[access-uk] Re: Happy 20th Birthday, JAWS for Windows

  • From: Mike Ray <mike@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2015 12:17:00 +0000

And I don't suppose anybody else who is an avid Jaws user can afford to
throw a party, after paying for the thing.




On 29/01/2015 10:42, Jackie Brown wrote:
> Wish I could throw a party, but I have no inclination! (smile).
> 
> Kind regards,
> 
> Jackie Brown
> Emails: thebrownsplace@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Jackieannbrown62@xxxxxxxxx
> jackie@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Website: www.thebrownsplace.info
> Twitter: @thebrownsplace
> Skype: thejackmate
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
> Colin Howard
> Sent: 28 January 2015 20:26
> To: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [access-uk] Happy 20th Birthday, JAWS for Windows
> 
> Greetings,
> 
> Seen on the VicugL group, thought it may be of interest! Shows how rapidly
> time passes!
> 
> From: David Goldfield <david.goldfield@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2015 20:46:24 -0500
> 
> Episode 102 of Freedom Scientific's FSCast podcast reminds us that 2015
> marks the 20th anniversary of the JAWS for Windows screen reader. In  fact,
> Jonathan Mosen reminds us that January is, in fact, the month in  which JAWS
> turned 20. I remember installing and using JFW 1.0 back in  January of 1995
> and I thought I'd dedicate this short blog post to some  of my early
> memories of that product and of that time in general.
> 
> In 1995, I was working for Blazie Engineering providing technical  support.
> Windows 3.1 was a fairly well-established operating system with  several
> Windows screen readers already available, including Blazie's own  Windows
> Master which I believe was already out at that time. While I had  used
> Windows 3.1 and was familiar with it on a very basic level, I was a edicated
> DOS user. While I was very familiar with Vocal-eyes and JAWS for DOS, ASAP
> from Microtalk was my screen reader of choice, along with a trusty Braille
> 'n Speak as my speech synthesizer.
> It was during the end of 1994 or the very beginning of 1995 when we received
> our boxed copy of JAWS for Windows 1.0, with January 19, 1995 being the
> official launch date of that product. If you really want to read a piece of
> classic assistive technology history, you can, courtesy of the Internet
> Archive's Wayback Machine, read the December 1994 Henter-Joyce newsletter
> which, among other things, contains the big announcement regarding JFW 1.0.
> 
> Around this time, I found out I had enlarged tonsils which needed to be
> removed. As I constantly used my voice to do my job, it was recommended I
> stay home for two weeks during my recuperation. This was, I decided, the
> perfect time to finally dive into Windows 3.1 with our new copy of JAWS for
> Windows, version 1.0.
> 
> The box contained a collection of cassette tapes with tutorials recorded by
> Eric Damery and Ted Henter. Eric's voice is very familiar to JAWS users as
> he annually introduces the new features which are being added to new JAWS
> versions. Eric has participated in these recordings since the very beginning
> of JFW and, even in the 1.0 days, was a fabulous and professional presenter.
> I think the product was often referred to as JFW or JAWS for Windows more
> than it is today as Henter-Joyce wanted to distinguish it from the other
> JAWS product which ran on DOS machines.
> Once I listened to some of the tutorials, I installed the product onto my
> Windows 3.1 machine from the included 3.5 inch floppy disks, followed by the
> authorization key, also on a floppy, a form of copy protection I had
> previously never heard of and was having some difficulty wrapping my mind
> around. After all, in those days most software packages never had any sort
> of copy protection; you installed it and then used it.
> Well, the installation and authorization process went smoothly and, soon
> thereafter, I had JFW working with my trusty Bns 640. After all, for the
> most part we had no software-based synthesizers at that time and so you
> needed a bns, Accent, Artic, Audapter, Dec-talk or Doubletalk to get speech,
> with no Braille support at that time.
> They wanted JFW to feel like JAWS for DOS by giving it a PC cursor as well
> as a JAWS cursor. It included the insert-G hotkey to label graphics and the
> insert-T hotkey to read the window title, two features we didn't really need
> in DOS. Insert-down arrow was the "say all" key and the other keys on the
> numeric keypad tried to emulate what we were used to with JFD. I remember
> this first version crashing quite a lot but this was quickly fixed in an
> update which I probably downloaded from the Henter-Joyce BBS.
> 
> If you're curious about what was added in JFW 2.0, you can go to their
> announcement on an old version of the Henter-Joyce home page, also courtesy
> of the Internet Archive.
> Those early versions would have seemed so limited to us compared to what we
> have today, but back then it was cutting-edge technology. The JAWS cursor
> could only move within the active window. When using the Internet, you had
> to press insert-f5 to reformat the page, which you read using the JAWS
> cursor. You couldn't freely navigate through a Web page using standard
> reading commands with the PC cursor the way you can with any screen reader
> today. If my memory is correct, that capability didn't get implemented until
> version 3.31. In fact, the ability to use single letter navigation keys,
> such as pressing H for heading or N to jump to the next block of text wasn't
> even implemented until a later version, probably around 3.5.
> What more can I say, except a happy 20th birthday to JFW, or JAWS as we now
> call it. JAWS has certainly come a long way in the past 20 years. I wonder
> what it will be like 20 years from now. I'm sure that it will be supporting
> Windows 43 or whatever OS Microsoft will have pushed out to us and we'll all
> have fond memories of running our screen readers on those ancient, primitive
> Windows 7 computers. It's too bad that the Internet Archive doesn't supply
> us with snapshots of pages from the future.
> 


-- 
Michael A. Ray
Analyst/Programmer
Witley, Surrey, South-east UK

Don't judge my disability until you witness my ability

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