I hate to say it, but that's the general consensus. And is it surprising that an expensive product put out by a software company is favored over an open-source alternative? The biggest problem with JAWS, from my perspective, is the whopping $1,000 price of admission for a target user group that has high unemployment problems already.
 
I have to give a shoutout to the NVDA project (http://www.nvda-project.org/), and would encourage your friend to give them a shot if he would like an open-source alternative to JAWS on Windows.

All of those are requirements for accessibility. You're right that being accessible is about more than just about blindness or low vision. This article, however, seems to be pretty specifically focused on the screen-reader issue of accessibility.

Unfortunately that's more what I was thinking was the MS motivation here.

I'm happy to see this too and also hope that FF and others follow this cue. But I don't think it's for the reasons others are mentioning here. To me, this is a case of MS hoping to head off Government intervention in this area. Even the folks on Capitol Hill have come to realize that tracking in its current form is a problem. There was a bureaucrat the other day talking about needing to address the "Flash cookie problem" and saying they're working with Adobe on it. This is just like the major sport bike makers all suddenly agreeing that 180mph is fast enough for anyone - right about the time congress started making noise about limiting the top speed of bikes (after the Hayabusa approached 200mph).

I'm glad for what they're doing, though I'm not ready to trust them to implement this honestly.

I think you're talking about Section 508 of the American with Disabilities Act. And yes, it can apply to more than US Government web sites. Target found that out the hard way after refusing to provide alt tags and other accessible changes to their web site. After getting slammed with a $6 million judgement, no one else is bothering to refute what has become established case law.

I might also add that Section 508 covers much more than screen readers and javascript.

In Soviet Russia friends make you.

Truer words have not been spoken in a long time. I wish I couldn't relate to pretty much that whole thing.