Accessibility tool privacy ratings
Accessibility tools that keep data on the device.
6 accessibility are rated against 4 public criteria, and 6 have enough evidence for a letter grade. Of the 2 with a known jurisdiction, 2 are based in a Five Eyes country, and 2 in the wider Fourteen Eyes.
Open-source accessibility only · Criteria for this category · Suggest an addition · Markdown
| Name | Grade | Score | Data | Jurisdiction | Open source | No trackers or telemetry | No ads or data sales | Independent audit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Open source speech synthesizer supporting more than 100 languages and accents, used as a text-to-speech engine by screen readers such as NVDA and Orca. |
Grade B | 80 | 100% | – | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
Free, open source screen reader for Windows that reads screen content aloud by speech or braille display. Developed by the Australian non-profit NV Access. |
Grade B | 80 | 100% | Australia Five Eyes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
Free, open source screen reader for Linux desktops that gives access to applications through speech and braille, using the AT-SPI accessibility framework. Part of the GNOME project. |
Grade B | 80 | 100% | – | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
Open source Linux app for taking, reading and translating notes with offline speech-to-text, text-to-speech and machine translation. Processing runs locally on the computer. |
Grade B | 80 | 100% | – | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
Offline voice dictation for Linux on X11 and Wayland that types speech into the focused app. Speech recognition runs locally with engines such as whisper.cpp and VOSK. |
Grade D | 50 | 100% | – | Yes | No | Yes | No |
Commercial speech recognition software for dictation and voice control of the computer, sold as Dragon Professional for Windows and Dragon Anywhere for mobile. Made by Nuance, a Microsoft company. |
Grade F | 0 | 100% | United States Five Eyes | No | No | No | No |
Questions
What is the most private option among accessibility?
No pick has been made yet. The table above is sorted by score, based on public evidence.
How are accessibility rated?
Each entry answers 4 questions: open source, no trackers or telemetry, no ads or data sales and independent audit. Answers need links to evidence. See the full criteria.
Does jurisdiction matter?
Jurisdiction decides which laws can compel a provider to hand over data. Each entry shows its country and whether it is in the Five, Nine or Fourteen Eyes. The data a provider can hand over depends mostly on what it stores and who holds the keys. Read about jurisdictions and the CLOUD Act.