JAWS was originally released in 1989 by Ted Henter, a former motorcycle racer who lost his sight in a 1978 automobile accident.

A feature unique to JAWS at the time was its use of cascading menus, in the style of the popular Lotus 1-2-3 application.

[citation needed] Ted Henter and Rex Skipper wrote the original JAWS code in the mid-1980s, releasing version 2.0 in mid-1990.

Skipper left the company after the release of version 2.0, and following his departure, Charles Oppermann was hired to maintain and improve the product.

A principal design goal was not to interfere with the natural user interface of Windows and to continue to provide a strong macro facility.

JAWS allows all major functions of the Microsoft Windows operating system to be controlled with keyboard shortcuts and spoken feedback.

These shortcuts are kept as consistent as possible throughout most programs, but the very high number of functions needed to fluidly use modern computer software effectively requires the end user to memorize many specific keystrokes.

JAWS also includes a scripting language to automate tasks and make more complex modifications to the program's behavior.