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Automatic Speech Recognition, or
ASR, refers to the translation of speech to text solely by a software
program. A microphone worn by an instructor, sends his/her speech to
a computer program that prints out in text what was said. This is
the Star Trek dream of the all-understanding computer -- you talk, it
understands. The task of understanding speech is a very difficult
one, however, and computer software analysis of today is not yet
perfect.
There is much research and development being done in the area of ASR. See the list of resources below:
Stuckless, Ross: "Recognition Means More Than Just Getting the
Words Right" in Speech Technology, Oct/Nov 1999, p. 30. A good
discussion of problems with ASR in the classroom by a professor
at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) in
Rochester, NY.
Automatic Speech
Recognition discusses ASR in the specific context of
communication access. From Hearing Loss Journal, 2001.
Speak
to Me is a web page with a typical user review of ASR. Her
conclusion, like so many others, is that ASR is really neat, but
not as effective as the trusty keyboard.
Article (pdf format) by Ben Schneiderman, an expert at University of
Maryland on human-computer interaction. Describes studies by users
of IBM speech recognition, and by the US military, that discovered
that it's much harder to edit while dictating than to edit while
typing.
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