Revisiting Windows Speech Recognition: Underrated and under-marketed.

For Assistive/Adoptive Technology and Rehabilitative professionals, Dragon Naturally Speaking  from Nuance has become the go-to software for people with fine-motor challenges. It's almost a knee-jerk reaction to recommend Dragon to people that have trouble manipulating Mouse and Keyboard. It maybe arguably true that as far as accuracy goes, few can out-perform Dragon Naturally Speaking, it may also be true, that, as far as Adoptive Software goes, Dragon is as affordable as it gets. ($49 for Home Edition and $20+- on Ebay or Amazon if one wants to find an unused older version), perhaps it is that affordability that makes it a knee jerk reaction to recommend Dragon and not bothered to look at the alternative options, even when it is freely available .

From the Microsoft's Point of view, it is not making money from the Accessibility features that comes standard with every Windows 7/8 Computers, so why bother spend cash marketing what's essentially, a freebie.  The result of the abovementioned factors, Windows Speech Recognition has been relegated to being a very well-designed software with some very impressive features that nobody talks about. After training the software for approximately two hours, I discovered some rather impressive features  that make me applaud Microsoft for designing it.

Impressive Feature #1: Mousegrid:
This feature divided the display in 9 segments to narrow down focus until the focal point is small enough for the mouse pointer to click, this is for those wishing to verbally control the mouse pointer. To activate this function: say, "mousegrid" and then say, "Click" or "Double click" to click the pointer. 

Impressive Feature #2: Show Numbers:
This has to be one of my favorite features, where Windows assigns a number to buttons and the user just say the number assigned instead of the handle. For someone with speech impediment, this feature is a real lifesaver. It reduces the number of possible options that Speech Recognition has to recognize thus circumvent, or at least compensate for the problem with accuracy. Just say, "Show numbers" to activate the feature, and say the assigned number to click, and after that, say "ok" to confirm it is the button you want to click.

Maybe I am imagining things, but I feel that Windows Speech recognition integrates more seamlessly with Windows than Dragon, I am also of the opinion that by the virtue of above two features alone, Windows Speech Recognition deserves at least an honorable mention, at least, we are seeing Microsoft trying to make Windows more accessible,  but whether or not it can give Dragon a run for its money, well, the jury is still out.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

CoWriter and the Subscription model:

The CoWriter Universal:  The Subscription model: When it comes to Word Prediction Software; none is, perhaps, better marketed than CoWriter by Don Johnston. Like Dragon Naturally Speaking by Nuance is for speech recognition, CoWriter by Don Johnston is often the first thing an AT professional think of when Word Prediction is being discussed.  In case there is still anyone out there that doesn’t know what a Word prediction software is, it’s what we often use when we type on the smartphone and other mobile devices. The little bar above the smartphone keyboard that guesses what we are trying to type is called, Word Prediction; and before the advent of the smart devices and their touch screens, Word Prediction Software had already been widely used by people with disabilities to make typing less of a pain. I first saw CoWriter on ABC News in early 2009, and its selling point was the copious vocabularies it is capable of predicting. It could be used by anyone from K12 to Po...
Read more

Simple Speech, affordable AAC software for Windows Platform

http://www.palsoftwaredesigns.com/ When I first came across their website, I was a little apprehensive, because it has neither the company's physical address nor telephone number. It only has a paypal sign for credit card payment, the name of its CEO, Jose A. Oritz, and a rather vague statement that the company is based in Brooklyn New York. True, many small companies that produce softwares aiming at niche market tend to use this model to minimize operating expenses - and trust me AAC software definitely qualifies as a niche market, Paypal payment and direct download afterwards, no mess, no fuss. But then, most companies do at least give their physical address and telephone number to give an impression of legitimacy, even fraudulent websites give that much. So readers cannot blame me for being over cautious. To cut a long story short, I took a chance, and bought a copy for testing. It works very much like proloquo2go from assistware and dynavox's mighty mo; it also comes wi...
Read more

The transformers come!

                                             While there has been little exciting news in the realm of high-tech consumer electronics other than the soul-eating-time-devouring-productivity-killing Pokemon Go sometimes masquerading as therapeutic app for people with agoraphobia, and, more generally, a cure for most Americans' aversion to outdoor exercises; the iPad got faster and bigger, and not to be outdone, Samsung sported an enormous 20 inch Android tablet called Samsung View; The bloated Android tablets, of course, have been with us since 2011, with Viewsonic's Smart Monitor and HP's all-in-one Android Computer. However, with the popularity of carbon fibre and other metal alloys, there has been a welcoming move by the Durable Medical Equipment (DME) industry to make traditionally bulky and heavy devices more mobile and portable. ...
Read more