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Ok ...Narrator really, really isn't that bad, and just calling something shit/crap/horse shit/terrible really is incredibly unproductive bordering on juvenile imho, but ok.

If we compare it to what it was in windows 7 the difference quite honestly is night and day. It is actively being worked on, with the team working on it being open and honest about what they fixed and what they broke. I'd like it to get better quickly as much as the next guy, but seriously I am seeing so much crap being hurled at a product you essentially get for free and a lot of it is just flat out untrue.

Even in this thread I see stuff that is just flat out wrong:

\- Sticky keys and Narrator have literally zero to do with each other;

\- These days, if you can use something with NVDA without having to use screen review, odds are it will at least work up to a point with Narrator;

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Is it ready to be a daily driver yet? No , probably not, but given it lets us set up a machine entirely independently, reinstall the OS independently AND perform troubleshooting steps even if the PC won't boot is a pretty big win for me. And yeah, it tends to come up still when JAWS or NVDA decide it's a good moment to go feed the fishes, which is another big win.

Go read the manual and see if things are really as bad as all that, and if it doesn't work for your particular use case, use something that does without trash talking. Christ, people work on this thing, pour their time and energy into it and get this kind of bashing as thanks? Maybe spend that time and energy constructing useful feedback to toss at the devs so they actually know what to focus on next, like filling in the survey they released several days ago to get user input on how to improve the voices, rather than dumping all over the keyboard.

Use JAWS if Freedom Scientific lets you, use NVDA if they don't, use Narrator if stuff blows up beyond repair, and give Narrator a whirl now and again to see how well it works these days. Be glad you even have the choice these days.

A lot of people prefer apple because their built in accessibility is better. NVDA is a free screen reader that is also decent quality.

wow, TIL many people on /r/blind don't like Narrator haha. I'm actually in the boat saying that it use to be horrible, but has gotten considerably better over the years. I now confidently turn it on when nothing else works.

Yeah, I've never heard anyone use narrator outside of sighted people accidentally holding down shift long enough for the sticky keys dialogue to open up.

From what I've experienced personally and with other clients, Narrator is often viewed as the "spare tire" until you get your actual accessibility apps installed (like using Internet Explorer to download Firefox/Chrome/etc.). It doesn't help that Freedom Scientific merged JAWS with ZT into JAWS Fusion around 2016; you're essentially buying a suite with one or both anyway, and FS is leaning into the MS Office-style subscription model. Yes, Narrator isn't a viable long-term solution. I often wish that Narrator was more in-depth a la VoiceOver, but that's not going to happen anytime soon.

However, if Microsoft bought Freedom Scientific, I'd be worried about how it'd be integrated. It's a resource hog (even when not actively running), so it'd likely be packaged as an add-on or app purchase. Remember how much Office has changed over the years and how many times we had to "relearn" it.

I'm sorry for the mini-rant, but it frustrates me how many times stuff like this comes up and we're left waiting for companies to sell us solutions for problems they made. I lean towards NVDA because developers aren't stuck waiting for companies to recognize an issue exists.

Narrator is great for getting a new version of Windows up and running, so I can get my screen reader of choice installed. It’s also good for quickly doing something with another’s computer.

In fairness, Narrator used to be a lot worse. It's not great, and I wouldn't enjoy using it as my daily screen reader in Win 10, but it does work reasonably well with Microsoft-provided programs at least. I test with it all the time as part of my day job.

Yeah Narrator is horseshit, which is disappointing as Microsoft’s Seeing AI app for the iPhone is a decent bit of kit wne it comes to a handy app for recognition. Accessibility needs to go mainstream and be brought up the way Voiceover is done on iPhones. Never got into the whole Mac scene, too much history with MS Dos/Win3.1 and many following incarnations!

The worst part about narrator is that even if you press control to shut it up, it just says control. And I'm not sure if it's still a thing, but when you pressed backspace, it wouldn't say what you just deleted, it'd just say backspace.

Recently I was setting up my grandpa's computer, so I had to use Narrator untill I could download NVDA. Windows 10 definitely brought some increddible improvements for Narrator with it. It's getting a lot better, at least compaired to the one from Win 7 and 8. I'm not counting the one from XP because that was just unusable. I now have E speak TTS set as my primary Synth, and it's easy to use, and I haven't gotten trouble with it so far. It's also great on Xbox One, at least compaired to what Soni did on the PS4. Is it as good as NVDA, no, not by a long shot. However it's improving, and I'm thankful for it.

This post is pointless.

I think it is fine. Is it voice over. No. But voice over wasn’t good once upon a time. Thank the antitrust stuff against microsoft

It works decently now compared to win 7 and it’s getting better. It’s being developed and honestly they are trying.

Let’s have some respect.

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Narrator is absolutely terrible, I agree. The only screen reader I could think of that is worse would be Google Talkback (or ChromeVox as I've also seen it). However, I don't really think it would be a good idea for Microsoft to purchase Freedom Scientific for a few reasons.

1. Microsoft has proven that it can make some pretty decent accessibility software (ex: Seeing AI and Microsoft Soudscape) so I doubt they would have much trouble making a decent screen reader if they really wanted to (which leads me to believe that they don't really care).
2. I already am weary of the dependence blind and other disabled people have on giant tech companies, and Freedom Scientific's independence remains one of the few areas where that isn't the case.
3. There's already a pretty good screen reader available for free! It's called NVDA.

Narrator is a lot better now than it ever was.

As others have said, I wouldn’t use it on a day-to-day basis, but it works completely fine for downloading NVDA and hell, it even works pretty well on edge and Firefox.

Tell you what would be really cool if somebody could build accessibility into react os.

I’m right there with all of you. I just bought (actually built) my first PC to access programs not available on my Mac and narrator is horrid! It won’t interact with most of the programs I need it to work with and is so insanely clunky I cannot believe it. Not only that but i’m a little ticked at freedom scientific as well. They wouldn’t honour my included upgrade to a later version of jaws (I owned an earlier version which doesn’t run on windows 10) So now I’m stuck with a very expensive useless box that Is about as accessible as a computer as a toaster oven.

I prefer magic and JAWS. They work well together.