NVDA

NVDA

I had heard about NVDA at an accessibility conference a short while ago but had not had the chance to test it. It's open source, and free (as in cost), and supposedly only so far works with Windows(TM), and that's a shame. Given the range of projects to work on, and given the satisfaction to be gained, as well as the market value--well, I should think that porting it to Linux, or Mac OS X would make sense.

Or even, to extend the idea, having a Web-based service that does this. I'm ignorant here, and as I type, am not doing the needed research. But does a screen reader exist for, say, Google Apps? For iCloud? The scenario I envisage is that a person has a tablet; she or he may not even have a visual disability but could, say, be dyslexic or not even particularly fluent in reading. The tablet does not support Windows (digression: are there apps that do screen reading on a sophisticated level for Android, iOS? There must be....beyond what is already in iOS, with which I'm most familiar), nor iOS but does Android or an equivalent Linux-based system, such as Meego.

How is this person to navigate the Web using the tablet? And suppose she is not even dyslexic but simply aged, and so cannot read very well because no matter what the font, it's too small and blurry. Would we (those who live in society: all of us, minus the outliers currently running--certainly not standing--for the Republic nomination in the US) really want to consign this very large population to having to buy licensed software? Wouldn't the cost to society, or even just to the affected persons be extraordinary?

Think about it: The baby boom generation's oldest have breached 65, and despite their best efforts, their bodies are falling apart and that process will accelerate as they get older. Many are now already using computers and many more will start using tablets, as they will shortly prove to be consistently cheaper and even, for most uses, easier to work with.

It's a large and so far mostly untapped market; but it's a market that can only come into being if some things are made freely available, like paving roads so that people can then go to the shopping malls.