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In October 2018, Nuance announced that it has discontinued Dragon Professional Individual for Mac and will support it for only 90 days from activation in the US or 180 days in the rest of the world. The continuous speech-to-text software was widely considered to be the gold standard for speech recognition, and Nuance continues to develop and sell the Windows versions of Dragon Home, Dragon Professional Individual, and various profession-specific solutions.
This move is a blow to professional users—such as doctors, lawyers, and law enforcement—who depended on Dragon for dictating to their Macs, but the community most significantly affected are those who can control their Macs only with their voices.
What about Apple’s built-in accessibility solutions? macOS does support voice dictation, although my experience is that it’s not even as good as dictation in iOS, much less Dragon Professional Individual. Some level of voice control of the Mac is also available via Dictation Commands, but again, it’s not as powerful as what was available from Dragon Professional Individual.
TidBITS reader Todd Scheresky is a software engineer who relies on Dragon Professional Individual for his work because he’s a quadriplegic and has no use of his arms. He has suggested several ways that Apple needs to improve macOS speech recognition to make it a viable alternative to Dragon Professional Individual:
- Support for user-added custom words: Every profession has its own terminology and jargon, which is part of why there are legal, medical, and law enforcement versions of Dragon for Windows. Scheresky isn’t asking Apple to provide such custom vocabularies, but he needs to be able to add custom words to the vocabulary to carry out his work.
- Support for speaker-dependent continuous speech recognition: Currently, macOS’s speech recognition is speaker-independent, which means that it works pretty well for everyone. But Scheresky believes it needs to become speaker-dependent, so it can learn from your corrections to improve recognition accuracy. Also, Apple’s speech recognition isn’t continuous—it works for only a few minutes before stopping and needing to be reinvoked.
- Support for cursor positioning and mouse button events: Although Scheresky acknowledges that macOS’s Dictation Commands are pretty good and provide decent support for text cursor positioning, macOS has nothing like Nuance’s MouseGrid, which divides the screen into a 3-by-3 grid and enables the user to zoom in to a grid coordinate, then displaying another 3-by-3 grid to continue zooming. Nor does Apple have anything like Nuance’s mouse commands for moving and clicking the mouse pointer.
When Scheresky complained to Apple’s accessibility team about macOS’s limitations, they suggested the Switch Control feature, which enables users to move the pointer (along with other actions) by clicking a switch. He talks about this in a video.
Unfortunately, although Switch Control would let Scheresky control a Mac using a sip-and-puff switch or a head switch, such solutions would be both far slower than voice and a literal pain in the neck. There are some better alternatives for mouse pointer positioning:
- Dedicated software, in the form of a $35 app called iTracker.
- An off-the-shelf hack using Keyboard Maestro and Automator.
- An expensive head-mounted pointing device, although the SmartNav is $600 and the HeadMouse Nano and TrackerPro are both about $1000. It’s also not clear how well they interface with current versions of macOS.
Regardless, if Apple enhanced macOS’s voice recognition in the ways Scheresky suggests, it would become significantly more useful and would give users with physical limitations significantly more control over their Macs… and their lives. If you’d like to help, Scheresky suggests submitting feature request feedback to Apple with text along the following lines (feel free to copy and paste it):
Because Nuance has discontinued Dragon Professional Individual for Mac, it is becoming difficult for disabled users to use the Mac. Please enhance macOS speech recognition to support user-added custom words, speaker-dependent continuous speech recognition that learns from user corrections to improve accuracy, and cursor positioning and mouse button events.
Thank you for your consideration!
Thanks for encouraging Apple to bring macOS’s accessibility features up to the level necessary to provide an alternative to Dragon Professional Individual for Mac. Such improvements will help both those who face physical challenges to using the Mac and those for whom dictation is a professional necessity.
Whether you prefer to dictate documents or you require voice recognition software due to a disability, there are several choices on your computer that are available, each with varying levels of accuracy and ease of use.
Likely the most recognizable and preferred voice recognition and dictation program is Dragon NaturallySpeaking, which comes in a variety of versions with different features for various applications. The basic version, with the bare minimum features, costs $49.99. The professional and enterprise versions go up to $500.
There are free alternatives to Dragon, provided by Microsoft and Google. Recently released is Microsoft Garage's Dictate add-on to Microsoft Office. Dictate uses the artificial intelligence application Cortana’s speech recognition network. Windows' Speech Recognition application can be used for dictation on most programs, and Google Docs has a voice typing feature as well. We tested each of these programs to see if they offer a viable alternative to the well-known Dragon.
How We Tested
Accuracy is critical with speech recognition software. In testing each of the four programs, we dictated a test paragraph, which was exactly 300 words. (Each of the applications was installed on the same test computer, and we used the same microphone with each program). We dictated the same test paragraph multiple times. In evaluating the results, we looked for misspellings, missed words, use of correct words and punctuation errors.
Ease of use is just as important as accuracy, since these programs are meant to be used hands-free. Knowing how to work each program and how to navigate the features with your voice and minimal use of the mouse and keyboard is vital. In evaluating ease of use, we assessed how navigable the program or tool was using only our voice and how well the apps understood our commands, such as starting and stopping dictation and correcting mistakes. We evaluated the tutorials each program offered and the learning curve of each tool.
1. Dragon NaturallySpeaking Professional 15
Credit: Nuance
Dragon is not the only paid voice recognition/dictation software on the market, but it is among the most popular. There are some 22 million registered users.
The latest version of Nuance's long-running software lives up to its reputation as a superior voice recognition program. Dragon features an intuitive interface aided by an interactive tutorial, which can be replayed at any time. It uses a toolbar on the top of your screen you use with your mouse or by issuing simple voice commands, such as starting and stopping the dictation. The program easily distinguished commands from dictation. When dictating, Dragon clearly understood the difference between words and punctuation.
Dragon was the most accurate of the speech recognition programs we tested, missing just an average of two words during our tests. There was some missing punctuation, like a few commas, but for the most part, it transcribed our punctuation commands correctly.
Its low error rate is likely helped by an extensive accuracy tuner that runs when you start the program for the first time. The tuner allows the program to become acquainted with your voice. You can run this tuner whenever you want to improve the program's performance.
The major advantage Dragon has over the other programs we evaluated is the abundance of features aside from dictation, including controlling your computer, managing a custom vocabulary and transcribing audio files.
There are two drawbacks to Dragon. The first is the high price point; the second is that different languages require that you purchase various versions.
Free Speech To Text
2. Windows Speech Recognition
Credit: MicrosoftWindows' built-in speech recognition tool offered fairly accurate transcription and helpful access features that, with some additional instruction, are easy to learn.
Speech Recognition's primary function is for navigating Windows using voice commands, but you can also use it to dictate speech to text for just about any application that has text input. We experienced intermittent trouble activating the program, which is initiated by saying, 'Start listening.' To stop dictation, you say, 'Stop listening.'
Much like Dragon, Speech Recognition has a tutorial that acts a voice calibrator. You dictate the program's instructions, and the program fine-tunes itself to your voice, which we found clever. If you're a frequent user of this feature, you can set it so the application launches when you turn on your computer.
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There are two dictation modes: the first one types text directly into text fields; the second mode consists of a dictation scratchpad that allows you to edit and approve dictated text before it's inserted into the text field. We found the dictation's accuracy lacking at first, but over subsequent tests, it improved. Out of our 300-word paragraph, Speech Recognition missed an average of 4.6 words and punctuation was mostly accurate, with a few missed commas and periods.
Does Dragon Do Text To Speech
Windows' application is a good alternative if you're looking for a basic, free transcription app, but it was not as accurate as Dragon. Our main complaints with the program involved difficulties launching the program using the proper voice command and some commands being mistaken as part of the transcription, or in some cases, not capturing the text at all.
3. Google Docs
Credit: GoogleIf you frequently use Google's suite of free office applications, you may already know that there is a voice typing feature that can be activated from the toolbar or by hitting Ctrl+Shft+S. This is a bare- bones dictation tool that doesn't require any setup or calibration, and that could account for its less-than-stellar accuracy.
On one hand, the austerity of the app makes it one of the simplest to use, but any further instruction needs to be found in a help menu that is sparse on proper guides. It has a reference list of commands to help you type and issue commands, but no other instructions are provided.
Accuracy was subpar, compared to other programs, with an average of 6.3 missed words in our testing (out of a total of 300 words). Punctuation was mostly accurate, but some punctuation isn't recognized by the program. For instance, in one sentence, rather than inserting a semicolon, it transcribed the word 'semicolon.' It featured other quirks that made our copy look sloppy, such as capitalizing certain words for no apparent reason and inserting unnecessary spaces. There's no way to calibrate or tune the program to your voice to improve accuracy.
We did like that Google Docs' dictation feature can be set to accommodate more than 50 languages and dozens of regional dialects for Arabic, English, Spanish and a few others. Overall, we found the simplicity to be a double-edged blade with the quick activation convenient, but no other options available to customize the experience. The ease of use could be improved with the addition of guided instruction.
4. Microsoft Dictate
Credit: MicrosoftRecently released under Microsoft's experimental software label Microsoft Garage, Dictate is a free add-on to Microsoft Office. It is currently only compatible with Word, Outlook and PowerPoint. Dictate uses Cortana's speech recognition software to transcribe. Since it needs to tap into this network, your computer needs to be connected to the internet for it to work.
We found the accuracy of Dictate to be the worst of the four apps we tested. Although installation was simple, there was no voice calibration nor a tutorial on how to use the program.
Out of 300 words, it missed an average of 14.6 words. The software misunderstood several words. Plus it was the only program we tested that typed out nonsensical words and sentences. There is a manual punctuation feature that you can toggle, but even with this off, punctuation was often missed or even spelled out in the copy such as 'period'” and 'comma.' Overall, we found Dictate's transcription ability unsatisfactory and would not recommend it in its current state.
Understandably, since this is an experimental, early-release feature, it's likely the program may be updated and its accuracy will improve. The add-on has a translation feature that allows you to type out your dictation in another language, but we did not test the accuracy of this feature.
Summary
While some of the free dictation tools we reviewed could be reasonably used as an alternative to Dragon NaturallySpeaking, they fail to surpass Dragon's accuracy and ease of use. Dragon has the variety of features, accuracy and ease of use we expected from dictation software. There were few mistakes, and when they occurred, it was a simple matter of correcting them just using our voice.
For simple dictation of notes and other unimportant copy, consider Speech Recognition, Google's dictation tool or Microsoft's Dictate. When accuracy is imperative and you must rely on speech recognition software to cleanly and efficiently create a word processing document for professional purposes, such as business or legal, we recommend Dragon NaturallySpeaking.