iOS and Mac OS definitely win in terms of what's built-in, the screen reader they come with is more than enough.
JAWS, a paid screen reader for Windows, is perfect for enterprise environments, as it works well with Microsoft Office and Common productivity applications and lets IT administrators enforce security policies. At also has a vibrant market for scripts, both free and paid. Those scripts add accessibility to third-party apps. Companies can even hire script developers to implement accessibility for the internal apps employees need, which is often important in big corp / government, and it is in those environments where JAWS thrives.
NVDA, the free Windows screen reader, is more suited to software development work than JAWS in my opinion. It's written in Python, which makes it much more flexible, but also much harder to learn script development. There's a big collection of addons and plugins of all kinds, from speech synthesizers and braille display drivers to full on remote access suites (which no enterprise security policy can block), but all of those addons need to be released as GPL, which discourages any development on addons for internal and professional applications. In many countries, NVDA has replaced JAWS entirely, even in the enterprise.
Narrator, the built-in Windows screen reader, is getting better with each year, but it still isn't on par with other solutions that we have. It's great for installing another screen reader or figuring out why your existing one doesn't work, but that's about it.
Linux is a shitshow, free software zealots will claim it's perfectly accessible, while many problems still remain. It can be used, but it's probably the least accessible out of the big three, at least when the GUI is concerned.
Android works, people use it, but iOS works much better. IPhones are much more popular in the blind community, even in countries where they're extremely expensive, even considering the fact that blind people are often unemployed or have low-wage jobs. Android has quite a few rough edges and thinks might not work the same way on different phones. It's been getting better over the years, but even something as simple as accessibility on first setup isn't guaranteed, something that Apple has basically figured out more than 10 years ago. It's much more common for an Android phone or a Windows PC to fail in a way that requires sighted assistance than it is for a device running iOS or Mac OS.
It depends. Where I live, this usually doesn't seem to be an issue for some reason. I guess IT administrators don't really know how powerful a screen reader is. Just to give you an idea, it would be trivial for anyone with basic Python experience to weaponize NVDA into a key logger and a screen scraping spyware, without admin rights, and no antivirus would complain.
In the US, this seems to be much more of a concern, so JAWS is often a requirement in big corp / government.
IIRC, accessibility hooks in Windows are very, very low level. Thus they bypass most security policies. Also IIRC, there’s been multiple “wontfix” “0-days” abusing those hooks and fixing them would basically brick Windows for people using accessibility tools.
iOS and Mac OS definitely win in terms of what's built-in, the screen reader they come with is more than enough.
JAWS, a paid screen reader for Windows, is perfect for enterprise environments, as it works well with Microsoft Office and Common productivity applications and lets IT administrators enforce security policies. At also has a vibrant market for scripts, both free and paid. Those scripts add accessibility to third-party apps. Companies can even hire script developers to implement accessibility for the internal apps employees need, which is often important in big corp / government, and it is in those environments where JAWS thrives.
NVDA, the free Windows screen reader, is more suited to software development work than JAWS in my opinion. It's written in Python, which makes it much more flexible, but also much harder to learn script development. There's a big collection of addons and plugins of all kinds, from speech synthesizers and braille display drivers to full on remote access suites (which no enterprise security policy can block), but all of those addons need to be released as GPL, which discourages any development on addons for internal and professional applications. In many countries, NVDA has replaced JAWS entirely, even in the enterprise.
Narrator, the built-in Windows screen reader, is getting better with each year, but it still isn't on par with other solutions that we have. It's great for installing another screen reader or figuring out why your existing one doesn't work, but that's about it.
Linux is a shitshow, free software zealots will claim it's perfectly accessible, while many problems still remain. It can be used, but it's probably the least accessible out of the big three, at least when the GUI is concerned.
Android works, people use it, but iOS works much better. IPhones are much more popular in the blind community, even in countries where they're extremely expensive, even considering the fact that blind people are often unemployed or have low-wage jobs. Android has quite a few rough edges and thinks might not work the same way on different phones. It's been getting better over the years, but even something as simple as accessibility on first setup isn't guaranteed, something that Apple has basically figured out more than 10 years ago. It's much more common for an Android phone or a Windows PC to fail in a way that requires sighted assistance than it is for a device running iOS or Mac OS.