DSpeech: Terrific Treasure for all kinds of Text and Speech Operations

DSpeech gives you free text to speech, text to mp3 and wav conversion, voice recording and speech to text - all from a flash drive!
I was exploring Access Apps, a free downloadable accessibility suite from RCS in Scotland, that runs from a flash drive. I was exploring for Mp3 conversion tools and one of the tools was DSpeech. I will be sharing more on Access Apps on another post, but wanted to specifically share the DSpeech today. You can opt to download it from the link at the top and just use it off a flash drive or your computer if you don't want the full downloaded suite in AccessApps. (More to come on the tools on the AccessApps suite.)
DSpeech can import text files in many formats and read them aloud. There is a box to check that shows tracking so that words are highlighted as they are read. Text can be converted to wav or mp3 files to download and listen on a portable player or they can be heard through the computer.
I used the speech to text tool and found that if I spoke slowly and clearly, I could get most of what I said to print okay. I could then save that as a text file. I found that under options, if I configured the ASR (automatic speech recognition) with the pull-down menu choice, SAPI Developer, I got better results with the computer interpreting my voice. There are recorder buttons on the program also to record messages and read text outloud to create Mp3/wav files as well. The website says you can do conversational things with the text and set up new voices by blending other voices - I haven't explored it that deep yet, but it has great potential. When you choose a voice, you get an avatar at the top that blinks and talks when the text to speech is activated. This will definitely be a draw for students!
I recorded some sound files, used the speech to text, copied an article from Word I had taken off the Internet and turned it into an mp3 file. Everything worked great.

Because DSpeech can run off a jump or flash drive, nothing has to be installed on a computer. A student can carry the jump drive with them and store files on it as well. The interface uses any voices you have on a computer. Mine had the Voiceware VW Paul and VW Kate. I liked them the best. I think I got them when I downloaded a free version of Natural Reader. The voices extended themselves over to the DSpeech which made a much more natural sounding voice so you might want to try downloading the free version of Natural Reader and see.

If you are looking for some great accessibility tools for voice, text and mp3, check out DSpeech. It's a great tool.

All the best to you!

Lon

Lon Thornburg is an assistive technology specialist and professional development trainer who lives in Oregon and serves 12 districts in 7 counties. He hosts the No Limits 2 Learning Blog and The No Limits 2 Learning Live Talk Show on Blog Talk Radio. He is sharing as a contributing writer on LD LIVE!



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Questions About Using Dragon Naturally Speaking in the Special Education Setting

One of our readers sent me a question regarding Dragon Naturally Speaking. I thought it would be helpful to throw it out to everyone for comments and suggestions and asked for permission to post it. I have presented the question below and my answer after. I have had a lot of difficulty getting it to work with students and our discussion below explains why. If anyone has something to share on this or a fix you have found, please share a comment...

Question:
"Thank you for sharing all of your valuable information on your blog. I always learn something new and helpful when I visit your blog! I am trying Dragon Naturally Speaking with a young lady who has some significant physical disabilities and is struggling with using the mouse to access the computer. She speaks very softly- we have been working with her to "turn up her volume" which she is getting much better at. The Dragon also is having a difficult time recognizing her words correctly. For example she will say "The cat is black" and it will recognize "At it's plant be" or "The top is blue" is recognized as "Time is blue" and when she says "period" it recognizes it as "daily". We are using the headphone that came with the Dragon but after doing some research I saw that perhaps changing the headphone may make a difference?
We also are using Dragon 9.5 and maybe should upgrade to Dragon 10? I also read that the Dragon has difficulty recognizing speech of folks who have an accent- she doesn't have an accent per se, but maybe her word pronunciation is affecting the outcome?
Again, this is my first time using Dragon with a student and could use any advice/suggestions that you could think of. I have visited several sites that discuss using the Dragon, but still am feeling like I'm missing something or wonder if there might be another program that would work more efficiently for her?"

My answer:

"Dragon is a great program, but the limitations you are facing are common to my own experiences with it. The students I have worked with generally have poor pronunciation and volume when reading aloud. Shyness and lack of confidence can also be a factor. Mix in the issues of disabilities and, as you can see, it can be tricky to get this "miracle software" to work.
Here are some ideas:
1. Get a better quality microphone (as you suggested)
2. Go in and highlight the incorrect words and change them so that the computer learns that when the student says a word and consistently gets a different one, it will make the change automatically. This is done by selecting a misspelled/mis-interpreted word and correcting the word you want it to be from a word list, or typing it in yourself. If this can overcome the errors in interpretation, then you might be able to get it to work OK.
3. Sometimes a sound shield around the student stops ambient room noise from disrupting the ability for the software to hear the reader.

Our version in my AT closet is an older version and so I have not experienced the new versions - you are working with a newer one than we have. I use it a lot to write papers, etc. and have trouble too sometimes - I don't know of anything better. I know that the Mac has built in speech to text - it might work better. Because of the very issues you have brought up, I tend to steer teachers away from using Dragon unless the student has a good speaking voice - logistically, it just breeds frustration unless someone is OK with spending lots of time."

What have your experiences been using dragon?

All the best to you,
Lon

Lon Thornburg is an assistive technology specialist and professional development trainer who lives in Oregon and serves 12 districts in 7 counties. He hosts the No Limits 2 Learning Blog and The No Limits 2 Learning Live Talk Show on Blog Talk Radio. He is sharing as a contributing writer on LD LIVE!



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