I am sorry if I am annoying people on twitter in relation to the messages I am sending and recieving from Freedom scientific regarding the bug reports and issues I am emailing to freedom scientific.

I am attempting to keep users as up to date as possible as I fear that without significant pressure from the Jaws user base, we will see no improvement in the quality of this product.

To that end, I have set things up so that you can see all of the posts relating to this topic on one page.

If you use RSS to keep up to date with new content on the Internet, I have made things really easy for you. Simply point your RSS reader at the following address to recieve updates as soon as they are posted to the blog for this topic only.

Fáilte go dtí DigitalDarragh.com

Again, I call. no. I pleed with you. If you have problems with Jaws, please email Freedom scientific. It is absolutely imparitive that Freedom Scientific are pressured into fixing these problems. The action taken to resolve bugs has been minimal at best since Jaws 7 from what I can see. This needs to change.

If you have emailed Freedom scientific, forward a copy of the Email to me at d@digitaldarragh.com and I will add it to the blog so that others can see what is happening.

Thanks.

What follows are messages between me and Freedom scientific regarding a number of problems that I have experienced with Lotus notes. Note: the problems I submitted are not an exaustive. they are just some of the most major issues that have hampered accessibility.

Greetings,

In Lotus notes 8 I have the following problems:

1. I cannot open attachments. Jaws reads the file name as it did in previous versions of Lotus notes (Example: 7.03) however when I press enter on it, the message closes and focus is left back in the inbox.

2. the auto complete functionality for the To, CC and BCC fields no longer reads correctly in this latest version of Lotus notes:

3. Control tab no longer works to move between pages. This is not a jaws issue but could be resolved with scripting.

The menus for new, reply, reply all, forward etc do not speak any more. for
example: when you press alt 2 for reply, Jaws should speak menu items such as reply, reply all etc.

The list view in the lotus notes client preferences dialogue no longer reads with Jaws. Again, this is a problem that was introduced with Lotus notes 8.

It would be appreciated by many users including my self if these issues were resolved before Jaws 12.

Thanks for your assistance.

Darragh

Response from Freedom scientific:

Dear Darragh

Thank you for contacting Freedom Scientific technical Support. I’m researching this inquiry with our senior specialist. As soon as I have some feed-back from this team, I will be emailing you back.

Be sure to include all previous correspondence pertaining to this matter when replying to this message so that we might better assist you.

Regards,
Mr. Tracey Jackson,
Technical Support Specialist
Freedom Scientific

Phone support: 727 803 8600, option #2
E-mail Support: support@freedomscientific.com
Visit our website at:
http://www.freedomscientific.com/

It will be interesting to see what they come back with. As before, this is functionality that they should have released in Jaws 11. Lotus notes 8 is not a new version in terms of it’s exposure to the public compared to Jaws versioning. Terefore in my belief, Jaws should support this latest version. I will therefore insist that these issues are resolved before the Jaws 12 release.

Continuing with my promis to chace Freedom scientific in relation to every bug that I find with Jaws version 11, here are a number of emails that were sent to and from reedom scientific today in relation to an issue when using the MMC. The MMC is an administrative console that can be used to interface with Windows administrative utilities. Scripts for Audible are mistakingly loaded for this application. This issue was reported origionally with Jaws 10 but has yet to be fixed. It should also be noted that although this seems to be a reasonably easy fix to implement, Freedom scientific expect customers to use an SMA or pay for an upgrade to Jaws 12 before they fix it. In my opinion this is unjust and unfair.

Origional message from me to Freedom scientific:

Greetings,

When the MMC is used, Jaws loads the audible scripts.

This is particularly evident when the data protector application is run.
This is an application based on the MMC.

Audible obviously requires a number of tweeks to Jaws for it to run correctly however these tweeks result in some strange activity when using Data protector. For example. If the down arrow is pressed in a tree view, the pc cursor goes to the next line but then imedietly goes back to the prior line.

This has been noticed in Jaws 10 and 11.

Please note, this has no baring on the tree view issue I reported a number of weeks ago and should therefore be treated as a completely different and independent bug report. It is simply that the audible scripts are mistakingly assigned to other applications.

Thanks

Darragh Ó Héiligh

Response from Freedom scientific support:

Dear Darragh

Thank you for contacting Freedom Scientific technical Support. This is a known issue by our testing/development team. It is being evaluated to be addressed in a future release of the JAWS® screen reading software. If I can be of any additional assistance to you, feel free to email me back.

Be sure to include all previous correspondence pertaining to this matter when replying to this message so that we might better assist you.

Regards,
Mr. Tracey Jackson,
Technical Support Specialist
Freedom Scientific

Phone support: 727 803 8600, option #2
E-mail Support: support@freedomscientific.com
Visit our website at:
http://www.freedomscientific.com/

Here is my response:

Why can it not be fixed in this version?

I have explained the following point countless times. I have purchased Jaws 11. I do not expect bugs that I report to be fixed in the next version. If an oversight has been made on the part of Freedom Scientific on both Jaws 10 and 11, I expect that at the least that oversight should be fixed in some kind of supplementary update or fix. pushing the fix to Jaws version 12 or later is unacceptable.

I continue to call on Freedom scientific to fix all of the issues I have reported with Jaws 11 before Jaws 12 is released. Not doing so further illustrates the perception that of the one step forward and two steps back mentality that the jaws development structure seems to have adopted.

Again, this mail and all others have been documented for my records and the records of other Jaws users. It can no longer be tolerated that users who depend on this product continue to purchase updates simply for bugs that should have been fixed in service packs and hot fixes. his point is one that I have heard made by other users since 2001. It is high time that action is even to be taken on the part of Freedom Scientific.

I await your response.

Best regards

Darragh Ó Héiligh

I urge others to do as I have begun doing. Make an effert to report your problems to Freedom scientific and do not desist until your issues have been solved. We can no longer afford to wait for the next version before bugs are fixed. e pay a lot of money for this product. In most cases, we pay more than the Operating system it runs on. If a major bug was reported in Windows, you can be certain that Microsoft would be obligated to fix it. It would be unheard of for MIcrosoft to tell users that the bug would not be fixed until the next version of their operating system. As paying users of an application that Freedom scientific develop, we have the same right to a sound, reliable and stable product. When this is not the case, we have an obligation to report our issues.