Earlier quoted context omitted.
> forced to rely on poor tools (I hate JAWS so very very much) Blind Windows users aren't forced to use JAWS, at least in the sort of context where they're likely to encounter emoji (i.e. I understand it may be forced in some job settings). NVDA is freely available and Narrator is built in, and both handle emoji well AFAIK. Disclosure: I work at Microsoft on the Narrator team, but I'm just as happy if you use NVDA.
> NVDA is freely available and Narrator is built in, and both handle emoji well AFAIK. They may handle emoji, but they also regularly fail to handle other common screen-reader situations well. I do understand the difficulty - most interfaces today are visually-oriented, and often don't include the necessary contexts for accessibility. This turns our screenreader programs into massive and complex programs that have to…
Do I understand this reference correctly? Are you saying NVDA is really slow when you're doing anything on a network, even when that network activity is in the background? Can you give an example? I've never experienced this nor heard of it. But maybe I'm missing some specific detail of the Zootopia reference. I watched that movie once, or rather listened to it without audio description (with my family), and I don't remember the DMV scene that well.
> Narrator's settings regularly get reset by updates, and will re-enable itself at random and unexpected times).
Have you reported this through Feedback Hub? I haven't experienced or heard of the problem with settings being reset by updates.