> Every time we tried to make things compatible with JAWS, we realized that JAWS was just a pile of dirty Trident hacks that wasn't integrated as nicely as someone would expect such a software to be.
I know what you mean. Those hacks were the state of the art for all Windows screen readers from the late 90s through the mid to late 2000s; I did similar hacks myself. But now that Internet Explorer is finally dead (I think), we can leave all that in the past. These days, web browsers implement documented accessibility APIs (there are still a couple of competing APIs on Windows), and screen readers consume them. Of course, between the web application, the browser, and the screen reader, there's still room for misinterpretation of the standards, but the situation is better than it was back then.
As for Linux, I dislike the Orca screen reader simply as a user. I hope to do something about that before too long (after my non-compete with Microsoft expires). I haven't yet studied the Orca codebase deeply though.
Blind people have strong feelings about speech synthesizers. One of the most beloved speech synthesizers among blind power users was developed mostly in the mid to late 90s and last updated in 2002; unfortunately, it's closed source. I'm actually pretty comfortable with eSpeak, or more precisely the espeak-ng fork, and I know I'm not the only one. Many of us value consistent pronunciation and intelligibility at high speeds over how human-sounding the voice is.
Document conversion is something that my new company is working on. I might do a Show HN on that sometime.
I know what you mean. Those hacks were the state of the art for all Windows screen readers from the late 90s through the mid to late 2000s; I did similar hacks myself. But now that Internet Explorer is finally dead (I think), we can leave all that in the past. These days, web browsers implement documented accessibility APIs (there are still a couple of competing APIs on Windows), and screen readers consume them. Of course, between the web application, the browser, and the screen reader, there's still room for misinterpretation of the standards, but the situation is better than it was back then.
As for Linux, I dislike the Orca screen reader simply as a user. I hope to do something about that before too long (after my non-compete with Microsoft expires). I haven't yet studied the Orca codebase deeply though.
Blind people have strong feelings about speech synthesizers. One of the most beloved speech synthesizers among blind power users was developed mostly in the mid to late 90s and last updated in 2002; unfortunately, it's closed source. I'm actually pretty comfortable with eSpeak, or more precisely the espeak-ng fork, and I know I'm not the only one. Many of us value consistent pronunciation and intelligibility at high speeds over how human-sounding the voice is.
Document conversion is something that my new company is working on. I might do a Show HN on that sometime.