Dictate your message

[Devil]

I never was a good typist. I began to explore speech recognition in the early 1990s with an IBM system that came on about 30 floppy disks. In time, as the technology improved, so did my adoption of it, so that I used it for long articles by the late 1990s. Around 2004, I suffered a couple of minor strokes which left my right hand difficult to use for typing, although I persevered as an exercise. I used speech recognition more after that, especially for long screeds. As my hand became slightly more mobile, so I typed more with it as much for exercise. Where I used speech recognition, the results became astoundingly good using a series of softwares under the general trademark of Dragon. I was able to dictate long technical texts with up to 99% accuracy and very simple corrections. Up till recently, I was using Dragon version 13 and found it extremely useful and good.

One of the features of Dragon is the ability to add any words you like to the vocabulary that it knows, ideal for technical articles. Unfortunately, my personal vocabulary became slightly corrupt, after about three years of use. I decided to take the opportunity to have a look at the advances over that time. I found that Dragon had become version 15.3 and was available in both a home version and a commercial version. I opted for the home version, being half the price (some may think exorbitant). BIG MISTAKE! It was far too cut down from my previous version 13. In fact, I found it difficult to use, having been accustomed to the previous version. I have now asked the Dragon people to take it back and give me the full version 15.3, which I understand incorporates all the bits that I miss in the cutdown version.

I can thoroughly recommend Dragon speech recognition for those who prefer to dictate their contributions, rather than typing, for whatever reason. However, I do not recommend the Home version 15.3, but only the full version. It is not exactly given away but I find it invaluable to dictate long screeds, like this one. It would have taken me four or five times as long to type this as it has taken me to dictate it and probably twice as fast as an accomplished typist.

This screed is recommending a specific software, probably against the rules of the forum, but it is warning potential users to go the whole hog with the full version and not the Home version. The latter is probably quite usable for casual work but less so for serious work.

[LouiseCastricum]

wow !

[Jimgward]

Hi devil, I would agree with you that speech to text has improved greatly over the past couple of years. I used to use Dragon dictate myself when I was using long tenders that I had to complete as part of a business exercise also in been able to write long submissions required for work. I have dictated this using the simple iPad Apple speech to text system built into the operating system. I also use Google speech to text on certain applications. I find them all very good, especially since I have a broad Scottish accent.