Okay, this is going to be interesting. So far, I’ve been one of the many blog authors that used to type that texts. Now, with my right slightly unusable, to put it at best, I had to look for an alternative.
It is actually not the first time, that I have tried voice recognition software. In the past, however, to no satisfactory result. But plenty of time has passed since the last attempt. So yesterday I did a little bit of research on the Internet and as it seems, there is a sole provider for voice recognition software out there.
So went to their website and check if there would be a demo version. There was none. So I contacted one of their salespeople to see if there is any way for me to try out the software before buying it. Their response was that there would not be a demo version but they completely would refund the sales price if I would not be satisfied.
Needless to say that that was good enough for me. So I went ahead and purchased the software which is, for the record, Dragon Naturally Speaking 13 Premium.
The installation was seamless even though Windows 10 is not officially on the list of supported platforms. Also, I had no problem to use my existing microphones with the application. Playing around with it a little bit, I found out that there are certain limitations in the interaction with the operating system but as long as you are able to perform a few mouse clicks you should not have too much of an issue with that.
Most of my texts are either written in the web browser or in Microsoft Word. So I tried worked first. Dictating long texts – in English or in German language – proved not to be an issue at all. It in fact is naturally, much more so than typing. The initial voice-recognition is already quite good yet the correction feature which is also controlled by voice recognition is so powerful, that I barely find it necessary to type anything on the keyboard.
Sometimes the software does not pick up the proper word but I would be able to spell it and even train it on it. I admit that that sometimes is too tedious so I might simply type it in. Typically, it is then picking up the new word correctly. That works in Microsoft Word as well as my web browser, some applications, which are not supported natively, can be dealt with we had the built in dictation box from where the text can then be pasted into the target application.
So the next couple of days I will have enough opportunities to test the software a little bit more. But even with the limitations that I’m facing at least for me this is a big step forward.
And by the way: this whole article has been dictated, not a single word was typed.