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Windows 10 April Update may break your JAWS licensing

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From: Steve Green
Date: May 11, 2018 5:34AM

If you have JAWS screen reader and you use dongle-based licensing rather than the ILM licensing, the Windows 10 April Update may result in JAWS running in 40-minute mode because it cannot correctly detect the dongle-based license.

Freedom Scientific are aware of this and have released new versions of JAWS 18 and JAWS 2018 that contain a fix. However, they do not plan to release fixes for JAWS 16 and 17. JAWS 15 and earlier are not affected because they do not work on Windows 10.

For most people, the fix is simple - just upgrade to the latest JAWS version. Those of us who need to test on old versions of JAWS will either need to do so in 40-minute mode or install it on a machine running Windows 7, 8 or 8.1.

However, the GDS screen reader survey in 2016 showed that almost 50% of JAWS users were using a version that was two or more versions out of date. If that is still the case now, any of these people with dongle licenses on Windows 10 will have to pay for a JAWS upgrade.

The main UK distributor for JAWS tell me that dongle-based licensing is not common for personal use, but it is used for about 20% of commercial JAWS usage.

Regards,
Steve Green
Managing Director
Test Partners Ltd
020 3002 4176 (direct)
0800 612 2780 (switchboard)
07957 246 276 (mobile)
020 7692 5517 (fax)
Skype: testpartners
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www.testpartners.co.uk
 
Connect to me on LinkedIn - http://uk.linkedin.com/in/stevegreen2