh yes, and Mac gets some brownie points for having iMovie which is accessible enough that you can edit simple videos on your own without sight. That's pretty damn cool.
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Voiceover is very, very different. It's not a modal screen reader like the Windows ones so you have access to the same commands pretty much everywhere on Mac OS. It also handles in a totally different way. Instead of jumping the PC cursor around with keystroke commands you use the Voiceover cursor to interact with high-level elements which contain smaller elements. You interact with a table and highlight the option you want. Then you move out of the table and go about your business, or interact with another content area depending on the app. It's easier to learn and master but it can be... jarring compared to the experience on Windows. It also has its fair share of bugs that Apple seems to be oblivious to... like how the Quicknav toggle keeps breaking :(.
​
You say you have a lot of freezing and stuttering issues and I think that may be a lack of power. I use the new 16-inch Macbook Pro and it runs quite smoothly so I think it may just be due to the limited performance of the Air. The audio issue is there though. I think it has to do with audio ducking. It'll just get quieter all of a sudden because another noise, possibly one generated by Voiceover itself, will play over the voice. It's really stupid and I can't think of a good reason why they haven't fixed it..
​
Voiceover for Mac is not the glorious experience that is Voiceover for iOS but it's still decent and supports many of the gestures, including the rotor, that are present on iOS. Plus, you can do stuff like reinstall the operating system without any help since the recovery utility has Voiceover support which is nice. Hell, Voiceover will even speak when you set a firmware password for the laptop. Narrator won't run in Windows recovery and it certainly doesn't play ball with the machine's UEFI..
​
Oh yes, and Mac gets some brownie points for having iMovie which is accessible enough that you can edit simple videos on your own without sight. That's pretty damn cool.
Threshereddit 2 points 3y ago
I appreciate your long writeup here, thank you.
A friend has been using Jaws on a Dell 520 laptop from about 16 years ago, and uses Outlook Express for email. Occasionally he would write in word, or surf the net.
I am amazed at the speed at which he can maneuver around Windows, Email and Outlook Express. He's memorized all commands after so much repetition and it's as fast as a mouse user or even better.
Anyway, he too has really taken to the iPhone and VoiceOver. But he still comes back to Windows and JAWS for getting emails done with proper editing ability. I spent about 2 hours today trying to get familiar with VoiceOver to figure out how to edit, copy, paste, etc and man, that is not easy. Navigation over VoiceOver though, that is pretty fast and efficient but I notice he can't repeat these commands as consistently as on JAWS. So he has to listen more intently to VoiceOver and he frequently has to go home and back, repeat.
Unfortunately his laptop screen is totally dead, Outlook Express and his email ISP changed server types and of course it's all wildy insecure.
So I see the newest Jaws runs on 4gb of RAM and was thinking of trying to get him on a Surface Go, a familiar keyboard, Jaws (annual), and either use the Mail app or Outlook (he loves his folders).
A friend has been using Jaws on a Dell 520 laptop from about 16 years ago, and uses Outlook Express for email. Occasionally he would write in word, or surf the net.
I am amazed at the speed at which he can maneuver around Windows, Email and Outlook Express. He's memorized all commands after so much repetition and it's as fast as a mouse user or even better.
Anyway, he too has really taken to the iPhone and VoiceOver. But he still comes back to Windows and JAWS for getting emails done with proper editing ability. I spent about 2 hours today trying to get familiar with VoiceOver to figure out how to edit, copy, paste, etc and man, that is not easy. Navigation over VoiceOver though, that is pretty fast and efficient but I notice he can't repeat these commands as consistently as on JAWS. So he has to listen more intently to VoiceOver and he frequently has to go home and back, repeat.
Unfortunately his laptop screen is totally dead, Outlook Express and his email ISP changed server types and of course it's all wildy insecure.
So I see the newest Jaws runs on 4gb of RAM and was thinking of trying to get him on a Surface Go, a familiar keyboard, Jaws (annual), and either use the Mail app or Outlook (he loves his folders).
CosmicBunny97 [OP] 2 points 3y ago
I’ll look into trading my Air for a Pro but initely dont need the power of the 16 inch hehe. At most the most demanding thing I’ll probably run is research based stuff next year for my studies.
That5s aweso that iMovie runs with VoiceOver! Definitely something i will like to play around with.
Thanks for this. I dont think ill swap operating systems for something that would perhaps be temporary. I havent used Windows in a decade except for the times i use it for uni
Duriello 3 points 3y ago
I use VoiceOver and NVDA, and while I prefer NVDA for web browsing with Chrome I find VoiceOver to be superior with other applications. The problem with NVDA is Windows, not the screen-reader. While on MacOS it's up to the applications to make themselves usable with a screen-reader, Windows screen-readers have to adapt to applications because there are a number of technologies available for development, and some of them are not designed with accessibility in mind.
CosmicBunny97 [OP] 1 points 3y ago
Hey thanks for this. Can you please give an example? Probably doesn’t help I’m not familiar with Window...
Duriello 1 points 3y ago
An example of what?
CosmicBunny97 [OP] 1 points 3y ago
I guess like... what happens when an application isnt accessible with NVDA or another screen reader? It’s probably a stupid question but I’m just curious. Like when you said apps on macOS are already accessible with VoiceOver but on Windows they may not be.
Duriello 2 points 3y ago
When an application is inaccessible you may have controls that are unlabeled, do not provide feedback to screen-readers, are impossible to interact with, or sometimes are completely unreachable using the keyboard.
I'm actually wrong about some Windows technologies lacking accessibility support. I thought that the WinAPI did not support accessibility, but apparently it does. My observation that Windows screen-readers tend to adapt themselves to applications while on MacOS it's the other way around is based on the amount of app modules that come with NVDA to make the screen-reader work with lots of specific applications.
I'm actually wrong about some Windows technologies lacking accessibility support. I thought that the WinAPI did not support accessibility, but apparently it does. My observation that Windows screen-readers tend to adapt themselves to applications while on MacOS it's the other way around is based on the amount of app modules that come with NVDA to make the screen-reader work with lots of specific applications.
Bachelor-pad-72 3 points 3y ago
hello, hope your recovery is going well. I use voiceover on my phone but not the Mac but I know lots of people who use Windows as well as the Mac and people say that Windows/NVDA is much simpler to use. I use it daily for my university classes as well as work and though sometimes it can be frustrating usually the frustration is due to inaccessibility rather than a problems with the screen reader. I wish you good luck friend
clarinetforfree 1 points 3y ago
Hello, for a long time I have use Jaws. I've just heard about nvda. Have you used both? Do you find one more user-friendly or helpful than the other? Thank you.
CloudyBeep 1 points 3y ago
I prefer JAWS, but many people who do not need the features and customisation options that JAWS has may find NVDA adequate.
clarinetforfree 2 points 3y ago
Thank you! Can can you give an example of a feature or customization option that does not exist on nvda?
CloudyBeep 1 points 3y ago
More than 50% of the settings in Settings Center and Quick Settings.
autistictechgirl1990 1 points 3y ago
I find voice-over is really good on the iPhone but I’ve never tried using a Mac, but I definitely recommend NVDA on windows. Not jaws, as it is disgustingly overpriced plus I used to use it at school it had a lot of conflicts and froze a lot. The only thing is NVDA I would say is, when you install it, if you are using Windows 7 still, it will default to the Espeak synthesiser so you will need to change it in the dialogue to a more pleasant sounding voice.
Also, if you are using Windows 10 I would recommend installing classic shell for the old layout as the layout when Windows 10 is first installed is almost impossible to use. Also with NVDA, you can install add-ons for extra functionality from the website
Also, if you are using Windows 10 I would recommend installing classic shell for the old layout as the layout when Windows 10 is first installed is almost impossible to use. Also with NVDA, you can install add-ons for extra functionality from the website
CosmicBunny97 [OP] 3 points 3y ago
Thanks! I’m definitely open to trying NVDA sometime in the future. Just curious about JAWS since I’m kinda assuming it’s used in a lot of workplaces and i just want to futureproof myself.
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