Blind Bargains

#CSUN14 Audio: Candid Thoughts on the GW Micro and Microsoft Partnership from Jeremy Curry


GW Micro made big news earlier this year when they announced a partnership with Microsoft to provide a free copy of Window-Eyes to owners of Microsoft Office 2010 and newer. But what will this mean for the screen reader going forward and for long-time or new users? To dig deeper, we spoke with Jeremy Curry, GW Micro's Director of Training, to get some of the nuts and bolts of the partnership and a taste of what will be in Window-Eyes 9. Blind Bargains audio coverage of CSUN 2014 is generously sponsored by the American Foundation for the Blind.

Transcript

We strive to provide an accurate transcription, though errors may occur.

Hide transcript
Direct from San Diego, it’s BlindBargains.com coverage of CSUN 2014. The biggest names, provocative interviews, and wall-to-wall exhibit hall coverage, brought to you by the American Foundation for the Blind.

For the latest technology news and accessibility information on cell phones, mainstream and access technology, personal medical devices, office equipment, digital audio players, and web-based and app technologies, log onto AccessWorld, the American Foundation for the Blind’s monthly technology magazine: www.afb.org/aw.

Now, here’s J.J. Meddaugh.

J.J.: We’re here at CSUN 2014 with Jeremy Curry, Director of Training for GW Micro. And of course, a lot to talk about, especially since the recent announcement and collaboration with GW Micro and Microsoft, and also new stuff with Window-Eyes. Welcome back to Blind Bargains, Jeremy.

JC: Hey, thanks for having me, J.J. Always good to be here.

J.J.: Well, we weren’t in Florida, so we haven’t had a chance to talk to you since the big announcement, of course, referring to the collaboration between GW Micro and Microsoft. So how has the reception gone for that? Fill people in, if maybe anyone might be living under a rock.

JC: For those of you living under a rock, anybody who owns Office 2010 or later can basically get Window-Eyes for free. The reception of it has been absolutely phenomenal. Microsoft has partnered with us, and people are just going crazy over it, not only individuals and consumers, but larger corporations, state agencies, just about anybody you could imagine who uses a screen reader. This is a phenomenal shift in the industry, so we’re seeing lots of positive things come out from that.

J.J.: Are you hearing from users who haven’t tried Window-Eyes before or perhaps used it several years ago and they’re coming back to give it another shot?

JC: Yeah, absolutely. In fact, I was just at a meeting earlier this week where we had some users who were Vocalize users, then Window-Eyes, then JAWS, and they were really excited to be able to get back into Window-Eyes again, because they had missed all of those commands and things that they knew from the past. So definitely, we’re getting a lot of that.

And we’re getting people who haven’t tried it before and have wanted to, we’re getting just about everybody you can imagine. Web testers, a lot of web testers for large corporations. Different states, obviously with state budgets being limited, this is very appealing to most of them, because almost everybody who has a PC has Office.

So all across the gamut, we’re getting just lots of people. Just a massive exodus away from the competition and towards us is what we’re seeing.

J.J.: How does this fall in line with – obviously this isn’t the first free solution, but perhaps a little more full-feature than what else is available currently?

JC: Yes, you’ve got free screen readers out there like NVDA, and it’s a great thing. Of course, it’s open source, which Windows-Eyes is not. We’ve always positioned ourselves as a professional screen reader, and we continue to do that. Really when you look out in the market for people who are in employment situations, they’re usually using Window-Eyes or another non-open source screen reader.

So we think that that’s going to continue to be the case, and this is something we see as different. Because it’s not an open source free screen reader; it’s a professional screen reader that’s now available at no charge. We think that’s a big difference than some of the open source stuff that’s out there now.

J.J.: So you do still have the $895 product, which obviously is a huge different. Why would someone buy that at this point?

JC: Yeah, we do have that $895 product. Basically, there are five differences between the versions. One is you don’t get an installation CD with the free one, but you can buy one. You don’t get a Braille or large print hotkey guide, but you could buy one of those; they’re $20 bucks a pop. Our GWConnect app, which makes our Skype interface accessible, or makes Skype more accessible in some cases, that is in sponsor mode with the free version.

Then the last two differences are the big ones. One is you get eSpeak and the Microsoft Speech Platform with the free version. So if you want Eloquence, DECTalk or Vocalizer Expressive, you have to buy those. And then the last one is technical support. That’s the big one. You get free tech support and installation, but anything beyond that is paid tech support. Obviously, it’s a free product; we can’t support it for free. So those are the five differences. Outside of that, the product is the same.

J.J.: But you can buy all five of those things.

JC: You absolutely can.

J.J.: Would it be still less than…

JC: Yeah. In fact, we’ve come up with some new items that people may not yet be aware of. One is something we call the Window-Eyes Install Kit. So you get the box, the CD, Vocalizer Expressive, and Eloquence, along with the Braille large print hotkey guide. You can buy that for $159. And if you want to combine those with what we call two incidents of support – an incident meaning one resolution, not just one phone call –

J.J.: Sure. For one problem that you might be having.

JC: Exactly. You can bundle that with two incidents for $199 bucks. That’s available, and then there are also other support plans available. I should mention those two incidents have to be used within a 12-month period.

If somebody’s using the free version and they want unlimited tech support for a 12-month period, they can buy that from $299. And then we have other plans that are restricted in incidence, but last for a 12-month period. For example, we have something called a 12-12 Plan, or 12 months, 12 incidents, for $99. That can be a single or multi user. That unlimited one we talked about is just a single user. There’s a 24-12 Plan, a 100-12 Plan, and a 200-12 Plan, and those plans – like the 100-12 is $599.

J.J.: Is that more for a multi user environment?

JC: Exactly. Corporation, state rehab agency, where maybe you’ve got the entire state of Indiana, for example, and they say “Okay, we want support for all of our people inside of our agency.” Not their consumers, but their agency. They could do hat. So lots of different options in addition to being able to buy the retail version as well.

J.J.: You’re placing a premium value on the tech support that you provide, obviously, compared to the full cost of the initial product.

JC: Yeah, absolutely. And that’s what we’ve been known for for years and years, so people love our support. If you want it, you can buy it, and if you don’t want it, you don’t have to pay for it.

J.J.: Sure. Also, the free version, you’re giving free updates? You discontinued SMA, so expound on that a little bit.

JC: That’s the big question for everybody, right? We had customers who were buying SMAs like 15 or 20 years out, literally. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m not sure where I’m going to be in 30 or 40 years, so we wanted to make sure that we’re delivering everything that we were promising. So we’ve discontinued SMAs currently. We think a lot of people are going to shift to the free product.

And you’ll probably see a price difference in the upgrade pricing, too, which will make the upgrade pricing more attractive and probably more aligned with what an SMA would be. So I think that’ll be less of an issue as before with the upgrades.

For the free version, the upgrades will be free. As long as you’re connected to the internet, when you start Window-Eyes, and if there’s an upgrade, it’ll say “Hey, there’s an upgrade. Do you want to get it?” You say yes, download it, install it, off you go.

J.J.: So I guess it’s worth it to point out as far as the different version of Office, it works for pretty much most of the ones that are out there if you were to get say – because you can get a 30-day trial of Office 365, or you can get a monthly plan. There’s a new – is it $7 a month plan, I believe, that was just announced a few days ago?

JC: it’s very, very inexpensive. For 365, you’ve got to make sure the client is installed on your machine. I guess for those who don’t know 365, it’s Microsoft subscription-based service. So they can get Office on a per-month basis. Office has something called Office On Demand, which is like streaming to your computer, so when you get Office 365, you actually want to make sure that the client is actually installed.

You can do that; you can do anything Office 2010 or later. As long as it’s not the Starter issue of 2010, which was only on a few OEM computers. So pretty much anything out there 2010 or later is going to work. Doesn’t matter if you’re an enterprise, government agency, school. It’s on your system, you can use it.

J.J.: What was the impetus for forming this partnership with Microsoft? Are they bankrolling this? How does this all work and how did this become fruition?

JC: I think that people have seen that the industry’s been changing for a long time. We see Apple out there with VoiceOver, for example, and there’s been a big push for Microsoft to do that. So now there’s a very similar solution. Because if you look at PCs, most 98%, 99% of all the PCs have Office installed. Most of us have that; it’s a very inexpensive way to get Office if you need it. So you can put Window-Eyes on and have access, very similar to a VoiceOver user, for example.

So I think that is something that people have asked for, and now it’s that ability to have that out there. That’s I think one of the things that’s caused this to happen.

J.J.: Sure. And obviously, you feel – the arrangement that you have with Microsoft, I’m sure you’re not going to go into details, but it obviously – because the sales that you’re going to lose from the retail version, you’ve got to compensate for that somehow. You obviously have a fair arrangement that’s going to make that possible for you guys going forward.

JC: Yeah, there were people who were afraid that we were going to go out of business or something. I can’t divulge details of what the business arrangement is, but it’s something that obviously we think is fair all around.

It continues that partnership between the two of us. It’s funny, because people are coming to me and saying, “Well, you guys are just now partnering with Microsoft.” We’ve been partners with Microsoft for over 20 years. It’s just that this is now at the forefront and everybody’s talking about it. So it’s just kind of a way that that gets even stronger.

J.J.: Some people have asked, why would Microsoft choose to make – or GW, I guess, whoever’s decision it was, to make Office a requirement for this version of Window-Eyes as opposed to making it work on any version of Windows, if Microsoft is trying to promote accessibility?

JC: Yeah, that’s probably a good question for Microsoft. But I think that because of the productivity that Office enables us to use – for example, I’ve made no secret that I’m an iOS user as well, but I also use a PC when I need to be productive. When I need to actually create content and do stuff, I’m using Office. And Windows already has, while it’s not very advanced, they’ve got Narrator built in.

J.J.: It’s gotten a little better, but you’re right.

JC: It’s still a ways. You’re not going to use Narrator to give a PowerPoint.

J.J.: And maybe that’s where they’d realize that Narrator comes short when it comes to the Office applications especially.

JC: Window-Eyes definitely excels there, so I think you’re seeing –

J.J.: No pun intended? Yeah. Awesome. Of course, you’re at Window-Eyes 8, and I’m assuming you’re working on a Window-Eyes 9. My math skills tell me that would be coming up next.

JC: Unless we just want to start cranking the version numbers up.

J.J.: Yeah, you could go up to 15 or something. So what’s new? You guys have talked about improving the web for a long time; is that on the horizon? I know that’s probably been one of the biggest talked-about situations of Window-Eyes currently.

JC: Yeah, it’s something that we wanted to do for a long time. We obviously had other priorities; obviously making this thing work with Microsoft took a lot of time. So we are actually showing some betas of Window-Eyes 9 here at CSUN, and it does have improved web accessibility.

It’s not obviously done yet, so there are things that we’re still working on, but for example there’s been talk on Twitter about improving support of various ARIA roles, how that’s done, and just improving access to content across the board. When we’ve got these dynamically changing web pages, we made some changes in 8, and now we’ve basically fundamentally rewritten the way our browse mode works and the things that people have wanted to see in the web for a long time are coming to fruition.

And again, just like we always have, we’ve got to raise the bar with some of these things and give just as good or better access with our new support.

J.J.: So where does this excel? Say like dynamic web content in 2.0, you mentioned ARIA, things like that?

JC: Yeah, things of those nature. Also the ability to move line by line with a visual line. For example, when we’re training people who are sighted, or sighted people are training, or you’ve got sightees who have a spouse and they’re trying to follow along with the web, we’re making sure that each line that’s visible is what Window-Eyes reads. If you do “read to end,” it’s still going to read just like normal.

But we want to make sure that’s a little bit more congruent with the sighted user experience a bit, so that maybe there’s more ease of training there as well as just communication with other sighted individuals. So things of that nature, ARIA roles, dynamic web pages, those are the things that are the focus. I think when people get to play with it, they’re going to be really, really happy with it.

J.J.: Back to – we were talking about the online systems, and of course, Office 365 comes up here. I’m not sure if that’s something that you guys have worked on. But does the Microsoft deal end up giving you a preference of “Okay, we’re going to make sure we work really good with Microsoft products” versus other companies’ offerings at this point?

JC: I think Microsoft is definitely still committed to accessibility. Would I say we have a much closer partnership? Absolutely. We’ve always had good relationships with those teams. Obviously, we’ve gotten very good relationships with those teams now. People are seeing it publicly. I think the expectation will be higher, which means we’ve got to meet those expectations. So I think you’ll see a lot of work on those things as we progress throughout this partnership.

J.J.: How is that going to affect other companies that might be offering competing products? Say like support for Google Docs or different word processors, things like that.

JC: Yeah, from our side, we want to continue to support those things as well. We’re not just tied in to just supporting Microsoft products. For example, people have asked “Are you going to support Firefox? Are you going to support iTunes?” Yeah, those things are still going to happen. Google, with their various products, we still want to work with those.

So there’s lots of stuff happening there. We’re not just going to be focused in on just this one thing. I think it’s important people know that we’re not just going to say “Oh, well, it’s not Office; it’s not going to work.” If there’s other stuff, we still intend to make it work.

J.J.: Awesome. I know these are always tricky; any sort of timeline on when people might be able to see some remnants or features of Window-Eyes 9 coming out?

JC: Of course, they can definitely stop at the CSUN booth. It’s not going to be public for awhile. I don’t know what the timeframe is currently, and if I gave one, we would probably have to apologize if we didn’t make that. I’d like to say tomorrow, but it’s not going to be tomorrow. In the very near future.

J.J.: Any other features in Window-Eyes 9 that Doug doesn’t want you to talk about right now?

JC: I’m sure there’s probably quite a few. But we’ll keep those secrets, kind of just whet people’s appetite for a little bit.

J.J.: You are showing a new low-vision product as well. Of course, GW has been doing a lot with low-vision products. Tell us about that.

JC: Yeah, it’s called the Readit Scholar. It’s a product made by VisionAid International, so if you’re familiar with our Readit Air or ReadEasy Move, it’s a camera capture system. And then it can do OCR not only on things up close, but also at a distance. it’s got built-in optical image stabilization so that you get a very, very steady image. I don’t think any other camera that I know of on the VT market has that built in, as well as 21x optical zoom and then more digital zoom.

So you can basically use this to see better than somebody with 20/20 vision. You could OCR something across the room if you wanted to, or take pictures with it to save for later or whatever you happen to have. But it’s all HD. It’s a very, very cool product. It collapses up and it’s very small, easy to take with you.

J.J.: So it’s semi-portable, you’d say?

JC: Yeah. Semi-portable. To some extent, it could be used by a totally blind user, too. Obviously to look at distance things, you’d have to be able to line those up, but the close-up stuff would work well for a blind user, just like with our Readit Air.

J.J.: Sure. And is that available now?

JC: It’s available now; it’s shipping. The price tag on it is $3999, so it’s up there, but it’s definitely well worth it.

J.J.: Okay. People who want to get more information about GW Micro?

JC: They can go to www.gwmicro.com. Give us a call, (260) 489-3671. Follow us on Facebook, Facebook.com/gwmicro, Youtube.com/gwmicro, or everybody’s favorite right now, Twitter @gwmicro. We’ve always got lots of information there, and if you want to look at information about Window-Eyes for Office, search for #weforoffice. Lots of information that’s been out there on Twitter for that as well.

J.J.: And there’s a website specifically for that as well, correct?

JC: Yes, windoweyesforoffice – not the number 4, but the word four, so windoweyesforoffice.com, all one word.

J.J.: All right, thank you so much, as always.

JC: Thanks for having me. It’s been a pleasure.

For more exclusive CSUN coverage, visit www.blindbargains.com, or download the Blind Bargains app for your iOS or Android device. Blind Bargains CSUN coverage is presented by the A T Guys, www.atguys.com.

This has been another Blind Bargains audio podcast. Visit BlindBargains.com for the latest deals, news, and exclusive content. This podcast may not be retransmitted, sold, or reproduced without the express written permission of A T Guys. © 2014.


Listen to the File


File size: 17MB
Length: 18:34

Check out our audio index for more exclusive content
Blind Bargains Audio RSS Feed

This content is the property of Blind Bargains and may not be redistributed without permission. If you wish to link to this content, please do not link to the audio files directly.

Category: Software

No one has commented on this post.

You must be logged in to post comments.

Username or Email:
Password:
Keep me logged in on this computer

Or Forgot username or password?
Register for free

J.J. Meddaugh is an experienced technology writer and computer enthusiast. He is a graduate of Western Michigan University with a major in telecommunications management and a minor in business. When not writing for Blind Bargains, he enjoys travel, playing the keyboard, and meeting new people.


Copyright 2006-2024, A T Guys, LLC.