Dragon Naturally Speaking (DNS) is voice recognition software that allows the user to operate a PC entirely by voice commands or by combining voice with a mouse and keyboard. The user speaks into a microphone attached to the computer. Some users prefer to use a headset containing a microphone due to a clearer transmission of their voice and noise elimination. The newer version of DNS has a USB microphone for laptop models that don’t have a microphone port.
Why use it?
People with disabilities, such as limited arm or hand movement, can operate their computers with full functionality. Even for people without disabilities, DNS can be helpful. For example: they can format a picture with their mouse and dictate text through their microphone. Mobility is another advantage. The newer version of DNS has an expansion program called Naturally Mobile which allows dictation into a hand held device. The data can be uploaded to a computer at a later date. This program is also good at boosting the typing speed for people who slowly peck away at the keyboard.
What can it do?
Users can dictate text or numbers into various applications, such as MS Word, Corel Word Perfect plus several other text editing and word processing programs. DNS supports most email programs and web browsers. It can control mouse movement, pull-down menus, and dialogue boxes. For word processing, it can do all the necessary functions, such as bold, italicize, cut, copy, paste set fonts and spell check.
How does it work?
The user speaks into the microphone at a normal pace without purposely pausing between words. The spoken words appear on the computer screen after a sentence is completed in order for the program to spell words in context. For example: when to use the word “by” or “buy”. The words are extracted from a large vocabulary base of over 250,000 items. New words can be added by first saying the word and then spelling it. There are no special names for the letters of the alphabet, such as “alpha” for “a”. The user just says “a” for “a”.
When using DNS for the first time, the user has to spend approximately 30 minutes in setting up his/her speech pattern. People who use this program tell me that this is somewhat tedious but most important for the success of using it. This is also the opportunity to start building up a vocabulary of special words, such as the user’s name, email address, etc.
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