Email sent to Freedom scientific regarding two Jaws bugs
This is an Email I have just sent to Freedom scientific regarding two bugs that are causing me particular pain every day. Even though these issues were reported well in advance of the recently released hot fix, they have yet to be resolved. If you are experiencing any issues with Jaws, I would encourage you to use the contact information below. More people need to speak out.
I am personally tired of the situation we have found our selves in as users of Jaws. Since around version 5, we have waited with bated breath for the next release to come out only to find that they’ve released new features and along with it, new bugs. What is even worse than this, they’ve continued this trend by building on this. They advertise that a bug has been fixed and in the next release, they’ll break the very thing they fixed the year before! For example: Jaws 8 fixed a bug in Jaws 7 with remote desktop. After some time in remote desktop, the alt key would stick. Obiously, it wasn’t a keyboard problem. The issue only emerged when Jaws was running. This was fixed for Jaws 8. The release notes said that customers who used remote desktop over slow connections encountered an issue where the alt key seemed to stick. In version 9, 10 and 11, this issue has returned with vengence. In fact, it has even been found in Jaws tandem! AGain, we report bugs, we pay our SMA upgrade fees, and again, we put up and shut up.
I’m tired of it. I’m not shutting up any more. I will email Freedom scientific continually until I am happy that the bugs that I am encountering are resolved. If the issues I am encountering are not bugs then I expect that as the maker of this software they at the very least give me instructions that will assist me in solving the issue my self. Instead, every email is responded to with a cannd paragraph telling me to upgrade my version of Jaws to the latest available from the Freedom scientific. website. If I emailed them telling them that the world was going to end, I bet I would get the same stupid response.
I’m through ranting.
Contact details: Manager at the top: BGahan@freedomscientific.com
Manager of Technical support: Bcarver@FreedomScientific.com
Escalations manager: johncarson@FreedomScientific.com
Here is the email:
Dear John,
Telling me that if it cannot be duplicated then the issue will be closed is not acceptable.
If I can duplicate it and document my system then you as Freedomscientific and the developer of this product have an obligation to fix this fault.If you had a car where the drivers side door was particularly stiff to open but the manufacturer couldn’t reproduce the fault on their side would you except that there was nothing that could be done to fix this? Even if the manufacturer of the car couldn’t resolve the issue, the least you would expect would be that they would communicate a number of tried and tested instructions that would determine the cause of the problem and its associated solution.
If there is any information you require that would enable you to determine a solution to this then please contact me.
You acknowledge once again that the Windows explorer issue has been assigned to a development team. You have however not given any justification as to why, even after a hot fix has been released, paying users of Jaws are still left with a major bug without even a patch or an estimated time to the next hot fix.
Bringing this back to a common sinario, If you bought a TV and one channel didn’t work your first action would be to contact the manufacturer. If the manufacturer said that the issue was known and the relevant department were working on it, you would validly assume that an update to your TV would be released shortly to rectify this. Surely, after paying for a TV, the company would recognise that as a supplier, they had an obligation to you to ensure the product you had purchased was up to the task? In fact, you are protected by law to ensure that products you purchase are “suitable for merchantability”.
If an update was released after you had reported this fault I’m sure you can understand that you would be particularly frustrated that your new TV had still not been fixed and you still had an empty channel after shelling out good money for it.It is not unreasonable to expect and in fact even demand that a product is free from defects. Of course. Being aware of the challenges Freedomscientific experience, it is understandable that certain issues are not caught during testing. However, it is not acceptable for those issues to be ignored or in the very least extensively tested and retested. I am aware and thankful that my reports have been actioned but more communication as to what is happening is required from Freedomscientific. I cannot afford to experience problems with my interface to my job and indeed my life any more. I am not sure if you are sighted or if you use Jaws, but imagine that tree views showed more information than you needed or wanted before the item you were looking for. Imagine that the title bar of Windows explorer wasn’t read. Imagine that, as reported earlier today, your monitor froze and went dim when two third party applications froze. Imagine that when you got in in the morning, your monitor wouldn’t turn on until you turned it on and off a few times just because you’d left your computer on overnight. Imagine that in Lotus notes 8, your monitor only showed the top part of the message in certain messages until you pressed tab for an undefinitive amount of times. You wouldn’t…. No. You couldn’t use your computer productively every day.
This is what I am encountering.
I administer a system with hundreds of virtual servers, hundreds of physical servers and thousands of work stations. Believe me, I am not exaggerating the numbers. In 1 OU in active directory there are 690 computers. This is the average size of an OU in this organization. I am fighting to keep my job as it is becoming known at a high level that my screen reader is causing problems for me when navigating around VMware VSphear, I cannot access the Dell Console utility, I cannot access Dell open manage, I cannot access IT assistant, I cannot access the lists in Trend micro, I cannot access any of the HP SAN software, I cannot access the SAN switches. The list goes on. I am fighting to keep this job and it is not helping that I have had to send you almost ten emails today alone to highlight defects, problems and issues in your software. It is not helping that I cringe every time I want to look around active directory because every tree view is speaking a lode of irrelevant rubbish before the item. It isn’t helping that I cannot use Data protector because it is also an MMC based application and I am having issues with the tree view in this also.
I expect an acknowledgement of this mail detailing a summary of steps that will be taken for all the issues that I have reported to Freedom scientific today as well as a time frame for the resolution of same.
Best regards
Darragh Ó Héiligh
From: John Carson [mailto:johncarson@FreedomScientific.com]
Sent: 20 May 2010 15:45
To: Darragh Ó Héiligh
Subject: RE: Escalations Issue # 198219Hello Darragh;
As stated in a previous email, the title bar issue in Windows 7 using Windows Explorer has been duplicated by us and is assigned to the development team.
As to the issue with the MMC in Windows XP, this issue has not been duplicated by us, and is currently being looked at by our test department, if it can be reproduced, then it will be assigned to the development team for resolution, and if it can’t be duplicated then we will close this issue.
Kind regards,
John H. Carson, Jr.
escalations Manager
Freedom Scientific, LLC.From: Darragh Ó Héiligh [mailto:d@digitaldarragh.com]
Sent: Thursday, May 20, 2010 1:54 AM
To: Darragh Ó Héiligh; John Carson
Subject: RE: Escalations Issue # 198219Jonn,
I have not recieved a further update from you in relation to what Freedomscientific are doing to assist in determining a solution to this issue. As specified in my origional message on this matter, this is having a particularly noticeable affect on my efficiency therefore I require an answer detailing the steps Freedomscientific are taking to address this.
I await your response.
Best regards
Darragh Ó Héiligh
http://www.digitaldarragh.com
http://www.lalrecordings.com
From: Darragh Ó Héiligh
Sent: 07 May 2010 11:28
To: John Carson
Subject: RE: Escalations Issue # 198219Hello John,
Sorry for the delay in getting back to you.
I have run Jaws 11 with the default settings and in fact, this morning, I had the opportunity to install Jaws 11 on a new installation of Windows XP and a second poweredge 1950 server running Windows 2008 standard and I replicated the issue again.
The steps are:
1. Start mmc from the run dialogue box.
2. Start something like computer management by adding it to the console.
3. Open system for example. Now arrow around the items below system.
4. Jaws will speak the sub title of the window. I.e, the line below the menu bar.
Again, this only happens with Jaws 11.This is the very latest version of Jaws11 available from the Freedomscientific.com website.
There are no applications installed on the Windows 2008 server. I have not even applied any updates to it as for obvious reasons, I needed to install Jaws on it first.
If you like, you or someone in your department can tandem onto my machine to verify this. The port should be open. At least, it was 6 months ago when I was using tandem every day of the week. If this is something you would be interested in doing let me know and I’ll ask our firewall person to open the required port for my machine.
Thanks for your assistance iwht this. As I’m sure you can understand, I use the MMC very regularly at work so although this would be considered a minor bug it’s very frustrating when I’m trying to do things very quickly like adding a cert to the default route authority. Actually, come ot think about it, I was manually configuring group policy on a stand alone server earlier and I found the same problem in the tree view in the group policy editor @gpedit.msc@ so maybe it’s a larger tree view related issue?
Darragh
From: John Carson [mailto:johncarson@FreedomScientific.com]
Sent: 05 May 2010 20:16
To: Darragh Ó Héiligh
Subject: RE: Escalations Issue # 198219Hello Darragh;
Thanks for being able to assist us in working towards a resolution for you, however, an audio file in is not necessarily what we need.
If I can be more specific, we need information from your computer, such as what configuration settings do you change in JAWS?
Also, if you run JAWS in default mode, does this still happen the way that you originally described?
You can run JAWS in default mode by following these directions if you are not familiar with doing this already:
1. Unload JAWS with Insert + F4
2. 2. Go to the Run dialog and type the following: JAWS11 /default and press enter.
Then test your application with the steps you provided to us.Thanks again.
Kind regards,
John H. Carson, Jr.
escalations Manager
Freedom Scientific, LLC.From: Darragh Ó Héiligh [mailto:d@digitaldarragh.com]
Sent: Wednesday, May 05, 2010 2:47 PM
To: John Carson
Subject: RE: Escalations Issue # 198219John,
I will record the audio produced by Elequents to demonstrate the issue tomorrow in work.Thanks for your assistance.
Best regards
Darragh Ó Héiligh
http://www.digitaldarragh.com
http://www.lalrecordings.com
From: John Carson [mailto:johncarson@FreedomScientific.com]
Sent: 05 May 2010 19:46
To: Darragh Ó Héiligh
Subject: Escalations Issue # 198219Hello Darragh;
Recently you contacted our technical support department about an issue with JAWS 11.0.1430, specifically, you’re reporting 2 issues, one in Windows 7 with insert T not speaking the title and the second is in Windows XP running the MMC.
I am writing to inform you that the first issue, pressing Insert T while in Windows Explorer in Windows 7 has been reproduced, and is being assigned to our test and development team for their review for possible resolution.
The second issue was also tested, and we can’t reproduce this issue, the MMC loads the correct scripts, and the tree view worked fine during our testing by using the steps you provided. If you have any further information that you can add that might help us to reproduce this issue, please provide them to me so that we can test further, otherwise we will close this part of the record.
Thank you for reporting these issues to us and we appreciate your patience in this matter.
Kind regards,
John H. Carson, Jr.
escalations Manager
Freedom Scientific, LLC.
Your thoughts would be very welcome.
7 Responses to “Email sent to Freedom scientific regarding two Jaws bugs”
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What can I say, Darragh? I have been there, and completely feel your pain and frustration.
I have had similar dealings with FS, on a different issue – my issue was memory leaks. To be more specific, ever since Jaws 9, which I think was one of the worst versions ever, came out, I noticed that Jaws does tend to crash more, and it’s use of memory is huge compared to previous versions. This issue is now a bit less intrusive, since some major fixes had been implimanted, but when the version first came out, I wrote e mails every single day, sometimes twice a day to FS, in the US as well as in Europe, and was told, just like you, that the issue cannot be duplicated and would therefore be closed.
To “shut me up” FS sent me tons and tons of “private betas” which I was not to let anyone else have, but nothing fixed the issues.
For a long time I and some other advanced users have been wanting to join the beta team, but they”no longer take new beta testers” which in and of itself tells you a lot.
The arrogance of FS astonishes me to no end. Yes, there is a good product there and no, unfortunately no other product on the market gives quite that level of assistance, but is this a reason to treat us, paying users, with disrespect and almost contempt?
To be fair, I did have one “small victory” about five years ago, when I started a petition to oust the local dealers of the product, since they were assisting a competitor to develop a product and I proved a conflict of interest there. It took months for them to listen to meand I have to say that now we have a much better dealer, but when I spoke to the guys in charge, and had an e mail exchange, they said”we don’t usually ask our end users who they like or don’t like to deal with”. Excuse me? Who is paying all the money? Who is keeping you guys alive financially if not the end users?
While FS does have the best product around, in my opinion they have the worst attitude towards their users.
I wish there was an equal product around, but so far, I don’t find System Access, GW Micros or Dolphins products anywhere near as good for my purposes, and NVDA, while full of potential, is not there yet, and so, in order to continue to be productive, I am stuck with a good product from a company that does not care enough about their users, and does not take anymore beta testers.
So, once again, as you say, Darragh, we are forced to put up and shut up.
And of course, what happens if we lose a job because of reduced productivity due to bugs that won’t be fixed? Nothing what so ever, they still make their money, and we still pay the price.
I had a pacMate QX 4 years ago running 3.0 for firmware. Then they upgraded to 4.0 which by that time I received a BrailleNote BX thanks to the school that I attended at that time, a high school in a small community in Wisconsin. The PacMate worked for about 2 years without flaw. Sure Ihad to sometimes reset it sometimes 3 warm resets if not more a week, and at least 1 guaranteed hard reset a month. Then the battery, after two years, decided to go and I had a huge issue. I sent in the PacMate before I went on a vacation. FS told me that they would have the PacMate for me before the first day of the school year. This must have been near late July/early August. Instead it took them a month to fix the thing. I got it back and I had to reset it constantly. I could not do my school and I had to depend on a heavy Perkins Braillewriter. I notied that something was wrong with the battery. The thing would charge in about 30 minutes from 0 to 100% and itwould only last for about 3 hours off charge. I promptly caled FS about the problem. They said that I should look at Support Questions and Answers or whatever crap. I called them the next day since nothing existed in that database. They said that they could not take it, or help me in anyway. Someone else caled them and yelled at them, literally! That’s what it took for FS to take it in. I even e-mailed them as well and they wouldn’t listen. So, two months later, I got my horrible CrashMate back. It was just as bad. Oh in the meantime I used an Omni which was worse. The original worked through the end of the school year last year and I finally got rid of that piece of junk. I still have the e-mail I sent to FS if anyone is interested.
I think FS is playing Jesus of the screen readers, like, that’s it. Your the bugged up, screwed and glitched King. It’s all you’ve got, your selections are very thin and the others, like, GW Micro’s Window-Eyes. That’s a screen reader with so much potential. But people pay the 1,000 fee for JFW.
NVDA, again, potential. Like Naama said, is not on the road yet.
They won’t listen to there customers, as I am sighted, I know how important work is, and they should be doing there work, making accesibillity products that make sense, making it worth it’s price tag. And, the private betas are what keep the JAWS revoloution going and they won’t take users? That’s dirty and twisted.
I think FS is playing Jesus of the screen readers, like, that’s it. Your the bugged up, screwed and glitched King.
1:02 PM
They won’t listen to there customers, as I am sighted, I know how important work is, and they should be doing there work, making accesibillity products that make sense, making it worth it’s price tag. And, the private betas are what keep the JAWS revoloution going and they won’t take users? That’s dirty and twisted.
I just tested this on my win xp machine with latest JAWS 11, and saw right away what you mean. JAWS reads something else before reading the actual tree view item. Freedom Scientific should be addressing this, since you obviously emailed them quite a few times, but of course, theree’s FS for you. When NVDA gets a bit further along, I’m thinking of switching to that as my primary scren reader. However, I just have to ask, how does this impact your ability to use the MSC? I mean, if you just hit the read line command, insert+up arrow, it reads the tree view item just fine. I’m not excusing what FS is doing, but I don’t see why this makes yourr use of the MSC so difficult.
With Windows Phone 7, it looks as though Microsoft is changing the platform and, almost incidentally, rendering the PAC Mate obsolete. I wonder if there’s a snowball’s chance in Havana that this means they can shunt developer resources from that product over to JAWS to perhaps fix some of these bugs?
Also, WPF and Silverlight. I work at Microsoft, and everything Microsoft is starting to move towards WPF and Silverlight (both internal and external). The support for WPF I’ve seen is flaky (there are parts of Visual Studio 2010, for instance, that are unusable because of performance bottlenecks that I believe were determined to be because of JAWS’ UI Automation support). I fail to understand why it takes sometimes two, three years for new technologies to gain support.
Hi Darragh,
I am in 100% agreement with you and the other posters here. FS thinks that by adding new dfetures to an already bloated piece of shit, they’ll make everything magically better.As a blind user of technology, it is beyond important that this software be updated, the major bugs fixed, and a constant dedication to keeping this product working with the latest applications. As for the PAC Mate, it used to be a great product, although overpriced and outdated. When Windows Mobile 6.5 came out, we were just getting 6.0 with some updates. Keep in mind that most notetakers don’t even have a wifi card, except the newest generations of Braille Note and Braille Sense. The PM never had wifi included, and it was always “compactflash addon”. Well, for something that costs 2grand for the unit + another 4grand for a 40cell Braille display, I’m a bit tired of the lame memory and lack of wifi card that needed to be purchased in orderto do anything online. Pretty sad when Yyu can get an iPad/iPod or even a netbook for way cheaper that can be made accessible, with builtin wifi and bluetooth. I usedNVDA as my main screenreader, and love where Window-eyes is headed. I actually is stable! JAWS and FS are obsolete, overpriced, under-developed crap.