In October 2018, Nuance announced that it has discontinued Dragon Professional Individual for Mac and will support it for only 90 days from activation in the US or 180 days in the rest of the world. The continuous speech-to-text software was widely considered to be the gold standard for speech recognition, and Nuance continues to develop and sell the Windows versions of Dragon Home, Dragon Professional Individual, and various profession-specific solutions.
Apr 24, 2020 The Enhanced Dictation feature enables Mac OS to convert the dictated speech to text more quickly. Just have to buy and install Mac OS on your PC. And there is no extra cost. You can use simple commands to convert your speech to text. Cons of Mac Dictation. You should use OS X Mavericks v10.9 or later to get ‘Enhanced Dictation’. Jun 12, 2018 It is really the best TTS experience you can get on Mac OS. Pricing Info: Pricing Options for Capti Voice. Link: Download Capti Voice from here. Honorable Mentions. CereProc has some of the most natural sounding computer speeches available on the market, which you can use to replace the default voice on your Mac (also available for other.
This move is a blow to professional users—such as doctors, lawyers, and law enforcement—who depended on Dragon for dictating to their Macs, but the community most significantly affected are those who can control their Macs only with their voices.
What about Apple’s built-in accessibility solutions? macOS does support voice dictation, although my experience is that it’s not even as good as dictation in iOS, much less Dragon Professional Individual. Some level of voice control of the Mac is also available via Dictation Commands, but again, it’s not as powerful as what was available from Dragon Professional Individual.
TidBITS reader Todd Scheresky is a software engineer who relies on Dragon Professional Individual for his work because he’s a quadriplegic and has no use of his arms. He has suggested several ways that Apple needs to improve macOS speech recognition to make it a viable alternative to Dragon Professional Individual:
![]() Best Speech Recognition Software Mac Os X
When Scheresky complained to Apple’s accessibility team about macOS’s limitations, they suggested the Switch Control feature, which enables users to move the pointer (along with other actions) by clicking a switch. He talks about this in a video.
Unfortunately, although Switch Control would let Scheresky control a Mac using a sip-and-puff switch or a head switch, such solutions would be both far slower than voice and a literal pain in the neck. There are some better alternatives for mouse pointer positioning:
Regardless, if Apple enhanced macOS’s voice recognition in the ways Scheresky suggests, it would become significantly more useful and would give users with physical limitations significantly more control over their Macs… and their lives. If you’d like to help, Scheresky suggests submitting feature request feedback to Apple with text along the following lines (feel free to copy and paste it):
Because Nuance has discontinued Dragon Professional Individual for Mac, it is becoming difficult for disabled users to use the Mac. Please enhance macOS speech recognition to support user-added custom words, speaker-dependent continuous speech recognition that learns from user corrections to improve accuracy, and cursor positioning and mouse button events.
Thank you for your consideration!
Thanks for encouraging Apple to bring macOS’s accessibility features up to the level necessary to provide an alternative to Dragon Professional Individual for Mac. Such improvements will help both those who face physical challenges to using the Mac and those for whom dictation is a professional necessity.
macOS Catalina introduces Voice Control, a new way to fully control your Mac entirely with your voice. Voice Control uses the Siri speech-recognition engine to improve on the Enhanced Dictation feature available in earlier versions of macOS.1
How to turn on Voice Control
After upgrading to macOS Catalina, follow these steps to turn on Voice Control:
When Voice Control is enabled, you see an onscreen microphone representing the mic selected in Voice Control preferences.
To pause Voice Control and stop it from from listening, say 'Go to sleep' or click Sleep. To resume Voice Control, say or click 'Wake up'.
How to use Voice Control
Get to know Voice Control by reviewing the list of voice commands available to you: say 'Show commands' or 'Show me what I can say'. The list varies based on context, and you may discover variations not listed. To make it easier to know whether Voice Control heard your phrase as a command, you can select 'Play sound when command is recognised' in Voice Control preferences.
Basic navigation
Voice Control recognises the names of many apps, labels, controls and other onscreen items, so you can navigate by combining those names with certain commands. Here are some examples:
You can also create your own voice commands.
Number overlays
Use number overlays to quickly interact with parts of the screen that Voice Control recognises as clickable, such as menus, checkboxes and buttons. To turn on number overlays, say 'Show numbers'. Then just say a number to click it.
Number overlays make it easy to interact with complex interfaces, such as web pages. For example, in your web browser you could say 'Search for Apple stores near me'. Then use the number overlay to choose one of the results: 'Show numbers. Click 64'. (If the name of the link is unique, you might also be able to click it without overlays by saying 'Click' and the name of the link.)
Voice Control automatically shows numbers in menus and wherever you need to distinguish between items that have the same name.
Grid overlays
Use grid overlays to interact with parts of the screen that don't have a control, or that Voice Control doesn't recognise as clickable.
Say 'Show grid' to show a numbered grid on your screen, or 'Show window grid' to limit the grid to the active window. Say a grid number to subdivide that area of the grid, and repeat as needed to continue refining your selection.
To click the item behind a grid number, say 'Click' and the number. Or say 'Zoom' and the number to zoom in on that area of the grid, then automatically hide the grid. You can also use grid numbers to drag a selected item from one area of the grid to another: 'Drag 3 to 14'.
To hide grid numbers, say 'Hide numbers'. To hide both numbers and grid, say 'Hide grid'.
Dictation
When the cursor is in a document, email message, text message or other text field, you can dictate continuously. Dictation converts your spoken words into text.
Voice Control understands contextual cues, so you can seamlessly transition between text dictation and commands. For example, to dictate and then send a birthday greeting in Messages, you could say 'Happy Birthday. Click Send.' Or to replace a phrase, say 'Replace I’m almost there with I just arrived'.
You can also create your own vocabulary for use with dictation.
Best Speech Recognition Software Mac Os X El CapitanCreate your own voice commands and vocabulary
Create your own voice commands
To quickly add a new command, you can say 'Make this speakable'. Voice Control will help you configure the new command based on the context. For example, if you speak this command while a menu item is selected, Voice Control helps you make a command for choosing that menu item.
Create your own dictation vocabulary
Mac Os X Free SoftwareLearn moreBest Speech Recognition Software Mac Os X 10 11
Mac Os X Speech Recognition
1. Voice Control uses the Siri speech-recognition engine for U.S. English only. Other languages and dialects use the speech-recognition engine previously available with Enhanced Dictation.
2. If you're on a business or school network that uses a proxy server, Voice Control might not be able to download. Have your network administrator refer to the network ports used by Apple software products.
Comments are closed.
|
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
December 2020
Categories |