Dragon assistive technology

This video is a brief introduction to Dragon voice recognition software. Dragon converts spoken words into electronic text

By the end of this video you'll be familiar with the Dragon toolbar, you will have learned about different microphones. You will know what a voice profile is and how to create one, you'll also learn some basic tips for dictating with Dragon and you will know how to add words to dragon's vocabulary and how to make corrections. There will be other things you'll learn along the way as well.

When you start dragon for the first time you'll be asked to create a voice profile. Follow the steps and make sure you select the right region and accent for you.With older versions of Dragon the options for accents are limited by the region that you select. For example, under the region of Australia, there is just one default accent available. However, if you select the region of United States, there are a number of accents available. Explore these options and make sure you select the accent that is appropriate for you. Make sure that you select the right audio device that you're dictating with.

Position the microphone as instructed. And read this text out loud at a pace and at a volume that you're comfortable with.

This will allow the software to adjust to the volume of your voice. Once you've started dragon its toolbar will appear at the top of the screen. When you place your cursor over the toolbar it expands, when you move it away it contracts. You can change the look of the toolbar by going to the toolbar menu and exploring one of the other options. For today's video we'll be using the new Dragon toolbar.

There are a range of different microphones that you can use with Dragon. The one in this picture is a headset that connects via USB.Bluetooth microphones are also available. If you have difficulty using a headset due to movement restrictions you might like to consider a microphone that you can place on your desktop and move close to your mouth.

To find a microphone that's right for your needs do a web search for "voice recognition compatible microphones". Now you've set up your microphone and your voice profile it's time to start dictating. Let's dictate into a Microsoft Word document. When you do dictate it's important to dictate at a pace and at a volume that's natural to you. Let's start. I'm going to go to this microphone icon in the toolbar and click on it. You will notice that it goes green. That means it's ready for dictation. This is an example of how you can dictate using dragon software. You can see that I'm talking at a pace and at a volume that is natural. When dictating with dragon, it's best to dictate a number of words at a time instead of dictating one word at a time  -- Dragon seems to work much better this way. I've just clicked on the microphone icon again, and it's gone red. That means the microphone is off. You don't have to click on the microphone to turn it on and off if you don't want to; you can use voice commands. If I say "go to sleep", it will deactivate the microphone if I say "wake up" it will activate the microphone. Let's give that a go: "go to sleep". You can see that the microphone has turned a different color. "Wake up". "Go to sleep"

Let's continue with a bit more dictation. Wake up, new paragraph. I prefer using voice recognition software rather than typing by a keyboard, full stop. Go to sleep.

Now you might be wondering why dragon didn't type the words "go to sleep" when I said them. Well, that's because I paused slightly before saying "go to sleep". When you pause before saying "go to sleep". Dragon knows that those words are words that are commands rather than words to be dictated. You will have noticed that I used punctuation when dictating. I used "full stop" and I also used "em-bash" -- and I also used "new paragraph" for when I wanted a new paragraph.

Dragons help menu contains more information about punctuation and other things to do with dragon. Go to the toolbar select and "help", "help" topics. Let's type in "punctuation". Let's select "punctuation marks and other characters you can dictate" And you can see that there's a list of symbols along with their corresponding commands. The help menu is very important to get to know with Dragon. You'll learn more about dictation and your accuracy will improve.

Adding new words and making corrections is very important when using dragon, it will increase its accuracy. I'm going to give an example.I'm a student at RMIT University full stop.

Instead of writing "RMIT" the software has written "RM I to"

Now it's very unlikely that the word or that acronym "RMIT" is in Dragons vocabulary. So what we're going to do is we're going to add it directly. We're going to do that by going up to the toolbar and select "vocabulary". We'll select "add new word". We'll type in "RMIT". We will leave this tick box selected. "I want to train the pronunciation of this word". We'll click "add" and I'm going to say "RMIT" three times to give it three samples of my voice. RMIT RMIT RMIT

Okay, let's see how we go now when I dictate the same sentence.

I'm a student at RMIT University full stop. Okay, so the software wrote "RMIT" correctly because we added it to its vocabulary and we trained it to my voice.

You can also add words to Dragon's vocabulary via the correction process. I'm going to give an example. Last night I went to Etihad Stadium to watch the football full stop.

So you can see that the software has written "Eddie had" instead of "Etihad" Let's correct that via dragon's correction process.

Correct "Eddie had"

What the software has now done is that it's listed words that, it so to speak, thinks are correct words.None of them are. We're going to select "spell that". What I'll do now is I'll type in the correct spelling of the word.

By following the corrections process you're giving dragon the spellings of words that might not be in its vocabulary. In addition what you're doing is you're giving dragon information about your voice -- so if you pronounce a word a particular way

you're providing dragon information that will assist it in getting the word correct next time you dictate it. The corrections process is a very important step to follow.

Your voice profile is really important when thinking about dragon. It contains all the new words that you've added to the Dragon vocabulary and it contains information about your voice that you've added whenever you've made a correction. For that reason it's really important to have a backup of your voice profile on a drive that is external to your computer. You can do that by going to the toolbar clicking on "profile"

Go to "manage user profile" select your profile go to "advanced". Select "export" and browse for a location external to your computer -- that way you will have a backup in case anything goes wrong.

So that's a basic introduction to Dragon voice recognition software. Now don't forget about the help menu because you learn a whole lot more about the product. If you're a Mac user there's a version of the product for Macs and also, if you're a student who's studying a medical related field or a legal related field there is a version of the product that has a vocabulary for those areas. So look out for that. All the best with voice dictation!