IBM VoiceType software

The release of Version 3.0 of VoiceType Dictation for both the Windows 95 and OS/2 Warp V4.0 platforms brings speech recognition software to a new level of accuracy. Laboratory tests conducted by IBM apparently suggest that 83% of the population can achieve a recognition accuracy of 90% straight out of the box. Optional enrolment (dictating a minimum of 50 designated sentences) raises the initial accuracy even further. There are further enhancements to these programs, such as the ability to save the text of a dictated document together with the associated sound file for later correction, spelling names with the phonetic alphabet and dictating directly into Microsoft Word 7.0 (Windows 95 version only), but the almost uncanny accuracy is the most significant improvement. The voice model is now only updated when words are corrected, and transferring uncorrected text to a word processor has no effect on the speaker´s voice model. Dictation is thus a much more relaxed process, and the ability to concentrate on the content of what is being dictated rather than the mechanism of getting the text into the computer is the real advantage of this software