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Speech recognition is an exciting technology that could revolutionize the way people work and live. At the moment, voice recognition is not often used as it is seen as unreliable, but this does not have to be the case.
Voice recognition systems are improved by a process known as 'training', where the user reads a set of words or a passage of text which the computer displays to them and then the computer is able to 'remember' the way the user speaks. In this way, the computer is better prepared to process speech from this person in the future. Strong accents can be particularly problematic to an untrained machine.

Popular speech recognition software includes Dragon NaturallySpeaking, which is claimed to be approaching 99% accuracy, though there are a few other major competitors. These include IBM Viavoice, Phillips SpeechMagic and Microsoft's Speech API which can be used directly from within applications like Microsoft Word or used by programmers to make their software speech-recognizing. Only two main speech recognition programs are available to Mac users - an older version of IBM's ViaVoice or iListen, although ViaVoice is often stated as being the better option.
In a business environment, speech recognition can have many purposes - calling the person whose name you speak, helping engineers to do their job by having a computer read instructions or specifications that they request by voice while their hands are busy and so on. However, voice recognition software is often extremely expensive and is not always suitable.
For example, if you work in a busy environment you may need a noise cancelling microphone to ensure your voice is correctly processed by the computer. A good microphone is another expense and equipping a lot of people with voice recognition technology can therefore be costly.
However, the benefits of speech recognition can be large, increasing productivity or offering interesting prospects in interfacing with your computer.

Learn more about this author, Harry Wagstaff.
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