[nvda] Re: nvda and OCR software

Hello Alf,
Thank you very much for your interesting statement about the price of specialised technology in your country.
I hope you don't mind I have linked your message below to my blog in french, I found your msg on the list archive. 


Alf a écrit :
Ok ok, since I started this topic I believe I should say something about to lower the tension and to explain why free software. First, I was looking for a free OCR software which could work with Nvda. Why Nvda? Because Nvda is open source and free software which every days grows into very good screen reader which could be very competitive with the other products if everything continues and from my observations that could be in a year or even less. Guys, I don't know if you ever thought that on this and the other blind mailing lists are members who are from country's who have very bad economical situation, or they have very low government support who can't afford none of commercial products. Believe it or not, Croatia is the only country in Europe who has the lowest government support which for a single blind person is 45 dollars per month. 45 dollars is for people who are employed and for none employed people support is about 65 bucks. Can you believe it??? Now tell me, with 45 bucks, can you live and get anything from the accessible devices including hardware or software? No way.
As I stated on another mailing list, all the technology boom didn't pass us by, and people here know for everything that's available. However if they want to stay in touch and use all available products specially software what they have to do? They are forced, I repeat, forced, to use pirated software. Why is that? Just because they can't afford it. Is it good to use pirated software? No, off course not, but I say once more, people here use pirated software just because they have to, not because its fun.. And the problem I presented is not just actual for Croatia, there are other small country's which are in similar situation. So logical answer for solving the global problem is ... open source and free software which is thankfully more and more available for all operating systems, and if you ask me for opinion I think that Nvda and espeak are the best think that appeared in the last few years for blind people and usage of windows operating systems no matter what some people say that espeak is not possible to understand on websites, or that Nvda doesn't do this or that.
I work in Croatian association of the blind who is official distributor and dealer for lots of commercial stuff including Freedom scientific, Handy tech or Codefactory products. Our prices are according to the situation I mentioned in previous paragraph the lowest in this part of Europe for sure, if not in whole Europe. When we sold Talks we were selling it for 160 euros, where in other country's was 250, and even 300. With Code factory is the same right now. And still, what do we have, some people who still can't get the product and they use illegal copy's. Off course they can't get legal technical support from us, but instead of getting legal support they have various mailing lists and forums where they help each other very successfully. As a dealer I should probably get all of their names on the list, and send them to all company's, where they would be on their black lists, and even if they will collect some money one day to buy commercial product, that will not be possible. Yes let's face it , that is happening that after a few months or years of illegal usage people finally come with money they collected and they buy the product. So I'm repeating my self again, that the only solution for that global problem where blind people use pirated software is free and open source software. So guys, next time when someone says that its very easy to spend 350 bucks for finereader, 150 for Mobile speak, or even 600/700 for windoweyes or jaws, think about people who can't get it and think about alternative solutions. Btw one more think at the end ... I have all the thinks including Braille display, jaws and finereader. Do you know how I got it? I had to write a paper which went too I don't know how many company's where I asked for their sponsorship. At the end the paper went to Croatian organization for all disabled people who organized the action for about 80 people with different needs, and I was on their list with very high priority, that's why I got my stuff in a few months. Again, if I wouldn't be so successful ion my university and all accessible fields for the last 8 years, I wouldn't get it. And even because of my success it wasn't easy to get all the stuff and who knows if I would be available to graduate on my university where I study information science and where I will graduate next month. In order to accomplish that action, I even had to make a documentary movie which was published on Croatian national TV in one program for disabled people, where few million people saw me at once, where I was explaining how my life functions from a blindness prospective, and why I need all of that equipment. Finally one very good private company showed up who bought all the thinks I needed. But I repeat, if I wouldn't be so successful, for sure I wouldn't get all the stuff. The reason why I told that story is because I feel that blind people really shouldn't pay more for accessibility, and if we have to pay, we have to pay something that has regular price and what's equal with the rest of sited population. Yes, there are some thinks which still need to be purchased in order to be competitive with sited people specially in the IT industry, but I can really see that the situation is changing every day towards free and open source products. So that's why I promote free and open source software all the time. Why Sound forge, if we can use Audacitty with little more effort from our side, why Nero, if we can use infrarecorder for example, why ms office if openoffice will be quite accessible with nvda for a few months I'm sure. Now at the end, why some commercial screen reader if we can use nvda which is really growing into a very good screen reader which is more and more capable of getting more complicated things even for advanced windows users.
P.s: John, that feature what are you saying that Jaws need some tweaking in order to work thru another soundcard, works just with eloquence, with the other synths its just not working,where Nvda again works better with what ever speech synth:) 
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To post messages to the list send email to
nvda@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
To modify your NVDA Email settings go to:
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Thank you for your continued support of Nonvisual Desktop Access, an open 
source free screen reader for Microsoft Windows:
http://www.nvda-project.org/
To get the latest NVDA snapshot:
http://www.nvda-project.org/snapshots/
Report bugs or make feature requests at:
http://trac.nvda-project.org/
Message Archive:
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