Assistive Technology Training Software Guide

Transcription

1 Assistive Technology Training Software Guide 1

2 Contents 1. Getting Started 1.1 Creating a voice profile The Dragon toolbar and Learning Centre Turning the microphone on and off 7 2. Using Dragon for Dictation 2.1 Basic dictation with Dragon and Word Correcting mistakes Switching modes Using Dragon to Edit Text 3.1 Moving around a document Formatting text with Dragon Proof reading with Dragon Using Dragon with the Internet 4.1 Quickly searching the internet Basic commands for browsing the web Using Dragon and 5.1 Using with Gmail Using with Outlook.com Controlling Programs and Windows 6.1 How to open and close programs How to switch between programs Using with Windows Explorer Controlling the Mouse 7.1 Moving the mouse cursor Clicking the mouse The mouse grid Improving Recognition 8.1 Editing and adding to the Dragon vocabulary 38 2

3 Contents 8.2 Improving recognition of commands Further improving accuracy 41 A. Appendices A.1 Useful voice commands 44 3

4 1 Getting Started Dragon Naturally Speaking is voice recognition software that enables dictation and allows full control of a PC using only your voice. Dragon builds a voice profile specific to you and works alongside many common software packages and web browsers. The first step to working with Dragon is to setup a voice profile. 1.1 Creating a voice profile With the latest versions of Dragon, it is incredibly quick and easy to setup a voice profile. If opening Dragon for the first time, or if no voice profile currently exists, you will be greeted by a welcome screen and a step-by-step process to set one up. The first step is to choose the region you are from and pick from the available accents. Don t worry that Geordie/ Cockney/Scouse etc. aren t on the list - the Standard option works for a range of different UK regional accents! Next choose an audio device from which you wish to use speech. Typically the top option alongside the PC icon will be the one you want. Click next and you ll see a screen instructing you how to best position your microphone. 4

5 With your mic positioned correctly move onto the next screen. You ll see there s a brief bit of reading to do. From this Dragon will build your profile. Click the start button and start reading. A Complete message will appear when Dragon has enough audio for your profile. Dragon will take a few moments to prepare your profile for use, after which the Dragon tutorial will appear. This will show you some key aspects of using Dragon and takes about 15 mins to go through. Use the >> button to progress through the tutorial. You can use the X button to close the tutorial. You can access the tutorial at any time through the Dragon toolbar. 5

6 1.2 The Dragon toolbar and Learning Centre With your profile ready and the tutorial closed, you ll see the Dragon toolbar - usually positioned at the top-centre of the screen. You can move the Dragon toolbar by clicking and dragging on the left edge. In the newer versions of Dragon you ll notice by default the toolbar will automatically shrink when not in use. When you hover the mouse back over the toolbar it will auto-expand to show all the available options. The microphone symbol represents if the mic is on, off or in stand-by mode. If red the microphone is off and won t respond to anything you say. If green, the microphone is on and listening - ready for dictation or voice commands. If blue, the microphone is in stand-by mode. The mic will only respond to wake-up. The Learning Centre is an optional sidebar which provides contextual help for Dragon. The Learning Centre shows useful voice commands for whichever program you are working in. If you don t want the Learning Centre cluttering the screen you can close at any time using the X button. The Learning Centre can always be opened again via the Help menu in the Dragon toolbar: Display the Learning Centre sidebar. You can use the DragonBar menu to change the appearance of the Dragon toolbar - both the look and whether the toolbar auto-expands/contracts 6

7 1.3 Turning the microphone on and off With Dragon it is always important to be mindful of whether the microphone is on, off or in stand-by mode. Lets look at the different ways to switch between these three modes. When the mic is off, Dragon will not respond to any voice commands. The two ways to switch the mic on are (a) click on the mic symbol within the Dragon toolbar or (b) press the + button on the keyboard number pad. To turn the mic off again click the mic button or press the + key. When the mic is on, Dragon will try to interpret any sound being received. It will listen out for any recognised Dragon voice commands and perform the relevant action, or it will presume anything else it hears is dictation. Dragon will then try and input this into the currently active program. To put the mic into stand-by mode you can say Go to sleep. In standby mode Dragon will not try do anything with sound coming into the microphone. It will however respond to the Wake up command. Saying Wake up will switch the mic back on (into green mode). Notes on the microphone: Whenever you open Dragon the mic will always be off (red mode). In order to begin using your voice with Dragon you ll initially have to manually turn the mic on by pressing the numpad + button or by clicking the mic icon on the Dragon bar. After that it s generally best to just use the voice commands Go to sleep when you are not needing Dragon and Wake up when you want to use Dragon. 2 Using Dragon for Dictation There are two aspects to using Dragon: dictation and voice commands: Dictation: Dictation is Dragon s most obvious use - getting text into documents, s and other areas without the need for typing. Voice Commands: Dragon can also be used for controlling other aspects of the PC - from formatting text, to opening programs, to controlling the mouse cursor. All of this is done via particular voice commands, which Dragon recognises as something you want to do, rather than text you wish to dictate. In this section we ll look at how to perform basic dictation with Dragon into Microsoft Word. From section 3 we ll introduce using voice commands. 7

8 2.1 Basic dictation with Dragon and Word With a new document open in Microsoft Word, let s try a brief bit of dictation. Turn the microphone on by clicking the symbol in the Dragon bar or press the numpad + button. Try speaking a few sentences to see how Dragon does! If you can t think of anything to say you can use passage below. (Note: read out the [new paragraph] and [full stop] bits as well.) Dragon speech recognition software [new paragraph] Your voice is ready to work [full stop] [new paragraph] Work smarter and more productively in the office and on the road [full stop] With fast [comma] accurate dictation and transcription [comma] advanced customisation [comma] seamless integration across devices [comma] and easy deployment for large enterprises [full stop] Use your most powerful tool [dash] your voice [dash] and put it to work [full stop] [go to sleep] You ll notice in the passage above we had to include the [new paragraph], [full stop], [comma] and [dash] bits in order to get punctuation and paragraph breaks into our Word document. By default Dragon is unable to add things like this automatically! 2.2 Correcting mistakes Usually Dragon is pretty accurate straight out of the box however at times it will still make mistakes and put in words you didn t speak. By correcting Dragon we can improve it s speech recognition and over time your voice profile should become even more accurate. There are a few ways we can go about correcting Dragon if text doesn t go into our document quite how we wanted it: Corrections by saying Select [word] Corrections by saying Correct that Corrections using the keyboard The [scratch that] command can also be used for correcting mistakes. Saying scratch that will immediately erase the last character, word or sentence you spoke. 8

9 A: Corrections by saying: Select [word] If you notice a word that has gone into your document incorrectly you can say Select followed by the erroneous word. For example here in this Word document under Productivity our sentence has gone in as As a Dragon... rather than There s a Dragon... To correct this we can say: Select as a This will bring up the Dragon correction menu. This window will show some alternate versions of the word or words selected. Often you ll see the word or phrase you meant in the Choose options. In our example we want the text to read there s a so we can say Choose 2. Doing this will insert that option into our document: 9

10 You may have noticed our text isn t quite right - as we have a small t at the beginning of the line. We may wish for this to be capitalised. To do this we can say Select there s, then from the correction menu say Choose 4. So - the correction menu can be used not only for replacing words, but also for making corrections to grammar as well. B: Corrections by saying: Correct that Another way of making a correction is by saying Correct that. The command Correct that will highlight the last phrase or sentence you have used and bring up the correction menu. In this instance when we said Say commands that your computer obeys, Dragon entered Say commands on your computer or beers! Saying Correct that immediately after we d said this will bring up the correction menu. In this case we haven t got the exact match for our sentence, but we can start by saying Choose 6. We re getting close! Now we just have to replace or beers with obeys! 10

11 To do this we can say Select or beers. Sometimes the word we want may not be among the Choose list. To manually correct this we can say Spell that which will bring up the spelling window: When using the spelling window you can enter text letter-by-letter e.g. O-B-E-Y. Here we can spell letter-by-letter the word we want. As we add letters, the list of choices will show different words we may be wanting. Alternatively you can use the phonetic alphabet e.g. Oscar-Bravo-Echo-Yankee, or use a mixture of these two, e.g. O-Bravo-E-Yankee. When we see our word appear ( obey ) we can say Choose 1 to insert it into our document. C: Corrections via the keyboard The correction menu can also be brought up via the - (minus) key on the keyboard number pad. In the dictated passage below we want to correct the word update to the plural version: updates. First we need to place the cursor either just in front or just after the word update. Alternatively we could highlight the word with the mouse by clicking and dragging. 11

12 Next we can press the - key on the numpad to bring up the correction menu. In this instance we can make the change we want by saying Choose 1. If our word doesn t appear amongst the choices we could just type it in, or use the spelling window (by saying or clicking on Spell that ). 2.3 Switching modes In Dragon there are several dictation modes we can use for entering specific information: Normal mode Spell mode Numbers mode Dictation mode Command mode To switch into any of these modes we can say Switch to followed by spell mode, numbers mode, dictation mode, command mode or normal mode. You can also switch modes via the dropdown menu to the right of the DragonBar. You ll see when switching modes a message will appear by the DragonBar to confirm the current mode. 12

13 Normal Mode: Normal mode is the default state of Dragon - whereby Dragon will interpret dictation and voice commands. Spell Mode: Spell mode lets you dictate text letter-by-letter e.g. A-E-I-O-U, and via the phonetic alphabet e.g. Alpha- Echo-India-Oscar-Uniform or a mixture of the two e.g. Alpha-E-Indigo-O-Uniform. For instance here we ve switched to spell mode in order to enter in a Twitter username (which doesn t contain normal words): Numbers Mode: Numbers mode is useful if you want numerical info to appear as digits rather than words e.g. 123 rather than one two three. Here we ve switched to numbers mode in order to put a phone number into our document: Dictation Mode: Dictation mode will disable virtually all voice commands. This is for when you just want to input text without triggering any voice commands or actions. Using dictation mode in the below example allows us to input go to sleep into our document without actually switching the microphone off! 13

14 Command Mode: In command mode, Dragon will not try and input any text. Only voice commands will be recognised and acted upon. With command mode active, in our Word document below - nothing we say will be entered onto the page. However we can still use speech to move around the page or format the text. 3 Using Dragon to Edit Text As well as using Dragon to dictate text, i.e. getting text into our document, we can also use Dragon to edit and format that text. In this section we ll look at some of the most useful voice commands for doing this. We ll be concentrating mostly on use with Microsoft Word, but you ll find a lot of Dragon s voice commands work across a range of programs. 3.1 Moving around a document Before getting to how to edit and format text, it may be useful to first look at how we can move about in a document with Dragon voice commands. Go to... Commands These commands are useful for jumping quickly around a document. Go to... top bottom start of line end of line start of document end of document 14

15 Move... Commands Use these commands to position the cursor a bit more precisely. Move... forward [n] characters back up down [n] words [n] lines [n] paragraphs where [n] is any number Insert... Commands Use these commands to position the cursor before/after a certain word or passage of text. Insert... before [word] after [word] before [word 1] through [word 2] 3.2 Formatting text with Dragon Now let s take a look at some of the most common commands for formatting and editing text within our document. Select... Commands First it would make sense to learn how to select the text we want to format or edit: Select... that all [word] [word 1] through [word 2] previous... next... character word line paragraph Note: Select that will select the most recent word or words spoken. 15

16 Basic Text Formatting Commands If we have some text selected we can do some basic formatting via the following commands: Bold that Italicise that Underline that Bold... from [word 1] to [word 2] Italicise... [word 1] through [word 2] Underline... [text] Where [text] can be a word, or sequence of words Upper Case Commands Dragon will often automatically add in capital letters at the beginning of sentences and for names. To manually add in capitals we can use the following commands: Cap [word] All caps [word] No caps [word] Cap that All caps that No caps that e.g. this is Dragon [cap] Speech recognition software e.g. this is [all caps] DRAGON speech recognition software e.g. this is [no caps] dragon dictation software with some text selected with some text selected with some text selected Deleting Text If you want to erase text from your document you can use the following commands: Delete that Delete... previous... character next... word line paragraph 16

17 Cutting, Copying and Pasting Text With a character, word, sentence, paragraph or multiple paragraphs selected we can also perform cut, copy and paste actions: Cut that Copy that Paste that 3.3 Proof reading with Dragon Dragon has some in-built text-to-speech functions handy for checking back through work. Read document Read the selection Play the selection The Read... commands will play back text in a synthetic computer voice, whilst the Play the selection command will begin play back in the users voice. You ll see using Play the selection, text within Word will be highlighted as it is played back. Its possible to customise some of the textto-speech settings. To do this we need to access the Dragon options dialog via the Tools menu. 17

18 In the Options window, you ll see a Playback/Text-to-Speech tab. In here it s possible to adjust rate and volume of speech and choose the voice used when the Read document command is used. 4 Using Dragon with the Internet It is also possible to use Dragon when browsing the web - for performing searches, completing web forms and navigating to and around different web pages. There are also some useful commands for operating services online such as microsoft Outlook (or Hotmail) and Google Gmail. 4.1 Quickly searching the internet Dragon has some commands for performing quick internet searches. Search the Web For... We can say Search the web for... followed by a word, words or phrase to use our default web browser to perform a search using that browser s default search engine. For example we can say Search the web for Newcastle College. After issuing our command Search the web for Newcastle College we ll see a dialog appear confirming our search term. Now we can say Click search to open up our web browser. 18

19 Our web browser (in this case Firefox) will automatically open on our search engine results page. Search YouTube For... If we want to look for a YouTube video we can say Search YouTube for... followed by a search term, for example Search YouTube for Dragon Naturally Speaking. Again we ll see the Dragon Keyword Edit box confirming our search term. If we need to change this we can say something else. We can then say Click search to open up our browser with the results. 19

20 Search Wikipedia For... We can also quick search Wikipedia using the Search Wikipedia for... command, for example by saying Search Wikipedia for assistive technology. We can check the Do not display this window again option if we want to cut out this middle step between voice command and browser search results. 4.2 Basic commands for browsing the web Now let s look at some ways we can move between and around web pages. As we ll cover, in some web browsers Dragon behaves a little differently. Generally speaking all Dragon voice commands work with Internet Explorer (IE). When using Chrome or Firefox there may be times when commands that work in IE will not work. Also worth noting that to ensure maximum compatibility with Chrome and Firefox, you may be prompted to install the Dragon extension for these browsers. Navigating to a particular website Whether using Dragon or not - there are a couple of ways we might get to a particular website: We may do a Google search for the site and click the right link from the search results. We may enter in the specific web address of the site we want to look at. 20

21 In section 4.1 we have already seen a way of using a search to find a website via the Search the web for... command. And whenever we load up Google via a web browser we will see the focus is on the search box, i.e. we have the flashing cursor ready to receive a search term: So with Google.co.uk loaded we can simply speak in the website we want to find. With Google instant search, as soon as we say anything, results will appear. So if we want to visit the BBC news page we can just say BBC news. So what if we want to manually put in a web address? The first job is to get into our browser s address bar. How we do this will depend on if we are using IE, Firefox or Chrome. In Internet Explorer - getting to the address bar is easy. We just say: Go to address bar. We can then say the web address we want: BBC dot co dot uk slash news To enter this - and try to load the web page - we can say: Press Enter. 21

22 If using Firefox Go to address bar will also work. However if you then try to speak in an address you ll see the Dragon Dictation Box appear. This box appears when Dragon is unable to input text directly into a program. The Dictation Box acts as bridge between Dragon and the program. In this case we can speak in the web address we want input into the Firefox address bar, then say Click Transfer. (Note: we can select and correct text in the Dictation box much like we can in Microsoft Word.) On saying Click transfer the Dictation box will close and our text input into Firefox. We can then say Press Enter to load the webpage. With Google Chrome the Go to address bar command will not work. However we can still access the address bar by saying Press F6. (F6 is the common windows shortcut for moving to the address bar.) 22

23 As in Firefox, with Google Chrome we have to enter information to the address bar via the Dictation Box. After we ve spoken our web address, we can say Click transfer to input it to Chrome and then Press Enter to load the web page. Moving about a web page With a site loaded, the next thing we can look at is how to move about on a web page. To do this there are several different voice commands we can use which control exactly how we scroll up and down the page. Scroll Up Scroll Down These commands move the scroll bar to the very top or very bottom of the page. 23

24 Page Up Page Down Line Up Line Down Start Scrolling Up Start Scrolling Down The same as pressing the keyboard Page Up/Page Down buttons, these commands will jump up or down the page. These commands will start moving fractionally up or down the page - one line at a time. You can use these commands to start constantly scrolling up or down the page. You can say Stop at any time to stop the page scrolling any further. Selecting items on a webpage We can also use voice commands to select links, buttons and edit boxes on a webpage. Let s start by looking at how to select links on a page, e.g. results from a Google search. To select a link we can say Click followed by word(s) or a phrase. Here we ve said Click Newcastle College. In this instance - as there are multiple links with Newcastle College in them - Dragon will put a number by each link. Now we can say a number to select that link. For example for the college homepage we just say One. With the college website loaded, say if we wanted to access Student , we can just say Click Student . 24

25 Accessing edit boxes on a webpage is similar. Say we want to input into the Find a Course search box on the college website - we can just say Click edit box. With the cursor active in the search box, we can now speak in our search term. With most search boxes we can then say Press Enter to perform the search and show the results. Tab controls and moving back through pages Most web browsers tend to work with a tabbed layout, allowing multiple pages to be open at once. Let s look at voice commands for controlling the browser tabs: Open new tab Close tab Switch to next tab Switch to previous tab Switch to first tab Switch to last tab Most web browsers also have back and forwards buttons so you can move through the history of pages visited. For Internet Explorer and Firefox we can activate these commands using: Go back Go forward In Chrome the above won t work so we can replicate the Alt + Left and Alt + Right arrow keyboard shortcut instead by saying: Press alt left arrow Press alt right arrow 25

26 5 Using Dragon and It is also possible to use Dragon when writing s. In this section we ll look at using Dragon with two of the more popular webmail services: Google s Gmail and Microsoft s Outlook (which was formerly Hotmail). 5.1 Using with Gmail With Dragon we are able to perform pretty much any action with Gmail which we would normally using the mouse and keyboard. We can navigate about within Gmail mainly by saying Click followed by the name of something we d like to open. So for example to access the Promotions tab within Gmail we can say Click promotions. Now if we want to open the top, unread from Adobe Systems, we can say Click adobe creative cloud as seen in the subject line. If there s more than one instance of this text on the page, Dragon will the number these. We can say Choose 2 to open our . 26

27 With our open we can move up and down it using the voice commands discussed in section 4.2: Scroll Up Scroll Down Page Up Page Down Line Up Line Down To return to our inbox we can say Click inbox. We ll have the choice of using the Back to inbox arrow towards the top of the screen ( Choose 1 ) or via the main Inbox link in the sidebar to the left of the screen ( Choose 2 ). We can create a new by selecting the compose button via the command Click compose. 27

28 After saying Click compose the New Message window will appear across the bottom right of the screen. The cursor will be in the To field already, so we can go ahead and speak our address, or if the person is in your contacts - start speaking their name. Here we ve contacted the person before, so by saying their first name, they are brought up as a suggestion. We can say Press enter to select this suggestion. To move the cursor into the subject field then to the message body we can say Press tab. With our message written, we can say Click send. To reply to an we have open, we can say Click reply. The cursor will be placed in the reply edit box towards the bottom of the screen ready for us to speak in our message. With our reply written, we can say Click send. 28

29 To do a search of our s we can say Click edit box to get into the search bar. Then we can speak in what we are looking for. Here we re looking for any s from Adobe. We can say Press enter to perform the search. 5.2 Using with Outlook.com If you have some sort of Microsoft account (e.g. Hotmail, Live, Outlook) you will probably use the Outlook.com webmail service. In the new message pane, the cursor will be in the To field. Here we can speak in an address or the name of person we re sending to. Here the person we are sending to is suggested when we speak their first name. We can say Press enter to confirm the suggestion. To create a new message on Outlook we can say Click new. As there are multiple new buttons on the page we ll have to choose the option we want. To create a new message, here we ll say Choose 1. 29

30 To move into the Subject or message body fields we can say Click edit box. The different fields will be numbered. To get into the Subject line we can say Choose 2, to get into the message body area Choose 3. With our message written we can go ahead and say Click send. If we have an we want to reply to we can say Click reply. The cursor will be placed in a new edit box where we can speak in our reply. With our reply written we can then say Click send to send the message. 30

31 6 Controlling Programs and Windows As well as using Dragon for dictation into documents and s, we can also use it for controlling the operation of our PC. In this section we ll look at how we can use Dragon for opening and closing different applications as well as using the Windows operating system. 6.1 How to open and close programs Lets look at the voice commands we can use for opening and closing different programs and applications. To open a program we can simply say Open followed by the program name. So for Word we say Open Microsoft Word. Some common application names are listed to the right. If we want to close a program we use the command: Close window It may be when closing a program you get the Want to save changes to your document? message. Here we can say click Save, click Don t Save or click Cancel to dismiss this. Open... Microsoft PowerPoint Microsoft Excel Internet Explorer Google Chrome Mozilla Firefox 31

32 6.2 How to switch between programs It s useful to know how to quickly switch between any programs we may have open. To do this we use the Switch to... command. To instantly jump from one program to another we can say Switch to followed by the name of another program. Switch to... Microsoft PowerPoint Microsoft Excel Internet Explorer Google Chrome Mozilla Firefox Another way to switch between programs is via the commands: List all windows List programs Either of these commands will bring up the List of Windows box. Here you will see all the open programs and their windows listed. To switch to a program on the list we can say Choose followed by a number, e.g. Choose 3. If you have multiple documents open in a program (e.g. Word) each document will be listed separately. To dismiss this box say Click cancel. 32

33 6.3 Using with Windows Explorer Windows Explorer is the application we use to navigate around files and folders on our computer. With Dragon we can use voice commands to quickly perform some key actions within Windows Explorer. Open My Computer The Open My Computer command will open a new Windows Explorer window showing the My Computer screen. Open My Documents The Open My Documents command will open a new Explorer window showing the My Documents folder - useful for quickly accessing your saved files. With the assistance of Dragon we can also use our voice to access and search the Start Menu. 33

34 To bring up the Start Menu, we just say Start Menu. Start Menu The cursor will be flashing in the Search programs and files box. To perform a search we can just start speaking. We cannot input text directly into this search box, so the Dragon dictation window will appear with our search term: We can then say Click transfer to send our search term to the Start Menu. The Start Menu will update with search results. Here we can say Press Enter to open up the currently selected result. We can also select any items visible in the Start Menu by saying Click followed by the name of the item. So if we wanted to choose the Music item from the right hand side of the Start Menu we would just say Click Music. To move around the Start Menu one item at a time we can use the arrow keys by saying Click followed by up arrow, down arrow, left arrow or right arrow. 34

35 Two more commands that are useful when working with windows are: Maximise window Restore down Maximise window is useful when programs open up like this, and we want to resize to take up the full screen. Restore down will shrink a maximised window back to how it was. 7 Controlling the Mouse Dragon also allows us to use voice commands to control the actions of the mouse cursor. 7.1 Moving the mouse cursor Let s start with how we can move the mouse cursor around the screen. Essentially we can use the Move mouse... command followed by a direction: up, down, left or right. Move mouse... up... faster down... left... right... very fast slower very slow We can also dictate the speed the cursor travels at if we want by saying faster, very fast, slower or very slow. These speed commands can be said at any time the cursor is moving. We can say Stop to stop the cursor in its current position. 35

36 7.2 Clicking the mouse Now we can move the mouse - how about interacting with things on screen via the mouse buttons. Let s look at an example where we ll move the mouse and interact with the Recycle Bin item on our desktop. First we ll start moving upward with Move mouse up. We ll say Stop when we re in line with the Recycle Bin. Next we ll move left via Move mouse left. We may want to get a move on so we ll say Faster! When the cursor is right over the Recycle Bin we ll say Stop. Now for some clicking action! If we want to empty the recycle bin from the desktop we can rightclick on the icon. To do this we say Mouse right click. If we want to open up the recycle bin and view it s contents we can double left-click by saying Mouse double click. And if we want to restore items in the recycle bin, we can move the cursor over the button and perform a single left-click: Mouse left click. 36

37 7.3 The mouse grid The mouse grid feature let s us quickly and precisely position the cursor anywhere on screen. To bring up the mouse grid we just say Mouse grid. You ll see numbered squares appear on screen. To position the mouse cursor within that square we just say it s number. After we say a number - the grid will resize. We can then say another number to position the cursor even more accurately. Once we ve used the mouse grid to position our cursor precisely we can use the click commands as previously: Mouse left click, Mouse right click, or Mouse double click. 37

38 8 Improving Recognition Dragon tends to be pretty accurate straight away, however it will inevitably still make mistakes. In this section we ll look at how to keep improving your Dragon profile. 8.1 Editing and adding to the Dragon vocabulary If you are dictating one word and Dragon is continually putting in another word, we can train Dragon to recognise that word more accurately. We do this through the vocabulary editor. To launch the vocabulary editor we can click the relevant option from the Vocabulary menu in the DragonBar or - with the microphone on - we can say Open vocabulary editor. The Vocabulary Editor box shows every word in the Dragon vocabulary, listed A to Z. Here we can search for a word and show Dragon how we pronounce it. Lets say for example we want to train Dragon in how we pronounce Newcastle. We can start typing in Newcastle to the search box. You ll see the vocabulary list update the more we write. 38

39 Once we see the option we want, we click on it, then click the Train... button. This will bring up the Train Words dialog box. Now we can click Go then speak in how we pronounce the Word. Once we ve done that, we click Done to save the update. As well as editing words already in the Dragon vocabulary we can add new words. This may include abbreviations or terminology not usually found in the dictionary. Let s say we want to add the term A-Tech to the vocabulary as an abbreviation of Assistive Technology. When we type this in to the vocabulary editor nothing shows up - but we can click the Add... button to create a new vocab entry. This will bring up the Add word or phrase box. In the first field we enter in our new term: A-Tech. The second box (Spoken form) is how we would pronounce it. For example here we just want to say A Tech rather than A hyphen Tech. 39

40 When we click Add the Train Words dialog box will appear. We click Go then speak in A Tech, then click Done to add it to our Dragon vocabulary. You ll see when we re-open the vocabulary editor our new term will appear in the list. The + shows that this is a new, custom addition by us to the vocabulary list. Now when we are dictating text and say A Tech - A-Tech will be placed into our document. 8.2 Improving recognition of commands We can also train Dragon to recognise better any voice commands we may use. This is done via the Command Browser. We access the Command Browser by selecting it from the Tools menu in the DragonBar. 40

41 The Command Browser contains a list of all the voice commands available within Dragon. Use the Context dropdown menu to view commands available in different programs. As an example, we may wish to train Dragon to recognise the Wake up command better. To do this we choose Global Commands from the dropdown menu, then scroll down until we find wake up. With wake up selected the Train option will become available in the left sidebar. Clicking this will bring up the Train Words box. Now we can click Go and speak in how we say this command. 8.3 Further improving accuracy To further improve the speech recognition of a Dragon profile, we can read out some text, then let Dragon analyse how we pronounce certain words. To do this we choose the Read text to improve accuracy... option from the DragonBar Audio menu. 41

42 This will launch the Training Wizard - which will set you up to read a passage of text for Dragon to analyse. Use the Next button to progress through the wizard. You will be given a choice of texts to read from various books and sources. You ll also have the option to either read off the screen or print out your selected text. You will soon come to the Speaking to the Computer screen which will display your text. Remember to click the Begin Training button before starting to read! Once you start reading you ll see a timer counting how much speech Dragon has recorded. The OK button at the bottom of the screen may stay greyed out until Dragon has gathered enough speech. It s likely you will have to speak for at least 4 minutes before Dragon has enough information to process. 42

43 Once you ve clicked OK continue with the Wizard until you see the screen with the Start Adapting button. On clicking this Dragon will begin to analyse everything you have just read out - and adapt your user profile. This process can take a while - particularly if you have read out many pages of text. Eventually though you will get confirmation your profile has been adapted successfully. You will then be able to move through and finish the Training Wizard. After you ve been through this process you should hopefully notice an improvement in the accuracy of Dragon. If you d like to further improve your profile, you can return to the training wizard and read out further text as many times as you like. 43

44 Appendices A.1 Useful voice commands Microphone Controls Wake up Go to sleep Turn the microphone on (from sleep mode) Turn the microphone off (into sleep mode) Switching Modes Switch to normal mode Switch to spell mode Switch to numbers Switch to dictation mode Switch to command mode Dictation and commands will be recognised Dictate letter-by-letter Dictate only numbers Only limited commands will be recognised Only commands will be recognised (no dictation) Correcting Mistakes Scratch that Scratch word Correct that Correct [word] Correct [word 1] through [word 2] Open vocabulary editor Delete last spoken word / sentence Delete the last word / word to left of cursor Open correction menu for last thing dictated Open correction menu for specific word Open correction menu for specific text Opens the vocab editor for training words Microsoft Word New line New paragraph Start a new line Start a new paragraph Go to top Go to the first line of the document 44

45 Microsoft Word continued... Go to bottom Go to start of line Go to end of line Go to the last line of the document Place the cursor at the start of the current line Place the cursor at the end of the current line Move forward 5 characters Move back 5 words Move up 5 lines Move down 5 paragraphs Move the cursor forward 5 characters Move the cursor back 5 words Move the cursor up 5 lines Move the cursor down 5 paragraphs Insert before [word] Insert after [word] Insert before [word 1] through [word 2] Place the cursor before a specific word Place the cursor after a specific word Place the cursor before a specific passage of text. Select that Select all Select [word] Select [word 1] through [word 2] Select previous character Select next word Select previous line Select next paragraph Select the last thing said Select everything in the document Select a specific word Select a specific passage of text Select the previous character Select the next word Select the previous line Select the next paragraph Delete that Delete previous character Delete next word Delete previous line Delete the last thing said Delete the previous character Delete the next word Delete the previous line 45

46 Microsoft Word continued... Delete next paragraph Delete the next paragraph Bold that Italicise that Underline that Apply bold formatting to the selected text Apply italics to the selected text Underline the selected text Cap [word] Welcome to cap assistive technology Caps on Caps off Welcome to caps on assistive technology caps off Cap that All caps that No caps that Start the next word with a capital letter To write: Welcome to Assistive technology Turn on title case (capitalise first letters of words) Turn off title case To write: Welcome to Assistive Technology Apply title case to the selected word Apply all upper case to the selected word Apply all lower case to the selected word Cut that Copy that Paste that Cut the selected text Copy the selected text Paste from the clipboard Read document Read the selection Play the selection Have Dragon read out the entire document Have Dragon read out only the selected text Have selected text played back (user s speech) Web Browsers Search the web for [search term] Search YouTube for [search term] Perform a quick web search Perform a quick YouTube search 46

47 Web Browsers continued... Search Wikipedia for [search term] Perform a quick Wikipedia search Go to address bar Open new tab Close tab Switch to previous tab Switch to next tab Switch to first tab Switch to last tab Go to internet address bar (IE and Firefox) Open a new browser tab Close the current browser tab Switch to the tab to the left Switch to the tab to the right Switch to the first browser tab Switch to the last browser tab Go back Go forward Press alt left arrow Press alt right arrow Move back a web page (IE and Firefox) Move forward a web page (IE and Firefox) Move back a web page (Chrome) Move forward a web page (Chrome) Scroll up Scroll down Page up Page down Line up Line down Start scrolling up Start scrolling down Stop scrolling Click [link] Click edit box Jump to top of the page Jump to bottom of the page Move up the page Move down the page Move up the page (line -by-line) Move down the page (line-by-line) Scroll up continually Scroll down continually Stop continuous scrolling Activate a specific link on a page Get into a search or text box on a page 47

48 Web Browsers continued... Click combo box Get into a dropdown box on a page General Windows Controls Open [program name] Close window Open a specific program Close the current program / window List programs Maximise window Minimise window Restore down Show desktop Show a list of all open programs Enlarge the current window to fill the screen Minimise the current window to the task bar Shrink the current window from filling the screen Show the Windows desktop Open my computer Open my documents Open Windows Explorer at My Computer Open Windows Explorer at My Documents Press right arrow Press tab Press control A Click the [cancel] button Press the right arrow key Press the Tab key Press the Ctrl key and the A key together Click a button that s on screen Mouse Controls Move mouse [direction] Move mouse [direction] faster Mouse grid Mouse grid window Mouse left click Start the mouse cursor moving in a direction Set speed of cursor movement Place the mouse grid over the full screen Place the mouse grid over the current window Click the left mouse button 48

49 Mouse controls continued... Mouse right click Mouse double click Click the right mouse button Double click the left mouse button 49