Hal, this is your grandmother speaking.
November 13, 2010 8:14 PM Subscribe
Very straightforward voice to text software for an elderly person? Is it out there?
It's my grandmother's 93rd birthday and I'd like to get her a voice to text program so she can record her memoirs without typing too much. She has arthritis that makes writing and typing painful, but has a very clear speaking voice. I'd like to get her software that allows her to speak into a microphone and record a text file that I could help her polish up later. I'd be happy to help her get it set up and get tuned to her voice initially.. but ideally, after the initial set up it would be a program where she can open a new file and start speaking without much trouble. She gets overwhelmed with complicated programs, and I had to write out a step by step guide to logging into her email account.
She has an HP machine with Windows 7. Is such a program available, or will I be buying her another cardigan this year? Thanks!
It's my grandmother's 93rd birthday and I'd like to get her a voice to text program so she can record her memoirs without typing too much. She has arthritis that makes writing and typing painful, but has a very clear speaking voice. I'd like to get her software that allows her to speak into a microphone and record a text file that I could help her polish up later. I'd be happy to help her get it set up and get tuned to her voice initially.. but ideally, after the initial set up it would be a program where she can open a new file and start speaking without much trouble. She gets overwhelmed with complicated programs, and I had to write out a step by step guide to logging into her email account.
She has an HP machine with Windows 7. Is such a program available, or will I be buying her another cardigan this year? Thanks!
Speaking as a 40-year-old computer geek, voice recognition software is terrible. I wouldn't subject anyone 93 years old to it.
Granted, it's been a few years since I've used them, but I tried them all and they were tons of trouble. it will work for a sentence or two, then mess up, and you have to pick up the keyboard and mouse to fix it.
Suggestion: get her a nice audio recorder instead. she can talk into it without worrying about transcription, and you can take home a bunch of mp3 files and fight with the transcription software yourself. You'll also have her memories in her own voice to remember her by.
posted by mmoncur at 8:45 PM on November 13, 2010
Granted, it's been a few years since I've used them, but I tried them all and they were tons of trouble. it will work for a sentence or two, then mess up, and you have to pick up the keyboard and mouse to fix it.
Suggestion: get her a nice audio recorder instead. she can talk into it without worrying about transcription, and you can take home a bunch of mp3 files and fight with the transcription software yourself. You'll also have her memories in her own voice to remember her by.
posted by mmoncur at 8:45 PM on November 13, 2010
I fully agree with mmoncur. Voice recognition software is a bear to work with. It will be so frustrating for her.
posted by JayRwv at 8:57 PM on November 13, 2010
posted by JayRwv at 8:57 PM on November 13, 2010
I used Dragon's Naturally Speaking software, too, and had good results with it.
posted by 630 at 10:01 PM on November 13, 2010
posted by 630 at 10:01 PM on November 13, 2010
My father used Dragon as his Parkinson's got more advanced and he had more problems using computer input devices. I've seen some of his transcripts, and they were pretty sketchy, but at least it still allowed him to correspond with his doctors, friends, and relatives.
posted by matildaben at 10:45 PM on November 13, 2010
posted by matildaben at 10:45 PM on November 13, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
If your grandmother can't be expected to correct recognition errors, you might actually be better off recording her voice with a dictation-quality microphone, then translating it to text with Dragon as an after-processing step. This way, when there is a recognition error, you'll be able to refer to the recording to discover which word was meant.
posted by gmarceau at 8:44 PM on November 13, 2010