Dragon Naturally Speaking is a speech recognition software that converts
your speech into text and can be helpful for people who can no longer use
the key board well but may be able to see the screen. From what I've
heard, it's pretty much the best speech recognition software on the
market, at least for English. It is usually better to have a fairly
recent version. And you do need to take time to "train" it (i.e., when you
say something into the microphone and the software prints out something
different from what you meant, you then need to program it so it knows
that THIS is the way you pronounce word X, Y, or Z so that it will put the
correct word on the screen in the future. And you need to keep doing this
every time Dragon does something wrong, so I imagine it can seem
cumbersome in the beginning particularly if you have an accent, but easier
to use later on on as it learns more of your vocabulary).
However, if your friend needs text to speech software (i.e, software that
will convert digital text on the screen into synthesized speech for people
who cannot see the screen well), then the best software in English that
I've heard of is JAWS, which unfortunately can be expensive to purchase.
There is also NVDA, which people can download from the web for free and
does some of the same things that JAWS does.
Am not an expert, but have met or known people who use some of these
software systems or have tried them.
Andrea
> Dear Folks: A colleague of mine in rural Canada is wondering what might be
> the best most up to date text to speech software.She has diabetic
> retinopathy and has tried Dragon which she does not think works that well.
> Do you have anysuggestions for software that she could use? If you send
> e-mails to the list, I will pass them on to her. Thanks so much for your
> assistance. Lilith
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