Comparing dictation on Apple devices vs Jay-say and Jaws on the PC

By Pat Pound, 29 September, 2012

Forum
iOS and iPadOS
A friend of mine has had trouble with her hands and does extensive word processing. She has always used Jaws but is going to buy a new computer, she wants to dictate her word processing, but needs advice from people who have used both Jaws with Jay-say vs Apple device dictation. Any thoughts? Anyone used dictation with the pages app?

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By JT on Friday, October 5, 2012 - 14:36

I really think this is one of those Apples versus Oranges questions. As far as I remember, J-Say is a product that allows Dragon and jAWS to work better together. Furthermore, I think J-Say works with Dragon Professional. If your friend has real physical problems, then the JAWS, J-Say, Dragon route will be worlds apart from the built-in dictation offered by Mountain Lion. The J-Say Etc. product is a serious accessibility solution for people with physical impairments. the Apple dictation is a nifty feature of the latest OS.

Here at American Lake Blind Rehabilitation Center Veterans have good luck with Apple's Dictation when using VoiceOver. VoiceOver will interrupt when the user double-taps the Function key to start dictation and will read back dictated text as it is entered. That said, Dictation in Mountain Lion Relies on Apple's servers. If you are not connected to the Internet you cannot use it. Dictation does not include command-and-control. Of course, JAWS and Jay Say do. Another viable option is to use Serotek's System Access with Windows Speech Recognition on a Windows computer. System Access will read back dictated text as it is entered. You can also use command-and-control that's built into Windows speech recognition. This is, perhaps, the cheapest and most comprehensive solution for those who need to use a screen reader with dictation. This is the solution we use most often for blinded Veterans who need dictation and verbal command and control. Dictated on my iPad. I hope this helps. Tim Sniffen