iLinc and speech recognition applications

I recently experimented with one of the better speech recognition software applications, Dragon Naturally Speaking/Preferred v10 (from Nuance). This allows one to dictate and have words captured as text, as well as control MS Office actions through commands. I decided to try this in combination with iLinc. The two applications work together beautifully, without any conflict of audio. One can present and speak, record the video and audio, and have the words captured. However, the words captured must be in the chatbox, which is within the active application window during the presentation. Further, to create grammatically correct text, one also must say the punctuation marks, which may be annoying to others listening to the presentation. Without the punctuation, the chats can still be saved and later editted for clarity, despite being a string of words in the video recording.


While Dragon will also work to capture the words as text within its "Dragon pad" or MS Word, one must toggle between these applications and iLinc in order for anything to be captured. The moment one selects anything in iLinc and makes that application window active, this deactivates the Dragon pad or Word window. Nevertheless, the ability to capture your words in the chatbox, while speaking and presenting, is a great step forward in steamlining the process of creating accessible materials.


The Dragon software costs about $100 on sites such as buy.com.