Listen Up! Speech Recognition Comes of Age

System builders on the lookout for new products and services to add to their catalog should consider a technology which has come-of-age: speech recognition, or SR for short. Long a mainstay in sci-fi films like Star Wars and 2001: A Space Odyssey, SR technology is finally ready for the real-world, thanks in large part to the Dragon software suite from Nuance Communications, the primary focus of this Recipe.

SR offers an alternative to keyboarding and the mouse as the means for interacting with a PC. Basically, SR works by letting systems equipped with a source of sound input (such as a microphone) interpret human speech for transcription.

But there is one caveat for system builders. While installing SR software is simple enough, most SR users need a good deal of help transitioning from the keyboard to the microphone. And that's where the business opportunity comes into the picture for you.

SR Markets for System Builders

With SR software installed, a user with the proper training and some experience can input text at about 130 words per minutes (wpm) with 90% accuracy. On a keyboard, that same user might struggle to reach 30 wpm with comparable accuracy. Also, making corrections with SR is as simple as highlighting the incorrect word and then restating it.

Yet even with this speed advantage, there's been no stampede to adopt SR. There are at least two good reasons. First, most people are conditioned to "think with their fingers," and have become accustomed to traditional keyboarding; for them, dictation is an alien activity. What's more, according to Howard Parks, founder of Highland Park, IL-based Microref Systems, an SR consulting firm, most people cannot mentally compose text faster than 50 wpm anyway, a far cry from that promised 130 wpm.

Still, markets do exist for SR. Doctors and lawyers' offices are a good place to start, since both have traditionally used dictation—typically with a transcription service or secretary—as a way to save time. Only about 2% of all doctors and lawyers use SR now, estimates Microref's Parks, making them a potentially fertile market for system builders.

Another viable market for SR is victims of motion impairment, such as carpal tunnel syndrome, which makes keyboarding painful. Speech recognition could restore productivity for them almost immediately, and such users would be highly motivated to master the system. And motivation is important. Without proper support and coaching, about three-fourths of SR users eventually go back to their ingrained keyboarding habits, Parks estimates. But with coaching, most users press on and make speech their default input medium.

I recommend that any system builder who plans to pitch SR to customers should get comfortable with SR themselves first. Plan on using it yourself on a regular basis for several weeks. By thoroughly learning the software yourself, you'll be able to offer combined installation, configuration and coaching services to those who can benefit from SR.