May 172006
The Star Tribune did another disability-themed story yesterday about Rollie Berg, a St. Paul man living with multiple sclerosis. The article describes how Berg uses Dragon NaturallySpeaking, an off-the-shelf speech recognition software package, to operate his computer. I continue to be dismayed that speech recognition technology hasn’t made more significant advances in the couple decades since its introduction. A colleague of mine uses this method to access her computer and I’ve watched her struggle with the software’s penchant for erroneously transcribing her words. I can’t imagine cranking out the amount of writing I do each day using an interface that seems more than a little unreliable.
That, and I think I’d get a little self-conscious about my nurses overhearing my end of my sundry and torrid e-mail correspondences.
Wow, you actually email people? That’s news. Ahem.
A few of my students use Dragon, but most don’t, because it takes so long to train, and if you have dyslexia, correcting the spelling while training can pose a problem. Mostly, they rely on peers to transcribe or edit (not sure this is any more reliable, esp. at an engineering school).
I’m waiting for that torrid and sundry email.
Newer isn’t always better; Berg may well find the older voice recognition package, DragonDictate, more reliable than NaturallySpeaking. It may be obsolete and unsupported software, but at least I don’t need 10 minutes to compose a two-line email.
As for privacy, my family and attendants quickly learned to tune out my incessant chattering, and in a worst-case scenario one could always create a “crypto” vocabulary. But when scientists finally perfect subvocal technology, I’ll be first in line… even though I never have any torrid email exchanges. (Dammit.)