Hi Tom.
That seems a very weerd approach, being as 50 percent of blind people are
over retirement age, and as you pointed out the vast majority even of the
ones under that are unemployed anyway. While Dolphin did fill educational
contracts in this country, sinse those were largely based on personal choice
or the choice of the L e a (local educational authority), they were largely
filling contracts for individuals.
That has also served them well, sinse obviously once a license is bought,
people can maintain their software for a standard upgrade price, and don't
need to buy another license, which is manageable even on incapacity bennifit
and disability living allowence.
Ironically enough with me, it was almost the opposite way around, sinse
after I finished my degree, I assumed the disabled students allowence
wouldn't cover more equipment so bought the upgrades for Hal myself, but
then was told actually, as long as there was some factor in the new upgrade
which would let me work on my course more effectively, i could have the Dsa
pay for it, and sinse the majority of Hal upgrades included things like
greater access to pdfs, ms office or the internet most have been covered by
my dsa, ----- though by no means all.
Then again I've always tried to be careful and only spend student allowence
on things actually needed for work. That was why when i bought my rowland
r09, I found the price of a mono voice recorder (I tink an olympus model),
had the dsa pay that much, then paid the extra myself for the r09 sinse I
obviously wanted it to do other things than just record my research
assistant reading articals for me, ---- she is also paid out of my dsa as
well, and to preempt a question, no scanning wouldn't work.
Firstly I never found a particularly efficient scanning program at the time
(try combining articals on metaphysics with scan errors, it's not fun).
Also, post graduate research in a humanities subject involves basically
pulling hundreds of jernal articals off a shelf, or scanning a book very
quickly and seeing if there is anything vaguely relevant. I cannot skim
read, neither can a scanner, but by having an intelligent person who knows
my work, can search on the library computer system and can in fact skim read
for me and give me a general overview of an artical, I can sort of
approximate the needed skill, which is why I pay for someone out of my dsa
in this case, more to the point, someone who already has a masters herself.
Beware the grue!
Dark.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Thomas Ward" <[email protected]>
To: "Gamers Discussion list" <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, December 08, 2011 10:41 PM
Subject: Re: [Audyssey] De Steno releases windows game.
Hi Dark,
Sure. I definitely do not disagree with you. Dolphin's payment plan
certainly is more fair. So is GW Micro's. However, as Freedom
Scientific is largely funded here in the USA through government run
state agencies they really do not have any incentive to change their
payment plan or be more competitive because they have government
funding.
Someone like GW Micro who doesn't necessarily get a large percentage
of sales through government agencies had to find ways to make their
product more affordable so they started their lease to own payment
plan as well as a traditional SMA payment plan for upgrades. As a
result someone on SSI or SSDI is actually better off investing in a GW
Micro product because its affordable and the company doesn't expect
you to drop $900 at a drop of a hat. Its just not realistic given the
fact over 80% of all blind Americans are unemployed and are living in
section 508 government housing.
Plus ever since I began working with Henter-Joice/Freedom Scientific
products they always struck me strictly as a stuffy white collar type
of company. It was clear from the beginning Jaws, Job Access With
Speech, was intended to be for business professionals and large
corperations. There aim or goal was not to target the average home
user but schools, government agencies, large businesses, or blind
computer users who were gainfully employed in some capacity. It
wasn't intended to be for the average home user, but obviously that's
what ended up happening because BSVI, BVR, DBS, and other state
agencies purchased Jaws, trained their clients, and then could not
successfully find them gainful employment Thus resulting in several VI
users who have state funded computers with Jaws, Openbook, etc but no
decent paying jobs to keep the software up to date.
Cheers!
On 12/8/11, dark <[email protected]> wrote:
Hi tom.
I suppose that's reasonable from a busienss perspective, but stil I much
prefer dolphin's system on this.
no extra upgrades, no pro or standard, you want it, you pay for it!
In fact the only real deal they have is the ability to pay for the next
version upgrade in advance and get cash off.
beware the grue!
dark.
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