1. BhavyaShah ,
Hi,
I was recently reading a topic of 104 messages about the most popular and commonly used screen reader out there in the market today.
According to screen reader usage surveys and other credible sources, JAWS is the most commonly used screen reader, and NVDA and Window Eyes somewhat tie for the second place.
My point of furthering this discussion is to clear all the myths and factually incorrect information and arguments that have been placed here.
I, of course, side with NVDA, and have cogent reasons for the same. I would strongly encourage everyone reading my thread to give NVDA one shot, report what they find disadvantageous about it, and we NVDA users will try to assist you in mitigating that problem. Every software has its own set of limitations, and that is something all of us must accept about all our favourites, but still, I use and support NVDA all the way, because of many causes.
For now, let me clear up some misconceptions that have been posted, and which deserve detailed clarifications:
* JAWS voices VS NVDA voice
This pointer of JAWS being superior to NVDA because it being shipped with ETI Eloquence is absolutely irrelevant.
Firstly, text to speech engines are a subjective field, because one ear finds something more comprehensible while the other ear prefers something else.
To clearly state, NVDA comes pre-integrated with the free and open source speech synthesizer ESpeak, which has numerous advantages over ETI Eloquence, lightweight, incredibly responsive, supports over eighty languages (and many more unofficially), and is highly intelligible at great speech rates. On the other hand, JAWS comes pre-integrated with the proprietery and since long development abandoned speech synthesizer ETI Eloquence, which supports only a few languages, and is simply so called' natural sounding, human like and understandable.'
Many people, including me, absolutely love ESpeak and rely on NVDA to gain access to our numerous regional and native languages, but those who still like ETI Eloquence for their own reasons, why do you buy JAWS for thousand dollars, instead of simply the ETI Eloquence and Vocalizer for NVDA add-on by Code Factory for 59 euros? For more information about this, please visit http://codefactoryglobal.com/app-store/voices-for-nvda/
Not only ETI Eloquence and Vocalizer, you have a whole host of voices and speech synthesizer to use with NVDA, including Acapella, Festival, Esvok Peako, several regional language supporting ones, a detailed list of which speech synthesizers supported by NVDA can be viewed on NVDA's Get Extra Voices Wiki page at https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda/wiki/ExtraVoices
* NVDA borrowying keyboard shortcuts from JAWS and stealing functionality
To brief you about Windows screen reading history, JAWS for Windows was perhaps one of the first screen readers for Windows, along with Window Eyes and a few other products. JAWS for Windows was first launched in 1995, whereas NVDA was begun in April of 2006, and launched for the first time in December the same year. When JAWS, Window Eyes and other Windows screen readers had already created a comprehensive set of keyboard shortcuts for basic functions and commands, it is so obvious for NVDA developers to not try to reinvent wheels to be different and simply borrow the existing traidition. Additionally, there was no copyright infringement or anything of that sort when NVDA did this either, or else Freedom Scientific would have filed a law suit like it did for GW Micro in the past.
Also, Afrin, could you be a bit more elaborately specific while mentioning the features and functionalities that NVDA has copied of JAWS? Please don't include traditional screen reading features, which are analogous to wheels reinvention. Something that was original to JAWS, and which was copied by NVDA, and by no other screen reader, if you know what I mean. I am quite avidly involved in following NVDA's issue tracking system and may have some knowledge about the background of some prominent NVDA features.
* verbosity of lists, headings and other elements in NVDA
As has been already mentioned, I don't see why this verbosity is serving as a barrier to transition to NVDA from JAWS. The Document Formatting Settings dialog which can be accessed from NVDA menu > Preferences submenu or directly by pressing NVDA + Ctrl + D has all the options you need to configure the reporting of various web elements. There should be no problem about this whatsoever in NVDA, if there is, please let me know, I'll investigate it and file a ticket for it on NVDA's issue tracker if required.
* web accessibility of NVDA VS JAWS
I was extremely surprised and startled to read some comments saying that JAWS is better at the web than NVDA. Without a doubt, NVDA has traditionally, and continues to have, much better web accessibility and support for modern web standards, than JAWS. If you have read, NVDA is the only Windows screen reader that gives even experimental support for Microsoft's Edge browsing engine, although Edge has many accessibility defects and loopholes. The Internet and web browsing has been NVDA's advantage, and I would like to really know on which websites link activation has been a problem, and where JAWS has been reading more useful information than NVDA.
* Microsoft Office support of JAWS VS NVDA
JAWS has historically had older support for corporate environment application and the Microsoft Office suite. However, NVDA has really picked up in terms of Microsoft Office support and some corporate accessibility in the year 2014. Those who may have followed NVDA's development progress, and NVDA happenings itself, may be aware of the leaps NVDA took in terms of Microsoft Office support in 2014, and in 2015, NV Access even proudly shared on one interview and also the NV Access podcast that with Microsoft Office support, users were really happy and donations had gone up by 25%. Microsoft Powerpoint received a lot of work then, but for those who still watch NVDA evolve, a development team for India is working hard on improving NVDA's support for Excel and Word even further. Unfortunately, Microsoft Access remains to be NVDA's weakness, and I acknowledge that.
- NVDA Advantages
- NVDA is extremely lightweight and snappy, and the only Windows screen reader portable in its true sense. JAWS and Window Eyes simply have namesake portability, because a Freedom Scientific mirror display driver needs to be installed on any computer that wants to run JAWS, so a pre-requisite is involved in JAWS's so called portability, whereas NVDA can just be taken on any flashdrive, inserted on the computer, the corresponding file clicked, and NVDA fires up seemlessly.
- NVDA has a lot of community involvement. If you find something wrong in NVDA, or you want a feature to be added, you simply request it through the bug tracker, and it gets considered by the two lead developers from NV Access, and either they, or someone from the community who may be interested in your feature suggestion, or you yourself, if you have sufficient technical knowledge, can implement that feature into NVDA. On the other hand, JAWS is wholely in the hand of Freedom Scientific, thus NVDA owns the advantages and benefits of open source whereas JAWS doesn't.
- NVDA uses the universally known programming language Python for its add-ons, whereas Freedom Scientific has made its restrictive scripting language for writing JAWS scripts which needs to be learnt from scratch.
- NVDA has been localized in more than 40 languages by native speakers and community users from around the world, thus is truly localized and ubiquitous a program.
- At the end of the day, everyone may not indulge in piracy and illegalities, but yet wants to use a computer despite a visual impairment, but due to residence in a developing country does not have the finance or means to acquire thousand dollars to purchase a screen reader. That is where NVDA comes into the picture, NVDA, NVDA, NVDA long life to NVDA! In the past, economic affordability was NVDA's sole upside, but now, NVDA is at par, if not even better in several aspects than JAWS! I am not trying to impose NVDA upon anyone, simply trying to prove that NVDA is not what you think it to be, a poor and incompetent free screen reader for an underprivileged person, it is something free indeed, originally meant for those in developing countries, but now higher, and more powerful than these so called better commercial alternatives. Please let me know if you have any further query or issue with NVDA, and we NVDA enthusiasts out here will try to assist you to resolve it at the earliest!
Best Regards,
Bhavya Shah
Punteggio: +0
Ultima edizione da BhavyaShah , 10.01.2016 10:38:29