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I find it unbelievable that a software costing $1000 is the de facto standard. What is their moat, what exactly does it offer that it's impossible to replicate

I find it unbelievable that a software costing $1000 is the de facto standard. What is their moat, what exactly does it offer that it's impossible to replicate using existing libraries and APIs?

bramd 9y ago
What's the standard really depends on which slice of the world/market you're looking at. NVDA[0] is a very capable screenreader as well and does some things even better than JAWS. It's totally free and open source. [0]: https://nvaccess.org/ https://nvaccess.org/
- jbob2000 9y ago
  That's great, but nobody uses it, so we don't target it.
  - robin_reala 9y ago
    For GOV.UK we came up with a screenreader breakdown of JAWS at 38.5%, VoiceOver at 21.2% and NVDA 12%. That’s not a lot, but it’s not nobody. https://accessibility.blog.gov.uk/2016/11/01/results-of-the-2016-gov-uk-assistive-technology-survey/ https://accessibility.blog.gov.uk/2016/11/01/results-of-the-...
    - jbob2000 9y ago
      Thanks so much for sharing your results!
saagarjha 9y ago
> I find it unbelievable that a software costing $1000 is the de facto standard. Of course, there's always software that costs absurd amounts of money for seemingly simple things; IDA comes to mind. I'm not excusing it, but that isn't to say that it doesn't exist.
kolpa 9y ago
It has a very small but dedicated user-base. You could clone it, but you don't have a market to sell to. You can't just make a lot more blind people to grow the market. (You could, but please don't)
AlexandrB 9y ago
> What is their moat Their moat is that the addressable market is too small for investors to bother investing in.
- cornholio 9y ago
  There are 36 million blind people in the world and other tens of millions with severe impairments. It seems more like the market is too small due to lack of investment and development.
avtar 9y ago
I work at an accessibility research centre in Toronto. When people consult Occupational Therapists for their a11y needs the government here will subsidize a percentage of the software (and hardware?) costs. As far as I know JAWS gets recommended, NVDA doesn't :/
sigstoat 9y ago
> I find it unbelievable that a software costing $1000 is the de facto standard. my recollection from speaking to a blind acquaintance is that it is subsidized by some government agency for personal use, and businesses buying it for blind employees are just stuck with it as an ADA thing.
jareds 9y ago
I bought Jaws 15 years ago before NVDA was out. Because of this it doesn't cost me $1000 to keep using it, it costs me $200 every two years to keep up to date. IT's the only software I know of that offers good 3270 emulator support using third party scripts someone wrote. While it may be possible to make NVDA behave similarly with python scripting it would take more then $200 worth of my time since I'm not a Python programmer. Since I rely on it for my job it's also comforting to know I can call up someone and get help or open a support ticket if something is broken. I have not had to do this recently, but I remember calling up when I switched from office 2003 to 2007 at work because the UI was so different I wasn't sure if I was having accessibility issues or not. Support was helpful and had me working in under 10 minutes.

I find it unbelievable that a software costing $1000 is the de facto standard. What is their moat, what exactly does it offer that it's impossible to replicate using existing libraries and APIs?

bramd 9y ago

What's the standard really depends on which slice of the world/market you're looking at. NVDA[0] is a very capable screenreader as well and does some things even better than JAWS. It's totally free and open source. [0]: https://nvaccess.org/ https://nvaccess.org/

jbob2000 9y ago
That's great, but nobody uses it, so we don't target it.
- robin_reala 9y ago
  For GOV.UK we came up with a screenreader breakdown of JAWS at 38.5%, VoiceOver at 21.2% and NVDA 12%. That’s not a lot, but it’s not nobody. https://accessibility.blog.gov.uk/2016/11/01/results-of-the-2016-gov-uk-assistive-technology-survey/ https://accessibility.blog.gov.uk/2016/11/01/results-of-the-...
  - jbob2000 9y ago
    Thanks so much for sharing your results!

saagarjha 9y ago

> I find it unbelievable that a software costing $1000 is the de facto standard. Of course, there's always software that costs absurd amounts of money for seemingly simple things; IDA comes to mind. I'm not excusing it, but that isn't to say that it doesn't exist.

kolpa 9y ago

It has a very small but dedicated user-base. You could clone it, but you don't have a market to sell to. You can't just make a lot more blind people to grow the market. (You could, but please don't)

AlexandrB 9y ago

> What is their moat Their moat is that the addressable market is too small for investors to bother investing in.

cornholio 9y ago
There are 36 million blind people in the world and other tens of millions with severe impairments. It seems more like the market is too small due to lack of investment and development.

avtar 9y ago

I work at an accessibility research centre in Toronto. When people consult Occupational Therapists for their a11y needs the government here will subsidize a percentage of the software (and hardware?) costs. As far as I know JAWS gets recommended, NVDA doesn't :/

sigstoat 9y ago

> I find it unbelievable that a software costing $1000 is the de facto standard. my recollection from speaking to a blind acquaintance is that it is subsidized by some government agency for personal use, and businesses buying it for blind employees are just stuck with it as an ADA thing.

jareds 9y ago

I bought Jaws 15 years ago before NVDA was out. Because of this it doesn't cost me $1000 to keep using it, it costs me $200 every two years to keep up to date. IT's the only software I know of that offers good 3270 emulator support using third party scripts someone wrote. While it may be possible to make NVDA behave similarly with python scripting it would take more then $200 worth of my time since I'm not a Python programmer. Since I rely on it for my job it's also comforting to know I can call up someone and get help or open a support ticket if something is broken. I have not had to do this recently, but I remember calling up when I switched from office 2003 to 2007 at work because the UI was so different I wasn't sure if I was having accessibility issues or not. Support was helpful and had me working in under 10 minutes.