The part that gets me almost giggling resignedly here is that we're arguing over a program that costs us nothing. People sometimes get mad at me for saying things like, "The next version of the Skype scripts will no longer
support any JAWS versions older than 15.0." I do that when it lets me do better things in scripting than the older JAWS versions allowed, or when older JAWS versions simply can't handle the newest version of the application.
But people generally have the sense to realize that I'm (1) not doing it to hurt people, (2) am actually doing it for a reason, and (3) cannot be called mean because I'm giving away for free what I'm doing anyway.

The only time I can remember complaining about a change to a free program was when Roger suddenly vanished with very little warning. My complaint at that time was that they gave us little warning and also gave us nowhere to go.
Microsoft has given us way plenty of warning and has also given us not one, but two places to go (Skype 8 or Skype UWP). And despite a small number of claims in this thread, we have absolutely solid and prolific proof that at
least Skype 8 works well enough with both JAWS and NVDA to be usable. It has its quirks, but so did Skype 7. So Microsoft gave us the easiest feedback system for reporting them that I have ever seen, bar none: Open, type into a
box, press Enter, done!

Finally, if anyone wanted to complain loudly, I think it should have been me. My Command Line Interface for Skype, Clisk (http://www.dlee.org/skype/clisk), is completely unsupported after the end of this month. That's a loss of
years of my time, at least arguably.

So why don't I yell about that one? Again, Microsoft gave plenty of warning, good explanations for why they are doing what they're doing, and even delayed Skype 7's demise partly because of one feature Clisk used, that being
the ability to redirect and record sound from Skype. I will seriously miss Clisk, but that is no reason to cry foul.

In conclusion, I'd say this Skype update should best be treated like a hurricane; and that hurricane actually has a name: Cloud. Cloud infrastructure is why this update is happening. Skype, as I said before, is changing how it
communicates. It is starting to use a cloud structure. Skype 7 was not ready for that and never will be. So Microsoft gave an evacuation order, with several months' warning - which is unusual for a weather bulletin lol. But
really, in this storm, if we cling to our islands, we truly will end up lost at sea.