Speach to Write Software

[rossibIT]

Afternoon,

I have a teacher who is suffering from a medical condition that affects their hands. It has been suggested that we look into software that could help her.

We are a Microsoft School, but the teacher does not get along with the dictation feature in Word. I am trying to encourage them to use it more, but I feel like I am fighting a losing battle.

Does anyone use any speech-to-text software in schools? How much are you paying? I have seen Dragon Software, which seems to do everything we need, but I would have to buy multiple licenses for the office and teaching classrooms which does not seem cost effective.

Many thanks for any advice.

 

Regards

Ross

[Steve21]

Depending on how many machines you mean Dragon used to allow 5 installs as long as it’s a single user using it 

Steve

[timbo343]

You could have a look at the Read & Write software by TextHelp. It's not the best to manage but is significantly cheaper than dragon.

[NegativeKillDeath]

It would be interesting to see why they don't get along with Word dictation. Do they need software that can ultimately control the computer in general or just as a replacement for typing? 7 or 8 years ago I had to support a user in a similar situation and Dragon Dictate was the recommended software but the user couldn't get on with it. 

[machy]

14 hours ago, timbo343 said:

You could have a look at the Read & Write software by TextHelp. It's not the best to manage but is significantly cheaper than dragon.

Read & Write uses the same speech/text engine as the one built into word, so if its a "it doesn't like my voice issue" the same problem will occur. 

[timbo343]

1 minute ago, machy said:

Read & Write uses the same speech/text engine as the one built into word, so if its a "it doesn't like my voice issue" the same problem will occur. 

 

What about Google Docs? Would that be an option?

[rossibIT]

36 minutes ago, NegativeKillDeath said:

It would be interesting to see why they don't get along with Word dictation. Do they need software that can ultimately control the computer in general or just as a replacement for typing? 7 or 8 years ago I had to support a user in a similar situation and Dragon Dictate was the recommended software but the user couldn't get on with it. 

 

It was very inconsistent at recognising what the user was saying. I feel like not enough time was given to this but I have been asked to look at the next option.

I think ideally ultimate control of the computer which is why Dragon looked so good, but there seems to be alot of options for Dragon, so if we were to go down that road then I want to use the correct one.

[NegativeKillDeath]

6 minutes ago, rossibIT said:

 

It was very inconsistent at recognising what the user was saying. I feel like not enough time was given to this but I have been asked to look at the next option.

I think ideally ultimate control of the computer which is why Dragon looked so good, but there seems to be alot of options for Dragon, so if we were to go down that road then I want to use the correct one.

Our user retired due to ill health before it became a real issue but they had real troubles learning how to use Dragon to control the computer as well as dictate. It didn't help that the office was off a DT room. We did find that dictation software back then didn't really play nice with noisy environments. Quality microphones helped but not much. 

[DalekSec]

Long time ago now we had the same issue, teach who was unable to use hands to type, they used Dragon dictate for a good 4+ years without issues. (This was 2014-2018ish) But i'd imagine it's only improved since then. 

[robintech]

Sounds like a job for AI maybe a Co-pilot Pro licence for one user , not sure what the education discount is on those 

[itskdog]

Windows has a built-in speech recognition (and I'm not talking about the legacy Windows Vista/7 one, but a more modern cloud/AI based one that doesn't need 30 minutes to train it to your voice first).

 

Just press Win+H and it starts right up.

[mavhc]

Windows has 2 voice recognition systems, Windows Speech and Windows Dictation.

 

Assuming you're using Dictation, what settings and what microphone are you using? Do you have Auto-punctuation on?

 

Google Docs uses Google's software of course, worth testing that

 

Whisper is Open AI's software, it can run locally, via webgpu https://huggingface.co/spaces/Xenova/realtime-whisper-webgpu

[Teach007]

Are you after this sort of thing but for students?