Author: AccessAbility Smyles

(Written with a combination of voice (major part) and keyboard(for editing)

This article is about Microsoft Word and the dictate function contained within it. I’m using a headset connected to a desktop computer which I originally had from dragon dictate. It is a bog standard headset with a 3.5 Jack.

So what I’m doing here as I’m writing with my voice. This new feature can really help me with my work especially when I’m thinking out loud.it does not contain all the full features of dragon dictate naturally speaking but it does have much value in just getting work down which is a strategy that can be used.

There are a few grammatical and sentence paragraph making tools. For instance i used..

..To create this paragraph. (Voice Command – “new paragraph”

It is actually quite efficient that creating dialogue and narrative. So it would be useful for children to get their ideas down in a flow kind of way. But any more complicated editing will require a more powerful package such as dragon dictate naturally speaking . I am pleasantly surprised about its accuracy for me. It does seem to be able to pick up my particular phraseology without any training whatsoever. It is most definitely a tool I will use in writing my blogs uncertain free flowing articles.

How does it cope with names and addresses? The answer is not particularly well the more complicated tool would be much more useful! As Some of the editing tools are very basic I feel the best way to use this is by a combination of keyboard and voice. This gives the best and most accurate results with a fairly free flowing movement which is pleasing impractical and not complicated.

Conclusion

 Microsoft Have done a great  job in creating a simple tool that would be of great value to those who don’t require a great deal of editing and more complex solutions. I feel it is a tool that can be very useful for those who want to practice speech recognition find out what its impact without too much fuss and bother. In fact it could be a first tool that people use in order to test out how good this would be for them in the future where they would move on to more complex packages.

To celebrate October being Dyslexia Awareness I am going GoRed which means all my logo has gone red ! Well, at least a reddish tinge !

Just had an email from Widgit with some good resources for teachers to use with their pupils. I suggest you get over to widgit. com and sign up for a free newsletter yourself:-

https://www.widgit.com/

Felt inspired to write about some principles about how to help people with disabilities use the Assistive Technology on LinkedIn. Feel free to share it if you think it is useful.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/bigger-picture-myles-pilling-ba-m-ed-

From the same source:-

Guide to Accessible and Responsive Street Furniture
https://kingswoodstructures.co.uk/guide-to-accessible-street-furniture/

We have all used them and attached them to our fridge or computer. But now Post-it is an app. A very useful one has your post-it’s can be group. Great too for to-do- lists .

Now it’s gone digital you can dynamically make them, change them and swop them around .

You can then have a variety of ways to output them as a pdf or a jpeg so that you store them or print out to work through. This would also be a way of brainstorming some ideas and moving them around or linking to groups and ideas. It’s very simple and very powerful. Especially for organization and forming ideas into groups .

I like the option to Trello as I use that for projects .

If you have a spare hour you might like to watch this.

This was my talk earlier this year at the above conference. The first in the Lebanon!

My blind client wanted to have read her local newspaper on her Echo Dot. After a direct talk with the newspaper and finding out that an audio service for the blind do a tape/usb stick of the paper which gives curated news I wondered if using an RSS feed would work as an alternative.

Simple answer is yes it would. Adding /feed.rss to the URL created a text feed of news. Now would this work on the Echo Dot? I created an account through https://servebot.net/settings/feedbot

You will need to link the account to your google account.

Next, I added the URL with feed addition. The Alexa skill is “Feed Bot – RSS Voice Reader ” which needs to be enabled and linked to your Amazon account. Once this is done you say ” Echo ( or whatever you use) ask Feed Bot to play my feed.” Then it should go through the news items listed on your website. You can also link Podcasts to it which is something Alexa is not particular good at but have not succeeded in that area yet.

You can add other feeds which are automatically updated as the website changes. This makes the process much more simpler to manage. Not as clear as a curated audio file but a good alternative and makes your site accessible for all. I would recommend that RSS feeds are put on your websites for specific content to be read out.

What is also quite cool is that if you stop and then restart it will go back to the last read news article . Articles are short and take a minute or so to read. No image codes or code read out.