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Is speech to text possible?

What Speech-to-Text options are there for someone with Cerebral Palsy?

  • There's a fellow with CP at my university in the engineering program who is having the toughest time with his work.  He ends up doing most of his work as mental calculations.  I'm thinking he would benefit immensely for some speech-to-text applications that would be tailored to people with speech difficulties, and especially some for math and science.  He tried Dragon Naturally Speaking some years ago, and that program was not able to translate his speech to text successfully.  Would the iPad's speech-to-text work for him?  What speech-to-text options are there which would be appropriate?  Is there any other technology that you might suggest, to help with communication and calculation?

  • Answer:

    If I may, perhaps another try with Dragon may be helpful.  The product has improved over the years, and is somewhat more forgiving.  I've worked with clients who have MS and Parkinson's and have found the following tips useful for them when using Dragon: Create a separate profile for good and bad days (or times of the day).  Remember to train each profile while in the appropriate "voice" for that profile. Take advantage of creating a smaller vocabulary for improved accuracy. Run the audio/sound check at least once a day. Use a quality microphone and be mindful of positioning. Train the user profile several times but for no more than 10 minutes at a time.  Make sure you run the adaptation immediately after each training session. Refine the vocabulary for improved accuracy. Correct misrecognitions as much as possible. Train individual words and phrases in the vocabulary as needed. Switch to Dictation Mode to assist with accuracy and prevent inadvertent command triggering. Honestly, Dragon is perhaps the best speech recognition application out there, but it's not the only one.  Dragon Premium is only about $200 and I think there are specials to be had right now too.  Failing Dragon, perhaps another app. Good luck and best wishes.

Alexandria Carstens at Quora Visit the source

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I have cerebral palsy and I am a long time user of dragon been using it in one form or another since approx 1996 here's my best advice given that I have cerebral palsy too some of my friends can't use dragon because their speech is impacted if that's not a problem then yes I love it personally. It is kind of a love hate relationship for many another option worth a look that I am not as formilar with is wordq and word speech this combines both text to speech and word prediction but yes for academics at the level you mentioned dragon would be your best bet I think my blog about my life with cerebral palsy can be found http://lifeofthedifferentlyabled.com and i talk about dragon a lot as I use it to blog often

Laura Forde

Try google chrome's Voice Recognition app. Works much better than Dragon, although you might try Dragon again. It has gotten a lot better.

Carrie Rosvold

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