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Hands Free Computer Operation for Quadriplegics?

Posted by Cliff on from the look-ma! dept.

Anonymous Coward asks: "Dragon Natural Speaking dropped hands free computer operation support back in version 3. My quadriplegic friend recently upgraded his computer and it came with Windows XP. His old Dragon Natural Speaking will not work on Windows XP. Does anyone know of any complete voice activated computer control for Windows XP or Linux?"

6 of 46 comments (clear)

  1. How about...Dragon NaturallySpeaking by TMLink · · Score: 5, Informative

    I think you need to look at ScanSoft's product again. Contrary to your statement, Dragon NaturallySpeaking 7 DOES allow hands-free use of the computer. In fact within the past 4 months I have trained 2 people to use it in a hands-free situation. From all of the built in shortcuts for the most popular software (including IE and Office) to the command "mouse grid", which allows you to move the mouse around the screen by only your voice, Dragon NaturallySpeaking will work great. You can even use a command (which I forget off the top of my head) to press specific keys on your keyboard. If he has the patients to sit down and learn all of the commands (which can be done over time...learn mouse grid, then slowly pick up the shortcuts over time), Dragon can be faster than a keyboard/mouse combo. If he has a clear voice, training will take 15 minutes. And it works with XP.

    Might I make the suggestion of getting Preferred over Standard. While it's double the cost, it really does seem to do a better job than Standard. Not sure what the difference is (smaller vocab maybe?), but it's there.

    --
    Every time a guy gets a threesome, somewhere in heaven an angel gets his wings. --Cary Tennis
  2. Not voice but... by An+Audience+of+One · · Score: 4, Informative

    Have a look at the Dasher Project. Its not voice input, but they have several input methods which can be used by para- and quadra-plegics (eye tracker, head mouse, breath mouse, toungue mouse, etc) - you pretty much can use any movement you can make. It can be faster and more accurate than most voice recognition systems, and they have it working for controlling the UI as well as textual input now.

    Matt
  3. Re:I have a question by cooley · · Score: 2, Informative

    LOL I don't want to blow shit about your girlfriend or anything, but I LMAO seeing such a sensitive post coming from a username like "smacktits".

    --
    Just then the floating disembodied head of Colonel Sanders started yelling Everything You Know Is Wrong!-Weird Al
  4. article about the design of VUIs vs GUIs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    http://www.informit.com/content/index.asp?product_ id={6029804C-55B7-4E1B-AAA4-ED211D6C5B89}

  5. Re:Nope by geoffspear · · Score: 2, Informative
    Mac OS X's speech recognition is kind of neat, but it's not really able to completely control your computer out of the box.

    However, it is pretty easy to extend by writing AppleScript that gets executed by voice command. I don't know that one could build a truly complete voice-controlled UI with what OS X includes, though. You'd at least need to add something like ViaVoice for speech-to-text, since Apple's speech recognition doesn't do that itself. In any event, building the AppleScripts to accomplish every single task in all the applications you use would take a really really long time.

    --
    Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
  6. OOSRI group by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    I am a member of OSSRI (Open Source Speech Recognition Initiative). We are working to develop an open-source speech product to help those with disablities operate a computer. You can join our mailing list to track progress if you are interested. Any help or input would be appreciated.

    http://harvee.org/mailman/listinfo/ossri

    Dustin Wish