https://deborah.dreamwidth.org/ Ramblings on Librarianship, Technology, and Academia - Dreamwidth Studios Mon, 03 Jun 2019 22:14:17 GMT LiveJournal / Dreamwidth Studios deborah personal https://v2.dreamwidth.org/15770/37793 https://deborah.dreamwidth.org/ 100 100 https://deborah.dreamwidth.org/85773.html Mon, 03 Jun 2019 22:14:17 GMT https://deborah.dreamwidth.org/85773.html At WWDC (the annual Apple developers' conference), Apple announced something which <i>might</i> be full command-and-control speech recognition for the Mac at last, for the first time.<a href="#note1" aria-label="Footnote 1" role="doc-noteref">[1]</a><a name="ref1"></a> None of the regular tech journalists are asking the questions I desperately want to know, however. <br /><br />Most of my questions boil down to this:<br /><br /><blockquote>How much did the Apple developers and designers of this product work with users of Dragon NaturallySpeaking for Windows (DNS), DragonDictate for Mac (DD), and Windows Speech Recognition (WSR)? <br /><br />How much did they learn about what the speech recognition community already expects as a minimal baseline, as well as what speech recognition users have been lacking in our current tools?</blockquote><br /><br />Because how Apple answers that first question will inform the answers to all these details:<br /><br /><ol><br /> <li>Will this allow complete hands-free command and control? In other words, will users be able to control their computer without a mouse, a keyboard, a virtual keyboard, a switch, or mouse emulation?</li><br /> <li>Will it give access to the menus, graphical icons, or any other aspects of the standard OS X desktop chrome, as long as the code is written using Apple standards?</li><br /> <li>How will it work with tools that are not natively enabled to use it? For example, if I install an application that runs in a virtual machine (eg. Eclipse or Slack), what aspects of this speech recognition will be available and what won't?</li><br /> <li>Will it require the cloud or network access to work?</li><br /> <li>Will it have a trainable voice model?</li><br /> <li>Will it have a configurable vocabulary?</li><br /> <li>Will it be programmable, either with simple macros or with complex third-party tools?</li><br /> <li>In what languages will it be available?</li><br /> <li>Will the mobile version require a physical trigger to access, as with the built in microphone-icon-to-dictate currently available on iOS? Can it be left on all the time?</li><br /> <li>How will the privacy be guaranteed for any always-listening aspects?</li><br /> <li>Does it integrate with Apple VoiceOver?</li></ol><br /><br /><span class="cut-wrapper"><span style="display: none;" id="span-cuttag___1" class="cuttag"></span><b class="cut-open">(&nbsp;</b><b class="cut-text"><a href="https://deborah.dreamwidth.org/85773.html#cutid1">For context, the answers to these questions for DNS and WSR</a></b><b class="cut-close">&nbsp;)</b></span><div style="display: none;" id="div-cuttag___1" aria-live="assertive"></div><br /><br />What other questions do people have?<br /><br /><span class="cut-wrapper"><span style="display: none;" id="span-cuttag___2" class="cuttag"></span><b class="cut-open">(&nbsp;</b><b class="cut-text"><a href="https://deborah.dreamwidth.org/85773.html#cutid2">Endnotes</a></b><b class="cut-close">&nbsp;)</b></span><div style="display: none;" id="div-cuttag___2" aria-live="assertive"></div><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=deborah&ditemid=85773" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> comments https://deborah.dreamwidth.org/85773.html windows macos user interfaces privacy mobile devices accessibility public 2