How many screen readers are on the market today, and what are the major brands?
“If we choose to define ‘on the market’ as the set of commercially licensed screen readers, then there are approximately 15-20 screen reader software packages available. The exact number is hard to pin down as new readers appear periodically and older ones sometimes disappear. Sometimes a freeware project will become commercial. “The major brands are much easier to pin down. On the basis of a survey by WebAIM, a site devoted to assisting Internet access to disabled consumers, the reader with the most users is JAWS (Job Access With Speech) from Freedom Scientific, at nearly two-thirds of the market. After that, the biggest commercial provider is Window-Eyes from GW Micro. Serotek’s System Access and Dolphin’s Hal are probably the last commercial readers to really have a significant presence in the marketplace. “All of these providers are specialized to the Windows operating system.
