Voice Recognition Software

[SphereGuy]

I've just been asked by our HR department if we could install voice recognition software to support a handicapped employee they are thinking of hiring. I've only ever used the built-in XP software to have a laugh when times are slow as the stuff it types is often so comical that you can spend hours amusing yourself with it.

In spite of how I feel about how far an employer should go to accommodate an employee they haven't even hired yet, I'm forced into this. This would be use to input text into Word documents, so it has to be accurate to some degree.

Anyone use anything that actually works? Even after diligently "training" the XP software it doesn't come close to what I'm actually saying.

Thanks.

[TobiasTheViking]

dragon is usually pretty good.

http://www.nuance.com/naturallyspeaking/

[Gord_in_Toronto]

I've just been asked by our HR department if we could install voice recognition software to support a handicapped employee they are thinking of hiring. I've only ever used the built-in XP software to have a laugh when times are slow as the stuff it types is often so comical that you can spend hours amusing yourself with it.

In spite of how I feel about how far an employer should go to accommodate an employee they haven't even hired yet, I'm forced into this. This would be use to input text into Word documents, so it has to be accurate to some degree.

Anyone use anything that actually works? Even after diligently "training" the XP software it doesn't come close to what I'm actually saying.

Thanks.

I've only ever go around this in OS/2 (you do remember OS/2 don't you?). One of the things I learned is that you should get the best microphone you can. The $2 one that comes in the box with the audio card really does not cut it.

As always, YMMV.

[SphereGuy]

I've only ever go around this in OS/2 (you do remember OS/2 don't you?). One of the things I learned is that you should get the best microphone you can. The $2 one that comes in the box with the audio card really does not cut it.

As always, YMMV.

Yes, OS/2. I still have some microchannel token ring cards laying around somewhere.

[SphereGuy]

dragon is usually pretty good.

http://www.nuance.com/naturallyspeaking/

Has that been around for awhile? The last time I seriously tried voice recognition was way back when Win95 was in full swing and that name sounds familiar. Back then we still got seemingly random words which was made worse by my boss's MS which caused him to have slurred speech as he got worse. I had nothing but respect for him and remember buying the best audio cards from my own pocket an spending hours on it but in the end it was just impractical. I don't know what handicap this new employee has but I think even the best VR will have problems if there is any type of speech impediment.

Do you use this at all? Is it accurate?

[GodMark2]

Has that been around for awhile? The last time I seriously tried voice recognition was way back when Win95 was in full swing and that name sounds familiar. Back then we still got seemingly random words which was made worse by my boss's MS which caused him to have slurred speech as he got worse. I had nothing but respect for him and remember buying the best audio cards from my own pocket an spending hours on it but in the end it was just impractical. I don't know what handicap this new employee has but I think even the best VR will have problems if there is any type of speech impediment.

Do you use this at all? Is it accurate?

I have a friend who was blind (he got better, Stem cells for the win!). He swore by Dragon (though he did sometimes swear at it). I used it a few times on his system, and it was pretty decent, but it took a bit of training to speak clearly, not mumble, etc. I don't think I could ever use it to completely replace my mouse and keyboard, though.

[richardm]

Do you use this at all? Is it accurate?

I used Dragon quite a lot about 10 years ago, and it was pretty good even back then. You really could talk to it at a normal conversational pace, although you did have to speak in a slightly clipped manner if I recall correctly. I should imagine that all things being equal it should be truly excellent by now (either that or it will have turned into a hideously bloated piece of junk).

You had to read a large number of set paragraphs to train it up. That took about 20 minutes. Then, such was the power of the mighty Aptiva PC I was using, it would process that into a usable form in a matter of, ooo, six or seven hours. But after that, it would process accurately on the fly.

One thing to note that I suspect won't have changed: It used a kind of post-hoc algorithm that looked at what you said earlier in a sentence vs. what you're saying now. If you stopped after each wrong word you would assume that it wasn't working at all well. If you just ploughed on regardless it would correct itself and nearly always get it right. Rather like predictive texting on a mobile phone. It was quite impressive really. I'd rather like to see their current version in action :)

[H3LL]

I used ViaVoice for almost all of my university final year project and that was many years ago.

I found it very good and it learnt quickly, even though I have a quiet voice and slight speak impediment.

Amusingly, it did make an error which I failed to pick up when checking, so miniaturisation appears in my final copy as miniaturised Asians. :D

ETA: Getting the family dog to bark and growl into it was hillarious.

.

[SphereGuy]

I used ViaVoice for almost all of my university final year project and that was many years ago.

I found it very good and it learnt quickly, even though I have a quiet voice and slight speak impediment.

Amusingly, it did make an error which I failed to pick up when checking, so miniaturisation appears in my final copy as miniaturised Asians. :D

ETA: Getting the family dog to bark and growl into it was hillarious.

.

Like I said, when it's not important it's hours of fun. I can remember the whole office coming into my room to find out why I was laughing so hard. The harder I laughed the funnier the translation of my laugh was.

Okay. Straight face. Thanks for the suggestions, I think I will try the Dragon product. It's not as expensive as I thought it would be and I'll pick up a nice headset to go with it. Does it require anything special in an audio card or will the motherboard-integrated one work?

[brodski]

Has that been around for awhile? The last time I seriously tried voice recognition was way back when Win95 was in full swing and that name sounds familiar. Back then we still got seemingly random words which was made worse by my boss's MS which caused him to have slurred speech as he got worse. I had nothing but respect for him and remember buying the best audio cards from my own pocket an spending hours on it but in the end it was just impractical. I don't know what handicap this new employee has but I think even the best VR will have problems if there is any type of speech impediment.

Do you use this at all? Is it accurate?


the dragon brand has been around for a good few years. I have played Around with some of their stuff and know a fair few propel who swear by it. After training (of the software as well as the user) is really is very good. It can cope with some speech impediments, obviously the more pronounced the impediment the less well it will work.

ETA- any modern motherboard sound card will work with Dragon, a fancy sound card won't work any better with this than a basic one.

[SphereGuy]

I'll be buggered. My boss wanted a demonstration of the built-in software that Windows XP has so I set up and plugged in a generic mic and let her train it for two sessions. I think there are six you can do total. I was expecting some funny stuff but darn if it didn't work almost flawlessly. She could open and close programs, dictate with accuracy, save documents and all kinds of stuff. It even reads stuff back to you. The only hiccup we could find was that it wouldn't send e-mail. You can open Outlook, start a new message, put addresses in and all that but we couldn't get it to send. There were a few, actually very few, missed words but she could easily delete them and move on.

I guess we've come a long way or my voice just isn't recognisable because I could never get it to work that well. I'll bet the Dragon product is even better. I guess I misjudged this technology, but of course we'll see how it goes after a week of use because I'm still skeptical.

[Moochie]

I wanted something that would allow me to tell the PC to scroll a page of screen at a time. I found this on the net:

http://www.e-speaking.com/index.htm

It's shareware, has a 30-day free try-out, and costs $14 to buy.

Dragon is by far the most lauded AFAIK, but this might help. Like most such programs, you need to train it, too.

M.

[Shrike]

A bit of an old thread, but does anybody have some experience with these programs in Dutch?
One of my cow-orkers has fallen ill (probably RSI - carpal tunnel). Problem is, he mumbles terribly in an accent.
We do translation work for 8 hours a day, so if useful we'll use it more often.

[Complexity]

DragonSpeak works very well.

The importance of training it (or any of its competitors) can't be overemphasized.

Take the opportunity to do further training as have the time.

Under no circumstances allow anyone else to try Dragon using your voice profile. Make them create their own, even if they only want to say, 'This is a test.'

[Mongrel]

We got a brief training session from the Dragon guys when our company supplied it.

Their recommendation was to train it and use it for a month, then delete the profile and re-train. The explanation was that as you used it your 'usage' voice would change as well to be more compliant with the software.
This was a few years ago though so I don't know if this is still best practice.