Microsoft has released Internet Explorer 7.0 this morning, but you may not want to jump on the banwagon yet. It is known to work well with Window-Eyes 5.5, but is not fully supported by other current screen readers such as Freedom Box System Access and JAWS 7.1. It will be necessary to await an upcoming release of an upgrade of these screen readers for Internet Explorer 7 support. In some cases, full screen reader support for Internet Explorer 7 is going to require payment of an upgrade fee if the user does not hold an active Software Maintenance Agreement with the vendor. Before downloading and installing Internet Explorer 7, please, do yourself a favor and ask your screen reader maker if they fully support the latest version of this web browser before plunging ahead. Taking this prudent step may prevent a lot of unnecessary grief.
Advocating full participation through equal accessibility.
I’m not trying to bash Freedom Scientific here, but Window-Eyes 5.5 was released about a year ago, and it supports IE 7. JAWS 7.1 was released in June of this year, during the IE test cycle, and it doesn’t fully support IE 7. I wonder why?
While System Access works with just about all of IE7 right out of the box, it has been reported and we have found a minor problem with the opening of drop down lists otherwise known as combo boxes. This problem is fixed and after some other testing of IE7 will be released later tonight as A FREE and automatic update. We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused any System Access user.
We at Serotek remain committed to providing full System Access on the go without killing your wallet.
I find myself agreeing with anonimous above concerning release dates and where they were in the test cycle of IE 7 and such. I find myself very frustrated when companies clearly not hurting for money as demonstrated by what they do such as five or six booths at conferences where the in house carpet is not good enough for their feet, the prices of their products and the fact that they charge for absolutely everything which their competition demonstrates more reasonable policies on and seem to do just fine… It’s just a little thought provoking observation and a note to those whose feet these shoes fit that we know what you do…
Yeah I find it a bit interesting that JAWS is only starting to support IE7, while Window-Eyes has supported IE7 for a while now. But on the other hand, wouldn’t the fact that JAWS has only started supporting IE7, seem to reflect well on FS’s commitment to customer satisfaction? Please note I am in no way trying to bash the folks at GW Micro. I’ve briefly used some of their software products and been very impressed.It seems to me that both GW Micro and Henter-Joyce/Freedom Scientific have very high standards and only turn out the best possible products. I guess it’s just personal preference that comes into play here.
Darrel and all,
Freedom Scientific let me know today that they’ll be releasing a free patch to JAWS 7.1 in approximately a week that addresses the combo box issue for JAWS 7.1 and IE7. Users are encouraged to watch the Freedom Scientific home page for more details.
AI Squared expects to have a version that fully supports IE7 out in a week or so as well. This will be version 9.04. Their current version, 9.03, workss well with IE7 once the user turns off Clearr Type from the Advanced tab of Internet Options. This is true for basic magnification but the app and doc readers do not work. This too has been addressed in the 9.04 update.
Finally the folks at Dolphin released updated MAP files for the 6.5 and 7.0 versions of their products as updates for IE7.
I am so glad that I stumbled upon your blog. The information is so helpful. In fact, if I found this blog a month ago, I would have avoided all the grief that I encountered when I downloaded IE7. My JAWS 6.2 went bonkers.
Because I didn’t have the cash to update my version of JAWS immediately, I had to take some very annoying steps to uninstall IE7. For some reason, JAWS was still not pleased. I had to reinstall JAWS as well.
I’ll be checking out your blog for now on. Again the information is much needed. Thanks!