Does JAWS work with Dragon NaturallySpeaking?

JAWS and Dragon NaturallySpeaking can be used together, but they do not connect on their own. JAWS is a screen reader that speaks the screen aloud, and Dragon is the speech recognition engine that turns your voice into text. A bridge product joins them. The two products that vendors describe for this job are J-Say, which lets a blind user control the computer by voice ¹, and J-Dictate, which is for dictation only ². Both are third-party products, not products of Freedom Scientific or Nuance.

JAWS and Dragon meet through a third-party bridge

The Job Accommodation Network, a US service that gives free advice on workplace accommodations, describes J-Say as the product that brings together Dragon NaturallySpeaking professional from Nuance and JAWS For Windows ¹. The same kind of pairing is described for J-Dictate, which combines the screen reading of Freedom Scientific's JAWS for Windows with the voice recognition of Dragon NaturallySpeaking from Nuance ³.

The pattern follows from what each product does. JAWS reads the screen aloud for a blind user, and Dragon turns speech into text. The bridge is the part that connects them, so you should treat the bridge as a product in its own right, with its own versions and its own support.

We did not find a statement from Freedom Scientific or Nuance that says JAWS supports Dragon directly. Freedom Scientific's own product page was not readable from our tools, and the vendor pages we could read name only the bridge products. Treat any claim of direct support as unconfirmed until the vendor confirms it for your versions.

Choose J-Say for voice control and J-Dictate for dictation only

The two bridge products do different jobs, and the difference matters if you want more than dictation.

Both listings come from the Job Accommodation Network and repeat the vendors' own descriptions. Neither gives version numbers, so the table reflects what the vendors say, not tests we ran.

JAWS and Dragon 16 both need Windows, and Dragon 16 supports Windows 10 and 11

Dragon Professional 16 runs on Windows 11 (64-bit) and Windows 10 (32-bit and 64-bit) ⁴, so the computer you use with JAWS must run a supported Windows version too. Check the Windows version on the computer first, then the versions of JAWS and the bridge product, before you buy a licence.

If you only need dictation in Word, Microsoft's own tool may be enough

If your need is dictation into a Word document rather than control of the whole computer, Word has a built-in route. In Word for Windows, you start dictation from the keyboard with Alt+H, D or with Alt and the backquote key (`) ⁵. Microsoft's guide, Use a screen reader to dictate a document in Word, is the page to read if you use a screen reader. This does not replace Dragon's commands, but it adds no cost if you already use Word.

What to check before you buy

Ask the vendor for the version pairs you need: the JAWS version, the bridge product version, and the Dragon version. The microphone matters too. Nuance advises a headset microphone about an inch from the side of your mouth ⁶. The question on the best microphone for Dragon covers the options.

Set up Dragon first, and test the bridge with a short phrase before you dictate a long document. The guide to using Dragon NaturallySpeaking covers profiles and corrections, which you need in either setup.

It depends on your screen reader and your version

The sources here cover JAWS only. We did not test NVDA, Narrator or other screen readers with Dragon, so do not assume the bridge products or the answer above apply to them. The answer also depends on the version. The listings we could read do not give a table of supported versions, so confirm the pair you plan to buy.

For the wider picture, see our overview of dictation software and the glossary entry on screen readers. If you are deciding which dictation software fits your needs, the question on whether Dragon is worth it and the question on the Dragon web extension are the next steps.