Voice Recognition Part Two: Commanding Your Computer

As promised, part two of a series on Voice Recognition.

Today’s topic: Commanding Your Computer

Although the Dragon NaturallySpeaking software is primarily known for being a success in conjunction with word processing, it is able to accomplish much more than that. This technology is compatible with a variety of other popular products such as America Online, Internet Explorer, and ITunes; This allows computer users the freedom to send an instant messages, surf the web, and control your music-simply by using their voice.

How does this work? The software includes a vast vocabulary of commands. (Don’t worry, I don’t have the time nor the energy to list them all. For fellow readers wishing for more information, feel free to comment here or e-mail me.) Many of the commands are commonsense, using the obvious words to activate a simultaneous actions. For example, adding a word “open” with a application name will open the application. The same holds true for many of the drop-down menus provided in these programs. Other simple commands include the commands used during the dictation process. Yes, I realize I may have highlighted some of these commands in my earlier post. But I may have left out a few for time purposes. For example, let’s say you dictate a sentence. It’s correct, but looking back it doesn’t sound right. Dragon NaturallySpeaking users have one of two options, they can either say “Select That” and take over the sentence or “Scratch That” which will delete the words highlighted entirely. Inserting new lines is just as easy, with commands like “Press Enter_Key”, “New-Paragraph “, and “New -Line”.

On the other hand, controlling the mouse by voice is a different story. Using the mouse can be done one of two ways. First, computer users can simply say, press “Mouse Grid”. That opens up a tic-tac-toe style board that covers the computer screen. Each board quadrant has a number corresponding to it; saying that number selects the quadrant you specified and zooms users closer to the application or location you wish to click.Computer users can continue this action until the mouse has reached desired position and say one of three commands: “click”, “double click”, “button click”.

Another shortcut to using the “Mouse Grid” is by saying the word “mouse” followed by the number of the quadrant you wish to choose. It’s easy to remember if you understand and refer for to the analogy of a tic-tac-toe board I explained earlier. For example, if you wanted the mouse to be left-hand corner of the screen, you could simply say “Mouse 1”. Let’s say you have two minimized windows in Microsoft Word on your computer tray. There are several ways to go about this. The simplest is to use the “Mouse Grid ” command with the following additional commands. Once you have clicked on the application in your computer tray on the bottom of the screen, users can then say “Button Click”. This will open up a drop-down menu listing all of the documents they have open in the application. From there, the user can simply say “Move Mouse Up” until the mouse highlights the document you wish to select. Users then can proceed by saying “cancel” and “mouse button click”

Now that I’ve covered the basics of moving the mouse by voice, I will try to explain how users can navigate the Internet. Four illustration purposes, I will be examining popular Internet software products such as Internet Explorer and America Online. Surfing the web is quite simple actually. The new version of this software automatically creates commands for virtually all of the links listed on page you have open. For example, if users deciding to search for golf clubs typed that into the search engine through dictation, thousands of entries may come up. Computer users can click on one of those websites by probably saying the first two or three words of the website title. If one or two of the websites have the same title or name, a number will appear next to it, simply say the number and you’re there!

Using America Online uses a majority of the same commands as Internet Explorer. For example, in order to send an instant message click on the person you want to instant message and dictate your message and then say one of these two commands: “Send “and “Press Enter-Key”.

I know I covered a lot, so I’m sure there are questions. Feel free to e-mail me