Vista's Speech Recognition

If you have Windows Vista, even the Home Basic version, you already have one of the more powerful
speech recognition systems available. Microsoft has invested many millions of dollars in research
regarding speech recognition over the years. Some of what they study in the R&D labs is years away
from being a product, but there's a lot of new fancy speech recognition technology built right into Vista.
To get started, all you need to do is click the start menu, type the word "speech," and click on "Windows
Speech Recognition." If you do it that way, you'll just be stumbling around in the dark. To get the most
out of speech recognition, you'll want to go to the control panel and run the wizards and tutorials.
We'll step you through some of the cooler features of speech recognition and give you some tips on how
to use it. Before you know it, you'll be talking to your email. All you need is any version of the Vista
operating system and a microphone. How good is it? Well, we only touched the keyboard a scant few
times while making this entire article.

Get Your Microphone Set Up

Your computer can't do what you say if it can't hear you, so the first step is to get your microphone set
up. In our experience, it certainly helps to use a higher-quality microphone. A poor mic can cause
problems with Vista understanding what you say.
After plugging in your mic (or headset), you'll want to make sure it's working well. Open the Control
Panel, click Hardware and Sound, and then under the Sound heading, click Manage Audio Devices. The
Recording tab should show your microphone, though this may vary from one sound device to the next.
Double-click the microphone to open its properties. Again, the dialog may be somewhat different from
one sound card or integrated audio device to the next, but the general principles are the same. A
Custom tab might list a +20dB boost option, and a Levels tab should show recording volume. For now,
leave these as default, but remember where they are: Tweaking these settings can really come in handy.

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Starting Out With Speech

Now that your mic is set up, let's get working with speech recognition. In the Control Panel, type
"speech" into the search box or click the Ease of Access category, then choose Speech Recognition
Options.
You'll see five options:
* Start Speech Recognition
* Set up microphone
* Take Speech Tutorial
* Train your computer to better understand you
* Open the Speech Reference Card
You'll eventually want to use most of these, and if you click Start Speech Recognition for the first time
on your computer, Vista will automatically walk you through the microphone setup and tutorial.

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The microphone setup is really straightforward. It's just a wizard that asks you which type of
microphone you have (headset, desktop boom, or "other") and then asks you to read a sentence so that
Vista can adjust input levels. If the wizard keeps reporting that it can't hear you clearly, you might want
to return to the microphone setup we described above and play around with the mic boost and input
level yourself.

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Can We Talk?
Okay so you have the microphone set up, and you're ready to start surfing the web with verbal
commands and dictating some email. Not so fast. Sure you can jump right into that, but you really want
to run the Speech Tutorial. This is a slick, full-screen, step-by-step guide to the most common commands
and conventions used by the built-in speech recognition. It'll show you everything you need to know to
use this feature effectively, and it only takes about 10 or 15 minutes. You can do the entire thing by
voiceno clicking required. If you run through the tutorial, you really don't need the rest of this article.

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Still, we know the hardcore do-it-yourselfers that read ExtremeTech aren't exactly the "guided tutorial"
types, so we'll go ahead and describe how speech recognition is used. Besides, most of you probably
don't have Vista yet and want to see what you're missing. By its very nature, it is hard to describe speech
recognition in a way that makes sense: It's much easier to just show someone. We'll do our best, but to
fully appreciate all this, you need to see and hear it for yourself.
With the little speech recognition panel fixed at the top of your screen, you make Windows wake up and
listen by saying "Start Listening." After that, your PC will try to interpret everything that comes into the
mic as either a command or dictation. If you find you have to take a break, or talk to someone else, just
say "Stop Listening." Simple.
Vista can interpret a host of commands to enable basic navigation around the desktop and simple
application use. Say "Start" and the start menu pops open. The blinking text cursor sits in the search box,
as it always does with the start menu is opened. So whatever you say will be entered as a search term.
Say "Vista" and you'll get all the start menu items, emails, songs, photos, and other search hits with
"Vista" in it. Then just say the name of the one you want to click on with your voice.
If you want to launch an application, you can skip the start menu entirely by saying "Start [app name]."
Vista is smart enough to know that not everyone uses the same nomenclatureyou'll see this
throughout speech recognition, but there are times when you have to be careful what you say. You can
say "Start calculator," "launch calculator," or "open calculator" interchangeably. If you're dictating, there
is a distinct difference between "clear" and "delete," though. This works for non-Microsoft programs as
well; "launch Firefox" works just as well as "launch Internet Explorer."

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Scrolling up and down windows is as easy as saying "scroll up" or "scroll down." You can get more
elaborate, like "scroll down three" to move further down, or "move to the end of the document" to go
all the way to the bottom of the email, web page, word doc, or whatever you have open.
Vista recognizes common menu commands for the application you're using, and will reference the
tooltip text on interface buttons. You can simply say "File print" to open the File drop-down menu and
select Print. Dialog boxes that have options like "Save/Don't Save/Cancel" can easily be dealt with by
simply saying the text on the button you want to press. This can take some getting used to. In Firefox,
for instance, the button to refresh the page is labeled "Reload current page." If you say that, it'll be just
as if you hit that button. If you say "refresh," the speech recognition will get confused.
Want to click on something? Say "click [item]". This works for commands like "double click" and "right
click" as well. At the desktop, for instance, you simply say "right click recycle bin" to get a context
sensitive menu, and then "empty recycle bin" to perform that action.
If you're having trouble clicking on something, just say "show numbers." This will show a translucent box
with a number over every clickable object in the current applicationevery button, link, and
hyperlinked image. Say the number you want to click on, and Vista highlights it green to confirm that
this is indeed where you want to click. Say "OK" and it clicks there.

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Last but not least, you can directly simulate keystrokes by saying "press [key]." If the speech recognition
just can't understand your command to refresh, say "press F5." Some keys can be virtually pressed
without saying the word "press," like Enter, Home, End, PageUp, and PageDown. Vista recognizes
fancier commands like "press right arrow three times" and "press control and U."
Taking Dictation
Speech recognition is a fantastic feature for those with disabilities that make it hard to use a keyboard
or mouse, but for those who aren't challenged in that way, it can still prove useful as a dictation tool. In
virtually any application or dialog box you could type text into, Vista's speech recognition can take
dictation from you.
You don't have to do anything special to enable dictation: If the cursor is in a text-entry box, just talk and
it types. It works in most web forms, email programs, word processors, you name it. Dictating to your
computer is a bit of an art, and an acquired taste. At first, the speech recognition is rarely as accurate as
we would all like it to be. It gets better over time, but you can improve accuracy right from the start by
running the training option in the speech control panel. You'll read a set of sentences, and Vista will
listen to your voice and adapt its algorithms to improve its understanding of what you sayat least,
that's the idea. It takes about 5 or 10 minutes and is well worth the effort.

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When dictating, you'll want to annunciate and speak clearly, but not really slowly, and certainly not too
quickly. The best advice comes from the built-in tutorialspeak like a newscaster. It helps to speak in
complete sentences or at least entire phrases. Many words and pairs of words can sound like others,
especially to a computer. By speaking in complete phrases, you give your PC a chance to interpret the
context of what you say. It really improves accuracy greatly.
Your most useful command will certainly be "delete that." Whatever you say, whether it's a single word
or a whole phrase, saying "delete that" will nuke the last thing Vista typed for you. It's a simple do-over
command that you'll use frequently.
Punctuation is a tricky spot when dictating to your computer. For instance, if I wanted to capitalize the
word "computer" in the previous sentence, I would say "select computer" and then simply "capitalize."
Ending sentences is as easy as saying "period" and adding commas is as simple as saying "comma."
Select a word or phrase and say "italicize," and you're golden. Vista's speech recognition is smart enough
to understand phrases like "select the previous two sentences" or "delete the next paragraph," and this
makes editing easy. It's often best to go ahead and ignore mistakes until you're done dictating a
paragraph or two, and then go back and fix them.
Other punctuation is a little harder, though. Say "select harder" and it will highlight the word "harder". If
you want to put it in quotes, the natural thing to do now is to say "put that in quotes" or "quotes" or
"quotation." Doing any of these will simply replace the word "harder" with those words, though. You
have to get the cursor in front of the word "harder" by saying "move to harder" and then say "open
quote," then move it to the end of harder with "move after harder" and then "close quote." Phrases like
"begin quote" and "end quote" are not recognized as suchyou'll end up dictating those words.
When Vista can't understand you or is unsure about what you're trying to say, it may pop up a
corrections box with a list of guesses. Just say the number that corresponds to the correct word or
phrase and say "OK." If you don't see the correct thing listed, just try saying it over; the list will
automatically update. As a last resort, you can say "spell it" to go letter-by-letter. Every time you do this,
Vista learns more about what you say and when you say it, so accuracy improves. This is one reason why
it's more important to use the "correct [word/phrase]" phrase than to "select [word/phrase]" and then
replace it. Using "correct [word/phrase]" lets Vista know it made a mistake, using the "select
[word/phrase]" feature just means you changed your mind.

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Despite the kinks, the dictation in Vista is actually quite good. It takes about an hour to get yourself
trained in the right way to navigate around a document and for the computer to learn the way you
speak. If you're willing to invest that kind of time, you can dictate emails, forum posts, and blog
comments much more quickly than you can type them.
Browsing the Web and More
If you're going to use speech recognition to browse the web, it's probably best to use Internet Explorer.
Other browsers like Firefox work, but most of the plain-language commands like "go to address," to
move to the address bar, are understood in IE, but not in Firefox. What's more, we were unable to
dictate in a couple of forum text-entry boxes in Firefox, while that feature worked in IE.
When browsing the web, you'll need a lot of the general window browsing commands used throughout
windows. "Scroll down" and "scroll up" are common. To click on a link, just say "click [text of link]." On
the ExtremeTech home page, for example, simply saying "Click five free online photo editors" will click
on that headline, then once in the article, say "click discuss this now" to go to the discussion thread. The
web can be tricky, though. If you say "click opinion" on the ExtremeTech home page, it won't click on
that opinion button on the top navigation menu, because that's actually a graphic. You'll need to use the
"show numbers" function to click that, and many other parts of most web pages.
Other handy commands are "back," "refresh," "right click [link]," and "google [words]" (if google is your
search box provider).

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To be frank, browsing the web using nothing but voice commands is quite frustrating at first. We found
ourselves repeating the same phrases over and over, and awkwardly fumbling around with "spell it"
corrections to web addresses. It gets better as the speech recognition becomes more accurate and as
we learned to surf a bit differently, but it's still less than ideal. We'll stick to the mouse for web surfing,
for now.
When All Else Fails
Sometimes, no matter what you try saying, you get stuck. You just can't get Vista to recognize your
command, or to click on the thing you want it to. When this happens, you're not totally out of luck. The
go-to command for help is "what can I say?" This will pop up a help menu about speech recognition, and
you can drill down further in it with simple voice commands.

If you can't click on the thing you want, you can click anywhere on the screen with the mousegrid
feature. Just say "mousegrid" and a 3x3 grid of numbered rectangles divide the screen. Say a number
like "six" to zoom in, creating a new 3x3 grid in just that rectangle. Keep saying numbers until you get
down to a small enough rectangle to click on the thing you want, then say "click [number]." With this,
you can effectively click, double-click, or right-click on anything on the whole screen. It's a little slow, so
it's sort of a last resort.

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A Good Start
The speech recognition in Vista isn't perfectfar from itbut it really is impressive just how well it
works. It's clear that Microsoft has invested heavily in researching this area, and it's also clear that there
is still a long way to go. For all its foibles, the Vista's speech recognition is good enough that anyone
could find value in dictating a few emails now and then.
We wrote most of this article using voice, and while plenty of mistakes were made (and slowly
corrected), it definitely went a lot smoother near the end. There were plenty of misunderstandings
("are" instead of "our") and wrong words, but the dictation started getting more accurate as both Vista
learned my voice and I learned how to work with the peculiarities of speech recognition. You may notice
the style of this article is a bit awkwardthis is one of the dangers of dictating to your computer. The
way that one is expected to write professionally is quite different from the way a person talks. It takes
some practice to be mindful of "talking as you would write," because it doesn't sound natural in your
head.
Source: http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2109974,00.asp

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