Speech Recognition; My first attempt at

For a couple of years I have considered buying a speech recognition program called Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Recently I have read a couple of reviews of the speech recognition program built into Windows 7. Since I recently upgraded to Windows 7 from Windows XP, I decided to try it out by writing this morning’s article using the speech recognition program provided. This is the first time I have tried using it.

Setting it up was not difficult.  The program took about 30 minutes to go through the tutorial and two training sessions (learning how I speak).

I do not plan on using the keyboard if at all possible. My interest in speech recognition programs came about while participating in the KDA chat rooms. In several chats many men living with Kennedy’s Disease commented on how difficult it has become to type. Personally, I find it difficult to type on cold days because my hands just don’t seem to want to function correctly.


First impressions:

• Even though I do not want to use the keyboard this morning, at times I find it quicker than to go through the list of commands needed to correct a word or change a sentence.
• I am certain that my dictation skills need to be honed and I can also do a little more voice recognition training.
• There are several commands that make navigating around a document and correcting it easier. I am still learning these commands so I have a cheat sheet but it slows me down.
• I can already see this process will become easier over time. Initially I obviously need a little patience (not something I was born with). Over the next few weeks I’ll try writing some emails and other documents using this program and see how that goes.

Conclusions:

• I can see the benefit to using a speech recognition program now than I have tried this one.
• Like anything new it will take practice for me to become more proficient.
• I also need to gain some confidence because currently as I’m speaking I find that I am often reading what has been written on the screen. This practice slows the dictation process. I actually do better when I don’t look at the screen and just wait until the end of a paragraph to read what the program wrote.

Question:
Have any of you had any experience using speech recognition programs? If so, I would be interested in your thoughts on the subject.