I may also update Vosh in the future, but the idea is to make it a library that can be used both for screen-readers and automation, and it will have a different name. There's one issue that I'll need to investigate and to my knowledge Turnover doesn't address either which are custom accessibility rotors, which may require using a private API since to my knowledge the public API doesn't make them available.
I personally don't feel comfortable contributing to Turnover since the code is quite a mess. I'll leave that for the AI junkies.
I personally would continue helping with the project myself, however, I'm working on other projects which demand more of my attention, including my website. I also do not use it enough to fully contribute.
But yes, the developer of the jaws type of screenreader for macOS has joined forces with TurnOver. And, from my knowledge, TurnOver now also has a jaws keyboard layout. Haven't tried this myself because I have an absolute distain for jaws.
I don't know how much freedom scientific are earning, but the fact that a blind person from the UK, regardless of using AI or not, the fact that he single-handedly created a screen reader, that, in some cases is better than VoiceOver, when freedom scientific were asked about this multiple times and said they couldn't do it because they didn't have the resources, it's just astonishing. Maybe, just maybe, the jaws developers will stop cramming so much AI into their software for once, and they might actually decide that they want to help? Although knowing American companies and just corporate entities in general, that's not happening. I would go into more of a rant about how corporate businesses are putting in less effort than the standard everyday user, but that's beyond the scope here.
Completely agree with him. I honestly hate jaws. I’m thinking seriously after this year. I am definitely going to cancel my subscription. I have a whole annual subscription in the US and honestly, I’m not even using it that much so it’s really not worth paying for it. I’m better off figuring out how to use NVDA probably. I have never used that or installed it in my Windows computer but I’m thinking seriously I’m doing that. Yeah freedom, scientific overpriced, crazy software company, and honestly dealing with their customer. Service is not a great experience so yeah, I think we’re better off making something ourselves like we’re doing now with the NVDA on the window side and turnover on the max side in building draws style components into the heck if there was a screen that could run like the jaws interface I might try a Mac. I’ve never tried to Mac because I heard so many things about it but people on here and have voiceover isn’t how different they interfaces and stuff like that from what you know in Windows so I just never was interested in wanting to try it because of some of the people’s not good experiences on here but yeah well hopefully this new screen reader doesn’t end up working out and let people have a good experience with it on the Mac and then once you know our established thing and people seem to like it maybe a few more years maybe probably wouldn’t try looking at the back. I don’t know.
In engineering, the last 20% of a project takes 80% of the time to get right. It's easy to build impressive demos with lots of quirks; it's addressing all those quirks that takes a huge amount of time and effort, and it requires properly structured code, because without containerized architectures, bugs can interact with one another in lots of complex and unpredictable ways. This is the reason why I'm not embracing Turnover myself; I checked out the code and it's already a mess, so I predict that the project will crumble under its untamed complexity long before reaching the stable milestone.
I also hate JAWS, and refuse to pay for a screen reader out of principle. I'd say if you're entertaining the thought of exploring a Mac in the future, you may want to get acquainted with NVDA on Windows first, as NVDA's object navigation model is similar to VoiceOver's, which could potentially ease the learning curve if you do eventually switch.
This may not be what Dominic was getting at, but software engineering isn't as easy as some people think it is, and this perception is only getting worse with vibe coding. Writing maintainable code, handling all of the edge cases and error paths, minimizing technical debt, testing every possible configuration, and I can keep going, is not easy, takes some time and costs money. I'm not defending Vesparo, but as a software engineer myself, I sometimes feel compelled to correct arm chair quarterbacks.
I get exactly what you’re saying. Yes software engineering isn’t easy. But if that company was easier to deal with, I could tolerate a lot more. I hate calling their customer service. They’re actually getting impatient with me sometimes when there’s something I couldn’t quite figure out how to deal with John or something almost like the attitude while you should know this and I have so many gaps in my technology training that there are some things that I just have trouble remembering how to do so yeah I don’t like dealing with them. They’re actually really pretty rude to their customers. At least it’s been my experience and they’re using it themselves because I can literally hear the jaws voices in the background on the computers when they’re doing stuff so yeah if they were easier a bunch of people to work with I would totally give them a lot more slack and they’d be a lot more likely to get my money next year, but I’m pretty sure that’s not gonna happen especially considering the fact that I still have a computer that’s too old to take Windows 11 so I’m pretty sure that Jaws 2026 would be the last one I’d get anyway most likely and even if it’s not, I think it’s just the principle of the thing I don’t want to give somebody my business who’s not gonna know how to treat me so yeah that’s the end of my wrench I promise
I did say that I didn't feel comfortable touching that code on the thread where you declared that it would be open-source since it's a bit of a mess. I even said that Claude doesn't know Swift, given the fact that it prefers to write unsafe code as if it was C with explicit locks over writing ergonomic Swift with structured concurrency. Even if it was C, Claude would also be failing by not declaring the private APIs that it relies on and instead directly calling them using `dlsym`.
Customer service 101... You don't tell the customer "You should know that" or anything like that. That's just a bad look and of course it makes the customer feel horrible. I haven't always had the best experiences with Vispero support either and try to avoid calling them unless absolutely necessary.
Comments
Last I heard
The developer is joining efforts with Turnover.
I may also update Vosh in the future, but the idea is to make it a library that can be used both for screen-readers and automation, and it will have a different name. There's one issue that I'll need to investigate and to my knowledge Turnover doesn't address either which are custom accessibility rotors, which may require using a private API since to my knowledge the public API doesn't make them available.
I personally don't feel comfortable contributing to Turnover since the code is quite a mess. I'll leave that for the AI junkies.
Re: Last I heard
I personally would continue helping with the project myself, however, I'm working on other projects which demand more of my attention, including my website. I also do not use it enough to fully contribute.
But yes, the developer of the jaws type of screenreader for macOS has joined forces with TurnOver. And, from my knowledge, TurnOver now also has a jaws keyboard layout. Haven't tried this myself because I have an absolute distain for jaws.
also, i'd just like to say
I don't know how much freedom scientific are earning, but the fact that a blind person from the UK, regardless of using AI or not, the fact that he single-handedly created a screen reader, that, in some cases is better than VoiceOver, when freedom scientific were asked about this multiple times and said they couldn't do it because they didn't have the resources, it's just astonishing. Maybe, just maybe, the jaws developers will stop cramming so much AI into their software for once, and they might actually decide that they want to help? Although knowing American companies and just corporate entities in general, that's not happening. I would go into more of a rant about how corporate businesses are putting in less effort than the standard everyday user, but that's beyond the scope here.
You’re not wrong, Dominic
Completely agree with him. I honestly hate jaws. I’m thinking seriously after this year. I am definitely going to cancel my subscription. I have a whole annual subscription in the US and honestly, I’m not even using it that much so it’s really not worth paying for it. I’m better off figuring out how to use NVDA probably. I have never used that or installed it in my Windows computer but I’m thinking seriously I’m doing that. Yeah freedom, scientific overpriced, crazy software company, and honestly dealing with their customer. Service is not a great experience so yeah, I think we’re better off making something ourselves like we’re doing now with the NVDA on the window side and turnover on the max side in building draws style components into the heck if there was a screen that could run like the jaws interface I might try a Mac. I’ve never tried to Mac because I heard so many things about it but people on here and have voiceover isn’t how different they interfaces and stuff like that from what you know in Windows so I just never was interested in wanting to try it because of some of the people’s not good experiences on here but yeah well hopefully this new screen reader doesn’t end up working out and let people have a good experience with it on the Mac and then once you know our established thing and people seem to like it maybe a few more years maybe probably wouldn’t try looking at the back. I don’t know.
Re: also, i'd just like to say
In engineering, the last 20% of a project takes 80% of the time to get right. It's easy to build impressive demos with lots of quirks; it's addressing all those quirks that takes a huge amount of time and effort, and it requires properly structured code, because without containerized architectures, bugs can interact with one another in lots of complex and unpredictable ways. This is the reason why I'm not embracing Turnover myself; I checked out the code and it's already a mess, so I predict that the project will crumble under its untamed complexity long before reaching the stable milestone.
Re: also, i'd just like to say
yeah honestly your not wrong. you can only hope this works, but as i said earlyer i don't use it as much as what i used to use it
Ditto on the JAWS hate
I also hate JAWS, and refuse to pay for a screen reader out of principle. I'd say if you're entertaining the thought of exploring a Mac in the future, you may want to get acquainted with NVDA on Windows first, as NVDA's object navigation model is similar to VoiceOver's, which could potentially ease the learning curve if you do eventually switch.
Re: also, i'd just like to say
This may not be what Dominic was getting at, but software engineering isn't as easy as some people think it is, and this perception is only getting worse with vibe coding. Writing maintainable code, handling all of the edge cases and error paths, minimizing technical debt, testing every possible configuration, and I can keep going, is not easy, takes some time and costs money. I'm not defending Vesparo, but as a software engineer myself, I sometimes feel compelled to correct arm chair quarterbacks.
I get what you’re saying
I get exactly what you’re saying. Yes software engineering isn’t easy. But if that company was easier to deal with, I could tolerate a lot more. I hate calling their customer service. They’re actually getting impatient with me sometimes when there’s something I couldn’t quite figure out how to deal with John or something almost like the attitude while you should know this and I have so many gaps in my technology training that there are some things that I just have trouble remembering how to do so yeah I don’t like dealing with them. They’re actually really pretty rude to their customers. At least it’s been my experience and they’re using it themselves because I can literally hear the jaws voices in the background on the computers when they’re doing stuff so yeah if they were easier a bunch of people to work with I would totally give them a lot more slack and they’d be a lot more likely to get my money next year, but I’m pretty sure that’s not gonna happen especially considering the fact that I still have a computer that’s too old to take Windows 11 so I’m pretty sure that Jaws 2026 would be the last one I’d get anyway most likely and even if it’s not, I think it’s just the principle of the thing I don’t want to give somebody my business who’s not gonna know how to treat me so yeah that’s the end of my wrench I promise
Re: also, i'd just like to say
You should have said something...
Re: also, i'd just like to say
I did say that I didn't feel comfortable touching that code on the thread where you declared that it would be open-source since it's a bit of a mess. I even said that Claude doesn't know Swift, given the fact that it prefers to write unsafe code as if it was C with explicit locks over writing ergonomic Swift with structured concurrency. Even if it was C, Claude would also be failing by not declaring the private APIs that it relies on and instead directly calling them using `dlsym`.
Re: I get what you’re saying
Customer service 101... You don't tell the customer "You should know that" or anything like that. That's just a bad look and of course it makes the customer feel horrible. I haven't always had the best experiences with Vispero support either and try to avoid calling them unless absolutely necessary.