Speech to Text (Dictation)
There are frequent situations in which students struggle in putting pen to paper for a number of reasons which may include fine motor difficulties, illegibility in their writing, non-uniform or overly large writing, difficulties in spelling, extraneous fatigue when writing, slowness in writing or simply general reluctance to write on paper. In some of these situations, it may be appropriate for a student to write using their voice. There are many ways of doing this both natively and using a third party extension and/or app.
Windows: speech recognition in Windows is located in the control panel under “Ease of Access Center.” At first glance, it appears to be a sophisticated program that allows users to not only dictate but to navigate windows, open programs, execute functions, and make corrections. Unfortunately, perhaps it is this sophistication that makes it so difficult to use as a basic dictation tool. To start speech recognition, select “use the computer without a keyboard” and choose start speech recognition. A small interface will appear at the top of the screen with a microphone icon and a voice level indicator. To use the tool, you will need some basic familiarity with the commands such as “start or stop listening.”
Mac: Apple has provided built-in dictation tools into both their newer Mac computers as well as their iPads. While the supports are similar, there is significant difference in the execution of the support.
· Mac computers – to enable dictation, you will need to turn this feature on in System Preferences. The feature is found in the “Dictation & Speech” icon. Simply click the ‘on’ button and dictation will be enabled. You can further configure the use of dictation such as specifying the sequence of key presses that will activate dictation (the default is to press the fn key twice) or allowing the computer to use an external microphone. Dictation is also available in many languages and Enhanced dictation is a variation of this feature that allows a user to continue to use dictation without an internet connection. Upon activating enhanced dictation, the computer will download an enhanced language file.
· iDevices – there are two perquisites for dictation. First, it requires internet connectivity and secondly, it requires the Siri voice engine. Therefore, dictation is unavailable for older models of the iPad and iPhone. For newer models, Siri needs to be turned on in Settings (General -> Siri). The dictation tool will now be available whenever the keyboard appears. It appears as a microphone icon just to the left of the space bar.
Chrome: Over and above the built in voice typing feature that is embedded into Google Docs, there are many websites and extensions (e) which will allow users to dictate. Some of the apps are nothing more than a hyperlink to a website (w) which hosts the dictation function. Below are some of the more popular ones along with a brief description of how to use them:
· Read&Write for Google (e) - clicking on the speech input icon activates dictation.
· Dictanote (w) – https://dictanote.co/ is a website from which you can type or click on the microphone icon to dictate using your voice. Completed notes can be saved to the cloud (pro version only) or copy and pasted onto another document.
· SpeechPad (w) – https://speechpad.pw/ is a website where users can record their voice by clicking the “start recording” button and speaking. The program will convert spoken passages into the output area of the page.
· VoiceNote II (e) – the extension launches a separate window where the user is able to dictate by clicking on the microphone icon. Documents can be downloaded onto a .txt file on the user’s computer.
· Voice Recognition (w) – https://dictation.io/ is a website where users can record their voice by clicking the “start dictation” button. Once finished, users have the option of downloading their document onto their computer as a .txt file.
Recommendation(s):
· Mac computer: use the built-in dictation tool. Not only can it be used without an internet connection (if the enhanced voice is downloaded beforehand), it eliminates the extra steps of having to cut and paste from another tool.
· iDevice: use the built-in dictation tool. Although it is restricted to internet use only, it is robust and it eliminates the extra steps of having to cut and paste from another tool.
· Windows computer: use Read&Write for Google or voice type in Google Docs. The built-in Windows dictation tool is cumbersome and slow.
· ChromeBook: use Read&Write for Google or voice type in Google Docs.