TALK TO TYPE: SPEECH-RECOGNITION SOFTWARE
by Barbara Twardowski
In my junior year of high school, I took a typing class. With the
discipline of a pianist, I learned to position my fingers above the
keyboard correctly. Back straight. Eyes on the document.
I spent hours training my brain to see a word and send a message
to the finger that corresponded to each letter, while never looking
at my hands.
I was slow. Painfully slow. But I learned to type.
In high school, I pounded on a turquoise manual typewriter from J.C.
Penneys. Before heading to college, I bought a portable, electric
Smith-Corona.
A decade passed and my masters thesis was composed on a word processor.
Since the early 1990s, Ive advanced to a computer.
But the effects of my Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease have made computer
keyboards sometimes difficult to manage. The muscles in my hands have
atrophied and I have two fingers I cant straighten out.
Now its a new millennium and my typing can be replaced with a speech-recognition
software program.
Just Talk to It
Speech-recognition software enables the user to dictate directly
into a computer using a headset. As the user talks to the computer,
words are transcribed onto the screen.
After more than a decade of typing the conventional way, I was ready
to try a hands-free approach. The three major products on the market
are IBMs ViaVoice, Commodios QPointer and Scansofts Dragon NaturallySpeaking
7.
My goal was to turn my computer into a personal stenographer who
types and edits perfect copy.
Each product requires "training" the computer to recognize
the speakers voice. Theoretically, this can be accomplished in less
than 30 minutes.
A headset microphone comes with each program the kind telemarketers
wear on infomercials. First, the microphone has to be properly positioned
and tested. Once the computer can "hear" you, the next step
is "training" it to recognize your voice.
Talking to a computer isnt the same as speaking to a person. People
can filter out background noises while they converse, but the computer
needs help.
The room you work in must be free of as much background noise as
possible. (No more classical music while I work.) Then the computer
has to adjust to the unique characteristics of a persons voice.
For this training process, you select from a list of short passages
and read them aloud. The instructions say to read them in a "natural"
voice. If you read so that the computer understands, the words are
highlighted on the screen and you proceed. If it doesnt, youre stuck
repeating the sentence over and over. (Getting louder doesnt help.)
Reading in a "natural voice" isnt easy. With ViaVoice,
I talked slowly and in a monotone. With QPointer, my slow, puffy enunciation
was similar to a poor Marilyn Monroe impersonation.
A Broadcasters Voice
 |
The
author makes friends with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.
Photo by Jim Vance
|
Dragon NaturallySpeaking was the last product I trained. Its instructional
materials were the most specific about how to speak:
"Listen to the way newscasters read the news. If you copy this
style when you use Dragon NaturallySpeaking, the program should successfully
recognize what you say."
Suddenly, picturing Dan Rather in my mind, I sat up straighter and
spoke in a confident tone. I began to read the text like a news anchor,
but it certainly didnt feel natural.
A large yellow arrow moved across the screen indicating which word
I was on as I read the following text:
Try thinking about what you want to say before you start to speak.
This will help you speak in longer, more natural phrases. Speak at
your normal pace without slowing down. When another person is having
trouble understanding you, speaking more slowly usually helps. It
doesnt help, however, to speak at an unnatural pace when youre talking
to a computer. This is because the program listens for predictable
sound patterns when matching sounds to words. If you speak in syllables,
Dragon NaturallySpeaking is likely to transcribe each syllable as
a separate word.
When you read this training text, Dragon NaturallySpeaking adapts
to the pitch and volume of your voice. For this reason, when you dictate,
you should continue to speak at the pitch and volume you are speaking
with right now. If you shout or whisper when you dictate, Dragon NaturallySpeaking
wont understand you as well.
And last but not least, avoid saying extra little words you really
dont want in your document, like um or you know. The computer
has no way of knowing which words you say are important, so it simply
transcribes everything you say.
An exercise that trained both the computer and me! In less than 15
minutes, Id raced through the training portion of Dragon NaturallySpeaking.
The training process is critical. All of the manufacturers recommend
you repeat the training session if the computer is making excessive
errors.
The computer makes mistakes for a variety of reasons. While people
can use common sense and context clues to understand a speaker, the
computer cant distinguish between phrases that sound alike such as
"ice cream" and "I scream."
Speech-recognition programs dont understand the meanings of words.
Instead, they keep track of how frequently words occur by themselves
and in the context of other words. This information helps the computer
choose the most likely word or phrase from among several possibilities.
If you mumble or slur your speech, the computer doesnt understand.
ViaVoice
Once the computer is trained, the next step is actually dictating.
With ViaVoice, I opened the Speak Pad and began dictating what I
hoped would be an e-mail to my friend Luan.
The computer typed "Lou a and." I shouldnt really expect
it to know proper names.
I also discovered it isnt a big fan of contractions. When I said
"Ive," the screen read "Im." When I said "play"
it typed "fly." When I said "thanks" it typed
"takes."
I struggled with how to put the document into an e-mail and finally
contacted customer support for help. A cut and paste with either the
keyboard or by voice was necessary.
I spent several hours over a two-week period playing with ViaVoice.
Id consult the manual and retrain, but I found myself repeatedly
using my hands to insert corrections. I was beginning to realize speech
recognition doesnt happen instantly.
Commodios QPointer
The second product I installed and trained was QPointer. Its Web
site touts it as being "especially beneficial for disabled users
with impaired fine motor skills."
The software allows the user to control the computer with voice commands,
as well as to dictate documents. My interest in QPointer was only
its ability to transcribe dictation.
I dictated using QPointer over and over. The sentences were filled
with errors. So, I trained it again.
Four times I sat through training, but I was never satisfied with
the end results. I could type better with two fingers.
Dragon NaturallySpeaking 7
By the time I installed Dragon NaturallySpeaking, I knew the routine.
I dictated directly into a word-processing file and was amazed at
the accuracy. It transcribed my contractions. When I said "91"
it typed the number.
The program has an autopunctuation command that capitalizes the first
word of a sentence and places periods at the ends of sentences. When
I dictated a 314-word document, it only made five mistakes.
Hands down, or rather hands-free, the best dictation product was
Dragon NaturallySpeaking.
Expert Advice
"Speech-recognition software requires motivation and a desire
to learn new technology. People mistakenly think they will put on
a headset and magic will happen," said Dan Gilman, the creator
of AbilityHub.com, a Web site that informs consumers on alternative
methods and adaptable equipment for accessing computers.
Gilman is certified by the Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive
Technology Society of North America as an assistive technology practitioner.
Hes lived with a disability since 1972, when he fractured his neck
in a swimming accident.
To use speech-recognition software effectively, a powerful, fast
computer is essential. Gilman recommends a Pentium 4 CPU and the highest-quality
USB headset or microphone available. Maximum memory is important because
most users are operating several programs simultaneously.
Gilman offers some tips for using the programs:
Give your voice frequent breaks and drink water, not caffeine. Its
easy to strain your vocal cords when you talk to a computer for hours.
Before buying a product for a child, realize he must be able to
read and spell to use the programs. Gilman has worked with children
as young as 8 and says a soft vocal pitch is difficult for the computer
to recognize.
Correct the errors in your documents with the speech-recognition
program, so the computer will improve its accuracy.
Plan to spend four to six hours becoming familiar with a program.
The results are worth the effort.
Gilman says, "Speech-recognition software has become more user-friendly.
It is empowering."
| For more on Access Unlimited read
the following articles: |
|
|
