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

  • From: "Eleanor Martha Burke" <eleanormarthaburke@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2015 19:37:58 -0000

I found when I started at the Opoen University, they knew all about JAWS as a screen reader and had it loaded on computers for accessability at some courses I attended but they didn't have a clue about Dolphin Supernova which is my screen reader on Windows. While people do knock it, its great advantage is the magnification and speech together. True there is Magic which can be used in conjunction with JAWS but at such a price! Nobody has mentioned Zoomtext, though it has magnification and speech I favour Dolphin Supernova above it. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Derek Hornby" <derek.hornby_uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 

To: <access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2015 7:12 PM
Subject: [access-uk] Re: Happy 20th Birthday, JAWS for Windows



Well  I think most Jaws customers  are employers of the users!
or the  customers are the  government as in say access to work.

So most users won't care how much jaws costs,  if not paying
personally!

Derek



-----Original Message-----
From: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Mike Ray
Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2015 12:17 PM
To: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [access-uk] Re: Happy 20th Birthday, JAWS for Windows


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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