Job Access With Speech
Job Access with Speech (better known as JAWS) is a screenreading software application used by many blind computer users. It is equipped with a voice synthesizer which reads information that could be seen on the screen by people who can see. Some Jaws users also have braille display windows under their computers, and they use Jaws to activate these windows.
Jaws was invented during the 1980s by Ted Henter, who founded the Henter-Joyce corporation to produce and market it. It was originally created for the DOS operating systems, and became the IBM counterpart to Bex the voice-activated screen reader for Apple II computers.
During the 1990s, when non-DOs-based versions of Microsoft Windows became more popular, a new program called Jaws for Windows (JFW) was created. JFW version 2.0 was released in 1997. Currently a new version is released about every year. The newest version, JFW 5.0, was released in 2004.
