How Does Voice Recognition Help People With Disabilities?

Are you or your loved one living with a disability? If so, you might benefit from using a voice recognition solution. 

Over the years, many disabled individuals have been able to use digital assistive technology to make their day to day lives easier. Speech or voice recognition technology is no different. While the technology – which is featured in a variety of today’s highly popular personal voice assistants such as Google, Amazon Echo and Siri – has been seen to be quite useful to able-bodied individuals. It is nothing short of a game-changer when it comes to disabled individuals. 

 Read on below to find out more about voice recognition including:

  • What it is, and;
  • How it is used to help people with disabilities. 

    What Is Voice Recognition?

    In essence, voice recognition refers to technology that is used by computers and other devices to capture human speech/words and convert them into a machine-readable language that can be processed by the same computers/devices. 

    As the technology continues to improve, voice recognition will continue to find more uses among both able-bodied and disabled persons. 

    As it stands, this technology has been used to make it possible for users to use the internet without a keyboard or mouse, and also use touchscreen devices with ease. Simply put, people who cannot see or use their arms are able to use phones, computers, TVs and other devices/ enabled appliances, all thanks to speech recognition technology.  

     

    Voice Recognition Help People With Disabilities

    Uses Of Voice Recognition For People With Disability

    Now that you have a good idea of what voice recognition is, read on for a description of some of the ways it is actually being used to help people with disabilities. 

    • Making Calls: One of the main uses of voice recognition is in making voice-activated calls. If you have a personal voice assistant like a smart speaker or smartphone app, you can configure it to make voice-activated calls. Once you have set up everything correctly, you can make calls using voice commands that involve calling out the name or number of the contact you want to call.   
    • Sending Messages: Speech recognition also plays an important role in helping people with disability communicate through text messages and email. By converting your speech into text, you are able to send clear and concise text messages without any problem. The use of this technology also goes beyond simple communication tasks. If you want to create lists and even set reminders on smart devices, you can use properly configured speech recognition apps to make easy work of these otherwise impossible tasks for people with disabilities. 
    • Using Computers: Voice recognition is also used in helping people with disabilities use computers without the need to use a mouse or keyboard. Using a microphone or headset and the right speech recognition software, individuals with disabilities are able to surf the internet or dictate notes on computers and laptops. These solutions normally try to recognise what the user says by analysing sounds and how the English language is normally spoken to make sense of what the user is saying. As such, when properly configured and the user is speaking clearly, you can be sure that 95 per cent of what is being said will be captured by the software. These solutions are especially invaluable to people with dyslexia, as all words are always spelled correctly, in a quick and effortless manner. 

      Summary

      As it stands, voice recognition technology has made it possible for people with disabilities to use a variety of devices and even appliances; and with it, make their lives easier. And, while the current capabilities of this advanced technology are limited by the available solutions and applications, the future looks to be quite promising, as improvements continue to be made as time moves. 

      If you are looking for digital assistive and other independent daily living and mobility aids, call Get About Mobility today on 1300 168 902 or leave an enquiry and we will get back to you as soon as possible.