So I type one handed and I’m an academic so a lot of typing is required, this poses a couple of issues. First I can’t type very fast and second I regularly feel like I’m getting carpal tunnel syndrome. I’ve been tested for the condition twice and in both cases the results were negative. While I may not have carpal tunnel, I do often deal with a lot of wrist and hand pain from typing. It was recommended that I start using speech recognition software and the only one that was ever recommended (by multiple people) was Nuance’s Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Since then I have owned and used two versions of Dragon. Dragon Home 11 and Dragon Home Premium 12. I will discuss my experience of both individually and then discuss issues that are common to both.
Dragon 11
I primarily used Dragon as dictation for writing but like most people with a new toy, I checked out its other features. Primarily controlling my computer with my voice. I was particularly amused with its functionality on the internet. I liked how I could command the software to open a link and have it do so (I know I’m easily amused). This function did however show an issue not with Dragon but with the general inaccessibility with website design. Occasionally buttons would not be coded with their visible titles. This meant that if you want or have to open a link with your dictation software, you have to verbally guide the mouse to the button and request the mouse click it,
Overall I enjoyed the software. I didn’t find it to be nearly as accurate as they claim (yes I calibrated it for highest accuracy). Anything composed through Dragon requires close editing.
The biggest issue I found was that it was completely incompatible with the web service Moodle which is commonly used by universities to offer online classes or online companions to campus classes.
I don’t just mean that I couldn’t dictate in Moodle, somehow the combination of Moodle and the Dragon add-on cancelled the ability for me to even type in the program. In order for me to complete online courses or online components to classes, I had disable the add-on. This forced me to type all communication through the site. It also put me at a disadvantage when taking internet delivered exams as I would have to type.
Dragon 12
I have a lot of buyer’s remorse over upgrading to Dragon 12. I found that the software was much less user friendly and entirely incompatible with the internet either for typing or navigation. If I tried to use Dragon with the internet, rather than obeying a command or typing in a text box, it would open another box type whatever I said and then I would have to click through to transfer the text to the web. So it had no navigation capability and an overcomplicated way of entering text. According to the product description, this is not how the software is meant to work so something was going wrong. My attempts at communicating with tech support were fruitless.
While I got nowhere with tech support. I was regularly called by sales begging me to upgrade to Dragon 12 from 11. As I had already done this, these repeated calls were frustrating as I explained each time that I had already done so and registered my new copy. I received at least five such calls before I demanded to be removed from their phone list.
As song as I was only dictating in Word, it worked as well as Dragon 11 but heaven forbid I needed to change tabs to check something in another program or particularly if I needed to check something online. Even if I turned off the microphone. Doing anything other than dictating while the program was active would initially slow both the program and my computer and ultimately cause Dragon to freeze, forcing me to forcibly close it through task manager and restart it. This issue deteriorated to the point that Dragon would crash on it’s own every 10-15 minutes. This eventually forced me to request the only assignment extension of my entire Masters degree because it was so time consuming.
Dragon 12 was a complete failure in functionality.
Issues in both versions
Accuracy, all versions claim to have accuracy rates over 95%, this has not been my experience at all,. Even after longterm use (accuracy is supposed to improve as you use the program more). This might be due in part to the highly academic work, I most commonly use it for, it recognized the word obstetrics as Star Trek. Often if you don’t catch errors immediately but find them later during editing it is difficult or impossible to discern what the intended word or phrase was to begin with.
I have a BA Honours in Women and Gender Studies and I occasionally wrote about issues of gendered and sexual violence. I found that the software was more likely to misinterpret words associated with violence. It really didn’t want to recognize the word rape for example. It wrote thing like grape or great. The software does have word training where you input the word and then train it to recognize your pronunciation of that word. Even with training it still didn’t want to accurately recognize the word rape. There is something disconcerting about yelling the word RAPE at your computer in frustration even if no one is around to hear you.
International English norms
Nuance and Dragon hate Canada, I can think of no other explanation. When you first use the software, you have to train it to recognize your voice. You help this along by setting your location so that it knows what accent to expect and what spelling is preferred. I don’t even know why there is a separate option for Canada because during selection it says in brackets that Canada uses American spelling. This is not true. Canada follows the British spelling system. Unfortunately selecting Britain isn’t a great option either because although we share spelling norms and say Zed instead of Zee, we use American terms for punctuation. We say period to denote the dot at the end of a sentence rather than full stop like the British. This causes issues of flow while dictating.You can’t change the settings in the software to change punctuation commands.
I am to fully programmed to use North American punctuation to be able to use the British settings. Using the Canadian/American setting causes it’s own difficulties that go beyond my frustration with being forced to adopt American spelling. If a word isn’t in Dragon’s dictionary (which happens a lot with academic terms) you can add them by dictating the spelling, You better just hope that the letter Z isn’t involved. I constantly forget that Americans say Zee, so I’m yelling Zed at my computer with no results. It’s beyond frustrating and a genuine flaw in the design of the software.
The fact that the software set up has to put in brackets that they assume Canada uses US spelling suggests that they know we don’t and just don’t care to set up a properly functioning set up for us. This despite the fact that they acknowledge the Britain does use another spelling and terminology and gives the preset options. You can go in and change the dictionary to reflect Canadian spelling but that is time consuming and quite frankly you shouldn’t have to. This is a huge oversight on the part of the software designers and it needs to be fixed.
Conclusions
When the software works it doesn’t seamlessly replace typing but it is a great option for those who can’t type or want to limit their typing. When the software fails it can be a big problem for the users who rely on it. There are some flaws in the software that I genuinely hope the designers will fix (though considering my experience with customer service I’m not holding my breath). They have now released Dragon 13 which I haven’t used and my attempts to see if they fixed the language flaws have been fruitless so I’m going to assume that they haven’t.
I start my PhD in the Fall and I will need to replace my Dragon 12 because it causes more problems than it solves and I may have to research the competition while searching for a replacement.
This post was typed single-handedly because my copy of Dragon 12 is unusable.
crippledscholar 