Jamie Teh and Mick Curran are software program builders and musicians from Brisbane, Australia who met after they have been youngsters at a music camp for the blind, the place they bonded over a shared love of pc programming and music. They’re now each married with households of their very own and have remained shut pals. Almost 20 years in the past, they began certainly one of their most essential initiatives that will assist change the world for the higher whereas constructing a neighborhood of devoted folks.
In 2006, Mick took a break from faculty to work on an concept he had for display reader software program. He knew the excessive value was conserving many blind folks from discovering jobs or utilizing a pc, and he needed to alter that with software program that will at all times be reasonably priced for everybody. He requested Jamie, who’d not too long ago graduated with a level in IT and was working full-time, to assist him develop it. Jamie was excited to collaborate, regardless of his preliminary uncertainty about how profitable they may very well be with software program so many corporations had been engaged on for years.
For the subsequent 12 months, Mick and Jamie labored collectively to create an open-source display reader often called NVDA, or NonVisual Desktop Entry, for computer systems operating on Home windows. A 12 months later, Mick attended the CSUN Assistive Know-how Convention hosted by the Heart on Disabilities at California State College, Northridge. When Accessibility groups from main tech corporations, together with Microsoft, expressed curiosity in integrating NVDA with their platforms and browsers, Mick and Jamie knew that they had a profitable product. That 12 months, they based NV Entry as a nonprofit group to assist the event of NVDA by means of funding and grants, and continued to attend CSUN for a few years.
NVDA quickly grew to become accessible on GitHub as an open-source display reader for Microsoft Home windows, permitting a world neighborhood of contributors to develop the software program with the most recent updates and add-ons.
