Freedom Scientific's Lack of Support for Hardware
- From: "Wil James" <wil@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2005 19:48:36 -0400
This makes no sense to me in any way, shape, fashion, or form. Let me
set up the context for you.
Someone wrote on the GW Micro list about the Braille Sense, the newesst
PDA from GW Micro, inquiring about a driver for JAWS to work with its
braille display. I was shocked to see the below response. This is
directly from Doug Geoffray.
Begin Quote
Hello Robert,
I'm very glad you asked this question. This has generated great
frustration for me.
With Window-Eyes, our philosophy is to support as many synthesizers and
as
many braille displays as possible. Even if this means we need to
support
products from competing companies. It just seems so clear in my mind
that
this is the only approach.
However, Freedom Scientific obviously doesn't feel as I do about
this. HIMS had contacted Freedom Scientific several months ago
regarding
the ability to create a JAWS driver for the Braille Sense. Freedom
Scientific never responded. Thinking I had a better relationship with
Freedom, I decided to send an email to Eric Damery directly regarding
this. Like HIMS, I never got a response. A couple weeks ago I saw Eric
in
person and asked him about this... He said he would get back with me by
the end of the week with what I needed. Well, I did hear back in email
at
the end of the week but it wasn't what I needed. Let me quote Eric's
official response:
"At this time, we don't feel it makes good business sense for Freedom
Scientific to work with HIMS or their Distributors to provide the
necessary
specification or support the development of a driver to be used by JAWS
for
Windows."
This just blew me away. Since the beginning of Freedom Scientific all I
have heard is that this one stop shopping idea is best for the
user. Creating one company that handles all products for all blind and
visually impaired users is only going to help the industry and of course
blind people. Well, all I have seen are prices going up and fear of
competition and anything that can be done to squash competition even if
that means not giving existing and future JAWS users access to all their
options. Options such as the Braille Sense.
Keep in mind that with Window-Eyes we, meaning GW Micro, create all the
synthesizer and braille drivers ourselves. With JAWS, the drivers are
not
written by Freedom Scientific but usually the manufacturer of the
device. So for the Braille Sense, we are not asking Freedom Scientific
to
create the driver, we are asking for the development kit they already
have
which documents how the driver should be written to interface into
JAWS. Bottom line, there is no extra work on Freedom's part to create
this
driver. We will do that. But they refuse to give us the existing
necessary information simply because it competes with their PACMate
which
has been struggling.
My frustration is that Freedom Scientific has grown so big and arrogant
that they can turn their back on blind users simply for a buck.
So Robert, to answer your question specifically. We would love to
create a
JAWS driver for the Braille Sense. But Freedom Scientific is tieing our
hands because they feel threatened by the Braille Sense.
End Quote
-------------------------------------
This message was written and composed on the Pac mate.
--------------------------------------
Visit my blog at
http://wil.wilanddenise.com
------------------------------
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