Sad but true!

Has anyone ever tried using speech recognition on a computer? I tried Dragon Naturally Speaking, after discovering that all it's major rival (IBM ViaVoice) was set up only to recognise people with American accents, and therefore about as much use as a lead balloon to the rest of the English speaking world. A friend of mine e-mailed me using IBM Via Voice, just to show me how hilarious the results were. He is from Barrow-in-Furness, in the NW of England, for reference (although as a matter of fact he lives in Scotland, in Aberdeen).

Even with Naturally Speaking, I found that the results needed a lot of correction when I used it to 'type'. Using the spellcheck in whatever I was 'typing' into was very necessary, as when set for a 'British' accent it automatically outputted UK spelling, with no way to set the accent and spelling independently, but I live in the US. I think Dragon are from Wales, and yet they seemed to think one setting would do all UK accents. I hate to think how it would handle a Glasgow accent. I am from SE England, and I suspect probably fairly close to a 'standard' British accent, whatever that may be, as in reality there really isn't one.

I was using version 5 of Dragon NS, and hopefully they should have improved since then. Maybe even IBM will have improved ViaVoice as well. I still can't imagine using it to control a lift (Am. Elevator), though. Using IBM ViaVoice, non-Americans would be trapped in the lift until the fire brigade arrived, even (or perhaps especially) those who were native speakers of English, assuming you didn't rely on voice recognition to call out the firemen as well!