Making JAWS work great with the Internet

I have had many past students and people who just found me along the way ask why their Jaws does not work well with the Internet any more. As soon as I ask them what version of JAWS they are using, I have my answer.

In general, when you update the Internet, you need to update your Jaws. Example, when JAWS 7 was out, it ran great with Internet explorer 7 (IE7), but then IE8 came out and if you did not update to JAWS 10 you would have problems. JAWS 11 worked even better with IE8 and JAWS 12 works great. So, if you would have purchased the upgrades when you purchased JAWS 10, you would be a happy camper because the upgrade fee would have been a lot cheaper than buying 3 whole new licenses.

Exceptions to the rule. However, when IE9 came out, JAWS 12 did not work well with it. IE9 needed a lot of work and JAWS worked on its updates also to make these 2 work together. Now it works well...but that took months.

In general, if your JAWS is working well with what you have, don't be anxious to update quickly. Let the companies work out the bugs in their hardware and software. Talk to people around you about their experiences and when you get the green light, update your JAWS and Internet together. And if you are having problems with your JAWS, it is most likely too old.