Personally, I'd like to see companies like FS and GW just go away because they aren't needed. It would be great if Microsoft took over screen reader development in house like Apple has and rendered them useless, at least in the screen reading space. Having accessibility as just another feature like in the Apple world seems like a much better long term plan for we blind users and also reduces a big part of the cost barriers. I've moved a big part of my life over to Voice Over now and just like that model a lot better. -----Original Message----- From: Darragh OHeiligh Sent: Monday, September 19, 2011 11:39 AM To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] Windows 8 The main thing I really want to see from assistive technology developers such as FreedomScientific and GWMicro is some kind of method that will enable blind users to access the system using the touch interface. I particularly like the Mac, the iPhone and the iPod for their utilization of touch to enhance accessibility. For example, on the Mac, jestures can be used to move between controls and interact with elements etc. The touch pad can be used as if you were touching the screen giving me a better idea of the visual layout of web pages and dialogues. This is very useful when someone sighted tells me that a control that I want to interact with is at the top right of the screen for example. On IOS devices web browsing is really easy with the utilization of the touch screen even without using swipe jestures and the roter. It's going to be a chalange but I feer that the main compeditors in the screen reader industry will not be up to the task. I also thing that there may be secret feers of litigation if they infringe on pattents filed by Apple regarding copyrighted touch screen access techniques. I'd like to be proven wrong on that point though. _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins