Disabled student - Voice recognition software

[Patrick]

Hi,

 

Been asked to source some software for a disabled student, software that will allow the student to dictate. The SENCO has said it needs to be "accurate" and "deal with accents". Anyone any recommendations on this? I have come across one solution, called Dragon Education Solutions. Apologies if this is in the wrong thread/section, i'm not really sure where to put it.

[Joanne]

Pretty sure you have to train the software, no matter where it's from. Which will take time.

 

You tried the stuff built into Windows?

 

Dictating text using Speech Recognition - Windows Help

[Norphy]

The SENCO has said it needs to be "accurate" and "deal with accents".

 

Ah, there's nothing like a precise and detailed product spec, is there? Which accents are we talking about here? English? Scottish? Irish? Geordie? Brum? American? South Asian? The really strange combination of Turkish and Irish that the receptionist of the hotel that I stayed in Ireland had?

 

In all seriousness, the Dragon software is pretty much as good as you can get these days and gets better with training. Pair it up with a decent mic, noise cancelling mic and give the student time to get used to it and you'll be fine. Apple use the cloud based version of their technology to power Siri's voice recognition and I think that there are a lot of other companies that use it too.

Edited March 8, 2016 by Norphy

[clareq]

I can't find anything that will cope with the chatter in an average classroom - background noise is a problem with both Dragon and Windows speech recognition.

[Patrick]

No we will give it a go, it's a school I support but I only visit once a week and got the message via support ticket, so i'll give it a go with the student/SENCO. Just wondered if anyone else had done this and found any pitfalls.

[Joanne]

Yeah I guess classes with the student will have to be quiet!

[caffrey]

Got iPads? Use Siri / notes. Google docs also has built in dictation now

[Patrick]

Thanks guys, I'm not sure which accents yet as that spec i gave you was the spec I received! I'll try windows out and see how that goes on, but might need something a little more robust, so will go with dragon if that's the case.

[HTCPCP]

We use windows or dragon depending on which laptop they use with a decent headset microphone. Last ones we ordered were sennheiser, but hae some trust ones as well i believe

[FragglePete]

We use Dragon Naturally Speaking for a lad here - he has a wheel chair that has blue tooth controls that enables him to either control his chair or a laptop that is paired. He has Dragon installed on his laptop and has his own headset. There is a period of training required to setup a profile for the user which takes time, but it continually learns so gets better and better.

 

Pete

[Patrick]

Thanks Pete, good to know!