voice activated computer programs

I am looking for the same think for my son who is 10 have you gotten any respones yet?

I have had students use naturally speaking by Dragon Speak. the biggest problem with this type of software is that students have to read a rather long exzcerpt from a book. They must speak clearly and loud enough for the computer to understand them. They also must have good spelling skills. The computer will give them a choice of words if it does not understand and they have to be able to select the correct word from the box. The students that I used it with did not like the software at all. These were middle school students and they did not want to be bothered with using it.

Try to get information on “Facilitated Communication” which is a controversial and some may say outdated approach to getting autistic children to communicate. It is a simple method whereby a facilitator provides a student at a keyboard slight physical support to the shoulder, arm, hand, and weans away to no support at all. I used it on a student several years ago, and it worked beautifully! He has now graduated from High School, and though he is able to communicate better than we’d ever imagined! I’d check out some bookstores or check with your local speech therapist. It’s not exactly voice activated software related, but nonetheless an approach that just may work! Good luck!
Jeannette

Hi,
I just was speaking with someone about this after reading an article at http://www.schwablearning.org/index.asp (search on speecj recognition). According to the software rep I spoke with 15 minutes of training where the learner reads a series of prompts on the screen is required.

According to the software rep he has done this with blind people where he softly says the phase in the person’s ear and they repeat it. If I go this route I may have to do this with our daughter because the reading passages may be beyond her current level.

Cost is $ 325 for the program I am looking at plus a new computer system (hardware requirements, Pent 4 or higher, min 2 gig hard drive 521 ram, sound board and Win XP.)

I am getting more information but am really thinking about going in this direction.

Unless the money really doesn’t mean that much — sales folks, besides having a bit of conflict of interest with objectivity, honestly don’t understand even mild disabilities and their products. It sounds so great — but I have done the training and to do it right took me, with language and reading skills in the 98+ percentile, more than 15 minutes to do it right. The one LD teen in the workshop group I was with was sincerely ready to hurl thye computer out the window and had a lot less success with getting it trained. On the other hand, he’s hoping that if he can stick it out it will be better than trying to spell and type with his disability.
Check out the listserv archives at www.qiat.org where successes and challenges are discussed at some length.

but a terrible time with ViaVoice for Mac. The Standard edition of Speak Naturally (windows xp) was < 100$(its been awhile but I think I bought it for $49 at Best buyor Circuit City). Via Voice for Mac was $149. The ViaVoice was eventually given up.

Be prepared for some time in training. I spent several hours training Speak Naturally for my voice before I tried it with a dyslexic/dysgraphic child. We spent 2 hours over several sessions and got it working very successfully. But the child learned a “dication voice” a slow and clearly enunciated way of speaking. As for the spelling corrections, the spell checker was pretty good as this child can’t spell.

For the right kid - speech recognition is marvelous. For a dysgraphic its dynamite.

I see this is an old thread, but what the heck. I have to say that there is definitely a draw for them. I actually did beta testing and fund raising for MacSpeech’s iListen. I think it is a good product. I ended up going back to typing. :-(

BUT this has quite a draw to it. What if the program could just type what you say, wouldn’t that be nice. Well it would be, but it is hardly the case. First you have to train them. The training in and of itself would be daunting for many many kids (and their parents). The parent themselves should learn to use the software. Then you need to correct. Even if you got 99% correct, most kids will not do that well, you are still making a lot of corrections. The corrections help “teach” the software to do better. Correct wrong or don’t correct and it effects the results. A fourth grade reading level or better is helpful. Teenagers might have difficulty because if their voice is changing the wavering or whatever inconsistencies will be problematic. I have allergies. So that if I have a low allergy day, I get good results. Otherwise…Also kids with small articulation problems… I seem to have a couple I was not even aware of. But these will come up.

I have heard fo some kids doing very well.

Another option is word prediction. This cuts down the no. of letters typed, guesses at spelling, even attempts to guess the next word thru intelligent prediction (though the word may be wrong— this is computer intelligence :-)).
There are quite a few of these ranging in price from really cheap to just incredibly expensive. Product I know of CoWriter (www.donjohnston.com). Very good, I have not used the new version. BTW, I used to use this myself.

—des