Job Access With Speech
Job Access with Speech (JAWS) 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 either via text-to-speech, or by means of a braille display. It also allows users to create custom scripts which can alter the amount and type of information which is presented. This fact is likely the primary reason it has enjoyed high popularity within the blindness community.
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 twice a year. The newest version, JFW 6.1, was released in March 2005. A minor update to JAWS 6.1 was released on 15 April2005.