Dragon

Dragon turns speech into text and into control of your computer. It is the tool of choice where typing is painful, slow or impossible, and it is one of the most common items on an Access to Work award.

It rewards setup. The two things that decide whether Dragon feels brilliant or infuriating are the microphone you use and whether you speak in whole phrases. A cheap headset in a noisy room will make good software look bad.

• Scratch that. Removes the last thing you dictated. The fastest correction there is.
• Correct followed by the word. Opens the correction list for that word rather than making you re-dictate the sentence.
• Select followed by the word or phrase. Puts the cursor on exactly the text you want to change, without touching the keyboard.
• Cap followed by the word. Capitalises the next word, which saves editing names and job titles afterwards.
• New line and new paragraph. Say them rather than reaching for the keyboard, and your dictation keeps its rhythm.
• Speak in phrases, not single words. Dragon uses the surrounding words to choose between homophones. Dictating word by word actively makes accuracy worse.

• Two voices will talk over each other. Turning your screen reader's typing echo off while dictating stops it announcing every word Dragon inserts.
• Dictate straight into the application. Where an app plays nicely, dictating directly into it beats dictating elsewhere and pasting. Where it does not, dictating into Word and pasting across is a reliable fallback.
• Verify by reading back, not by watching. Read the sentence back with your screen reader after each paragraph. Dragon's own visual feedback is no use to you, and errors caught early are far cheaper to fix.
• Expect a setup session. Getting Dragon, a screen reader and your main applications to co-operate is a legitimate piece of work in itself, and it is what a lot of our Dragon training is actually spent on.

• Accuracy is poor from day one. Check the microphone before you blame the software. A decent USB headset positioned consistently is the single biggest factor.
• It mishears the same word every time. Add it to the vocabulary and train it once. Names, technical terms and company jargon all need this.
• Recognition is fine in Word and awful elsewhere. Support varies by application. Dictating in a supported app and moving the text is a normal working pattern, not a defeat.
• It types commands as text. That usually means the phrase was not recognised as a command. Pause briefly before and after a command so it stands apart from your dictation.

People with repetitive strain injuries, limited hand function or chronic pain, and dyslexic writers who find it far easier to say what they mean than to type it. It is also increasingly used simply for speed by people who write all day.