But Brian, the NFB did ask Microsoft to stop development of Narrator. In fact, it would be illegal for Microsoft to continue development of Narrator to the exclusion of other screen reader. Essentually, you are claiming that the NFB merely asked Microsoft to not do something that is illegal anyway. And it's not even what actually happened. Microsoft did stop development on Narrator. This was never about accessibility of the API. It was always about competition between Freedom Scientific and Microsoft. You said so yourself earlier in this very thread, " When Microsoft began putting a real effort into Narrator, there wer those of us who were concerned that it would put Freedom scientific out of business." On 8/16/22 20:53, Brian Buhrow wrote:
Hello. I'm going to stop soon, but I'll try one more time. The conversations I participated in weren't ones where we asked Microsoft to stop development on Narrator. They were conversations where we asked them not to develop Narrator to the exclusion of keeping other screen reader developers out of the loop. We recognized that Microsoft was only going to put so much resource into developing the APIs and Narrator, and if they didn't keep the third parties in the loop, we might end up in a situation where the existing screen readers didn't work at all and Narrator wasn't really ready for prime time use. The point that's ben missed here, is that the only reason Jaws, NVDA and any other third party screen readers work at all is because Microsoft has worked hard to make sure they will continue to work. If Microsoft decided to close those APIs, while there might be a large hue and cry in our community, I doubt they would get into that much legal trouble. Consider, for example, how much effort was expended to get them to accept third party browsers on their platform. Yes, they do and now they embrace it, sort of, but there is no way the blindness community could mount the kind of effort it took to get them to change their minds about browsers, which I could argue, is still not entirely a resolved question, since there are times you still need to use Edge if you want to do certain things in Windows. I hear and appreciate the argument from those who cannot afford to pay for extra software in order to use Windows. But consider this, today, NVDA is a very viable option which can be had for free. Even better, it came about without the total destruction of the eco system built around Jaws, which, whether you like it or not, supports a large number of blind folks who are gainfully employed. It may be that Freedom Scientific strongly discouraged Microsoft from developing Narrator, I wouldn't put it past them to have done that, and it's true the NFB didn't decry their efforts, but in the conversations of which I was a part, and I realize Iv'e said this before, it was always about making sure all access developers had equal access to the Microsoft APis and could write the best screen readers possible. NVDA is the shining example of the success of that argument. If Microsoft had pursued the holy graille of making the best screen reader possible, they would have done it at the expense of the third party AT developers and we would be in much worse shape than we are now. -Brian
