Developed by Freedom Scientific, JAWS has been on the market since the 1990s and remains one of the most feature-rich Windows screen readers, particularly favored in enterprise, government, and legal environments where its verbosity settings and scripting capabilities support complex, specialized workflows.
Because it is commercial software with a real cost, JAWS usage skews toward professional and institutional settings more than personal use, which is one reason accessibility testing guidance typically recommends testing with both JAWS and the free NVDA to cover a wider range of real-world screen reader users.