National Federation of the Blind Convention: JAWS and Freedom Scientific

Those chapter members who were able to attend and I arrived in Dallas ridiculously early on Friday. After sleeping until four in the afternoon, I made plans to rouse myself bright and early the next morning to attend Freedom Scientific’s seminar on JAWS.

JAWS is Freedom Scientific’s screen reader, a powerful tool for the blind that works through a number of keyboard commands and voice feedback that can be toggled in a variety of ways for the individual user’s verbosity and voice tone preferences. JAWS enjoys frequent upgrades. In fact, JAWS 7.1 upgrade was handed out to those people in the audience who already have the program. (along with free Freedom Scientific shirts and fierce shark toys that squeak when you squeeze them. That shark is still my favorite thing I brought home with me) There was also talk of JAWS 8.0 being released soon.

One exciting feature is that JAWS now works with Skype, an exciting program in and of itself. JAWS can also work with a refreshable Braille display, so the user can switch between Braille and voice or use one or the other.

Pictures forthcoming!