Speech to Text Technologies

What is the tool?

A speech to text program or software will allow a person to speak words, or tasks, into a microphone and those words be presented on some sort of Word document without having to type them. To the right I have added an image from just one of the companies that provide this type of software as an assistive technology.

How can it be used?

Speech to text software can be used in any scenario where typing is needed to get words onto the computer. It can be used to write papers, compose emails or letters, and its newest purpose is texting. You can speak words into a phone and have it write them out for you to send as a text. Its primary use, as an assistive technology, is as an aid for students to write papers and can be helpful for students with or without a disability.

Advantages of this tool:

The advantages of this tool are simply that it allows a person to have all of the other advantages of using a computer to write while providing them with a tool to do it more efficiently. This program would be useful for anyone, but especially for a person with a disability who may not be able to manually type, or could have a cognitive disorder where something only makes sense to say but not to write. It could be anything as simple as poor sentence formation when writing to something more challenging such as dyslexia.

Disadvantages of this tool:

The software may not be as advanced as needed for some individuals. Also, there could be common errors with the program such as it not being able to recognize unfamiliar words or not understanding the person speaking into the microphone because of a dialect, accent, or speech disorder.

Audience for this tool:

This is a great tool for a person with a learning disability that finds it easier to speak words and sentences than to write/type them. It is also a helpful tool to a person with or without a disability to write something in a fraction of the time that it would take to type it. It would not be marketable to a person with a speech or language disorder who is not easily understandable.

To learn more about this tool visit these sites:
A video about speech to text software

A mini guide to speech to text software

My opinion:

I believe that this tool is extremely useful for people that are compatible with it and can use it effectively. In fact, this class was the first time that I was introduced to speech to text technology and I found it to be very fascinating and helpful for those who need it. I have never used anything like this but I also think that it would be great to come standard on every phone for the use of texting. It would limit the amount of manual texting being done in cars while driving, and therefore limiting accidents, if a person could just speak the words that they want to say and then send them with a simple voice command. I think it is a wonderful technology that has a great potential to be used in so many different ways.