Speech recogntion software - recommendations?

Savvy_Sue

One of my colleagues will have one arm in a sling for several weeks and we were wondering if it would be worth installing speech recognition software to ease the typing load. Any suggestions for free or inexpensive, easy to set up and use?

TIA

Gers

Win10 has a programme installed - don't know if previous versions had it. I've never used it and don't know much about it though an acquaintance with arthritic hands has been successfully using it, for what exactly I don't know.. sorry! Half a help...

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/17208/windows-10-use-speech-recognition

Savvy_Sue

thanks, that's worth a look,, especially as we have Windows 10. I've heard of Dragon as well but always worth having a comparison.

debitcardmayhem

A headset may help too , some built in microphones are not very good

bluesnake

Used Dragon in the past. The trick was to limit the dictionary.

Surprisingly long words were fine, but my killers were "their, there, they're." "on,one,1", "to,too,two,2" "three,free,tree,3" "for four,4" "cue, queue" and the list continues.

About 1 word our of 10 were wrong, and amending was painful and time consuming, especially as they were correctly spelled, but just were the wrong words, you you had to go over the text multiple times like a hawk.

Later learned 1,2,3.. were actually pronounce "numeric one" etc, and some symbols also had their own special commands, like capitals.

Then those commands like "new line", "go back" and the ever popular "amend that" and "scratch that"

After two weeks put me off voice recognition for life.

Only use a headset, and mike positioning was critical. Those P's and E and S... sibilants drown out the mike, so had to be close to the mouth. but not in the air flow, needed to carefully use fingers as a measurement device for distance and positioning to get consistency.

These days I would rather read the text and get someone in Asia to type it out instead. Probably cheaper than the software and far less painful.

forgotmyname

Which OS tried to push speech operation? Vista or Windows 7?

OH MY it was terrible. Open Word. (Computer says; Shutting Down) NO OPEN WORD.. too late its gone off.

Type one handed it will be so much easier, and probably faster.

DoaM

The voice recognition in W10 works quite well .. or at least it did when I had a play with it a while ago. It sits in the background waiting for a specific voice command to wake it up, and then follows instructions. It seemed to cope OK with my hybrid, softened Geordie accent.

debitcardmayhem

using an onscreen keyboard with a mouse may be more use, depending on how much real estate there is on the screen. Saves the user having to move the one hand between the keyboard and mouse/touchpad.

Savvy_Sue

forgotmyname wrote: »

Type one handed it will be so much easier, and probably faster.

that was my experience too when I had a similar operation to the one my colleague is having, but I was signed off for longer so by the time I was back at work I had both hands available, at least some of the time.

debitcardmayhem wrote: »

using an onscreen keyboard with a mouse may be more use, depending on how much real estate there is on the screen. Saves the user having to move the one hand between the keyboard and mouse/touchpad.

No touchscreen available, it's all fairly old-school!

We have ordered a phone which will take a wireless headset so we may find that is enough, hard to tell at this stage!

DoaM

Savvy_Sue wrote: »

No touchscreen available, it's all fairly old-school!

The suggestion wasn't about a touchscreen - it was about using an on-screen keyboard with a mouse.

Undervalued

forgotmyname wrote: »

Which OS tried to push speech operation? Vista or Windows 7?

OH MY it was terrible. Open Word. (Computer says; Shutting Down) NO OPEN WORD.. too late its gone off.

Type one handed it will be so much easier, and probably faster.

That was my experience back then too.

However what did work quite well was some voice recognition software, not for controlling the computer, but as an alternative to typing long passages of text. It had to be trained to the users voice and also for any unusual technical terms. Once that was done I would estimate it was 98% or better.

It did also depend on how clearly the user spoke so if you have been to RADA, worked as a BBC newsreader or have treaded the boards at the RSC.....