This is our third year using voice recognition. We also use continuous speech software that requires about an hour of training and is also very accurate. A Digital High School grant will soon enable us to place voice recognition and speech to text capabilities in all 150 classrooms in the school. Students will be able to use these assistive devices without leaving their general education classroom. Used along with text to speech programs, students take tests from their general education classes by having each question read to them with the text to speech program and then answering the question with a voice recognition program.
Students can concentrate on the content of the class more, and they also can work independently.
Students who have used the programs for over a year are commenting that their reading is improving. This would certainly be a very positive side effect. Voice recognition is assisting a group of individuals in the area of their greatest weakness. People who have difficulties processing the phonemes of words and making the phoneme- grapheme connections can use a system to accomplish this very task. Individuals with phoneme processing deficits can use their energy on the conceptual issue of what they want to say and how they want to organize it.