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JAWS (an acronym for Job Access With Speech) is a screen reader for the visually impaired. JAWS is produced by the Blind and Low Vision Group at Freedom Scientific of St. Petersburg, Florida, USA. Its purpose is to make MS-DOS and, more recently, Microsoft Windows accessible to a blind user. It accomplishes this by providing the user with access to the information displayed on the screen via text-to-speech or by means of a braille display, and allows for more comprehensive keyboard interaction with the computer.
It also allows users to create custom scripts which can alter the amount and type of information which is presented for different applications, and ultimately make programs which were not designed for accessibility compatibility (ie, by not using standard Windows controls) usable with JAWS.
History
JAWS was originally released in 1989 by Ted Henter, who founded the Henter-Joyce Corporation to produce and market it. Later, Henter-Joyce, Blazie Engineering, and Arkenstone, Inc. merged to form Freedom Scientific. JAWS was originally created for the MS-DOS operating system. It was one of several screen readers giving blind users access to text-mode DOS applications. Freedom Scientific now offer JAWS for DOS as a freeware download from their web site.
During the 1990s, when Microsoft Windows became more popular, a new program called JAWS for Windows (JFW) was created. JFW version 1.0 was released in 1993. Currently a new revision of JAWS for Windows is released about once a year, with minor updates in between. The newest version, JFW 7.1 was released on June 21, 2006.
External links
"JAWS (screen reader)"