Job Access With Speech

Job Access with Speech (better known as JAWS) is a screen reader from Freedom ScientificBLV Group, LLC] for the visually impaired. Its purpose was to make MS-DOS, and, more recently, Microsoft Windows accessible to a blind user. It accomplishes this by providing the user with access to the information displayed on the screen either via text-to-speech, or by means of a braille display. It also allows users to create custom scripts which can alter the amount and type of information which is presented. This fact is likely the primary reason it has enjoyed high popularity within the blindness community.

Jaws was originally released during the 1980s by Ted Henter, who founded the Henter-Joyce Corporation to produce and market it. It was later transfered to Freedom Scientific. It was originally created for the MS-DOS operating system, and became the IBM counterpart to BEX the text-to-speech screen reader for the Apple II family of computers.

During the 1990s, when Microsoft Windows became more popular, a new program called Jaws for Windows (JFW) was created. JFW version 1.0 was released in 1993. Currently a new revision is released about every year. The newest version, JFW 6.0, was released in December 2004.