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There are plenty of reasons why voice to text software is incredibly beneficial for a number of professionals including healthcare workers, lawyers and academics. The advantages of this software, however, extend to a surprising number of additional people and occupations

These are three people and professions who might find a use for voice recognition software like Dragon Naturally Speaking.

Writers – speak it, don't type it

At this point, it is a given than many people speak faster than they can type. When it comes to those who write for a living, that speed can provide a number of advantages. Dragon Naturally Speaking is quite useful for short dictation tasks such as e-mails, notes and articles, but it can be used for much longer works like an entire book. 

That is what leadership coach Jason Womack found when he used Dragon Naturally Speaking to write his popular book, Your Best Just Got Better. In an interview with Nuance, Mr. Womack stated that, in addition to the book, he has also used Dragon for more than half of the articles he's written for Training Magazine for over six years. 

"I can type at about 60 words per minute, but when I get going I can talk at 80 or even 100 words per minute," said Mr. Womack.

"To write a long email, or draft the beginning of a multi-paragraph blog post or article, I can get a lot more out onto the screen faster and more efficiently by speaking rather than typing."

Coders – rest your wrists

Any task involving words seems like a natural fit for Dragon Natural Speaking, but a little ingenuity can unlock the software's true potential. User customisation allows for a number of tweaks, including the ability to insert commands for programming.

At Python Convention 2013, coder Tavis Rudd presented his method of programming using Dragon Voice Recognition. After a rock climbing accident in 2010 prevented him from exercising regularly, Mr. Rudd was put out of commission by a repetitive strain injury in his wrist. 

Without the ability to type, but a backlog of projects that needed to be done, he began using Dragon Naturally Speaking to write code. He created a number of personal commands that allowed him to program even more effectively by voice than he was able to by hand.

Though his wrist has healed, Mr. Rudd still uses dictation for 40 to 60 per cent of his work.

Germaphobes – keep your fingertips clean 

Take a standard office keyboard, shake it upside down and see what comes out. Chances are, that desk is now covered in a pile of crumbs, dust and other detritus. That's quite filthy, but it's just the dirt that can be seen.

On a microscopic level, keyboards are dirtier than toilet bowls. According to the Cleaning Services Group in the UK, most toilets contain 49 microbes per square inch. A keyboard, on the other hand, holds 3,295 microbes per square inch. 

What kind of bacteria lives on office keyboards? Research reported in the American Journal of Infection Control and conducted by Glenn Anderson and Enzo A. Palombo at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne sampled a number of keyboards in three multi-user and one single-user computer labs on a university campus to test for contamination.

The researchers found Staphylococcus aureus on 47 per cent of the multi-user keyboards. Other keyboards in both the single- and multi-user labs also showed signs of E. coli and Enterococcus faecalis (a bacteria found in human faeces).

For people who want to efficiently get words on a page, write a new program or even just keep things clean, Dragon Naturally Speaking is an ideal speech-to-text solution. Contact Voice Recognition today to learn more.

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