hello. I get that this is a list for an open source project and I am a strong advocate for open source software -- I too make my living using and working on it every day. In fact, I'm writing this using an open source screen reader, yasr. Yes, we got many of the details wrong in terms of how things have played out over time, but I think the over all concept was more or less correct and I think the jury is still out as to whether we were completely wrong. With the exception of Linux and the BSD's which are completely open source, the screen readers available today for commercial operating systems, i.e. Windows, iOS, Mac OSX and Android, are totally dependent on the accessibility APIs the vendors of those operating systems provide. If the data coming out of those APIs isn't good or if the APIs aren't performant, then the screen reader experience wil be terrible regardless of which one is in use. As I wrote earlier, Apple has already shut the door on third party screen reader development -- it's VoiceOver or the highway. Microsoft has made the argument that by building Narrator, they can learn how bad their APIs are and improve them for their own use, as well as the use of the third party screen readers. This is a reasonable argument, as long as they're willing to continue sharing those APIs with third party screen reader developers. But, if they decide they want to go down the road of Apple at some point, third party screen reader developers, and their users, are out in the cold. That is more true today than it was, say, 10 or 15 years ago. The irony is, and I'm sure many of the folks on this list wil disagree with this statement, that in some way, the argument we made about these concerns to Microsoft helped spur the development of NVDA, a project I thoroughly endorse. Microsoft has been a very large contributor to the NVDA effort, something they did, in part, to allay our concerns, and to show they support open source software. As to my comment about the jury still being out on the issue, Microsoft continues to push Narrator forward. And, based on discussions we've had with them recently, they are discovering just how challenging it can be to make a screen reader work well. It is my perception that they are still toying with the idea of going down the Apple road in some of their internal discussions, but that they are coming to the realization about how bad of an idea this really is. It is that realization that gives me hope that we will continue to have choices when it comes to access software on Windows going forward and that the Linux companies, i.e. Cannonical, Red Hat and the others, will decide the best way to leverage accessibility is to continue to improve the access software that's already out there. -Brian
