Re: Job loss through injury or illness?

[Darren Barefoot <dbarefoot -at- MPS-CANADA -dot- COM>]

I'm afraid I'm more skeptical of speech recognition technology. My
experience is about a year old now, and may be out of date, but when I used
Dragon Naturally Speaking, it offered 90% (they claim 95%) accuracy. That
sounds fine at first, but consider that that's one in ten words that gets
transcribed incorrectly. Given my 60 wpm, I found this a sub-standard
alternative. I suppose if I had carpal tunnel syndrome I'd learn to deal
with it, but I wouldn't recommend it for the entirely able-bodied. DB.

-----Original Message-----
From: Heidi Waterhouse [mailto:HWaterhouse -at- VIDEOUPDATE -dot- COM]
Sent: Thursday, February 11, 1999 10:00 AM
To: TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU
Subject: Re: Job loss through injury or illness?

<snip>
My sister developed carpal tunnel in 1 month, doing data entry.  When she
got back to college, she invested in Dragon Naturally Speaking.  Her letters
home were pretty funny looking at first, while she was training it, but she
swears she turns out papers faster now than she did before.  She did have to
upgrade her RAM to 64, just to make the computer run naturally, and she
warns against writing papers about middle English, but other than that, it
seems like a viable solution for someone prevented from typing.

For anyone truly worried about repetitive motion, let me suggest learning a
new keyboard layout.  I use the Dvorak layout, and my fingers move a lot
less, and my wrists are less stressed.  As an added bonus, my typing speed
has gone way up.  Check out http://www.dvorakint.org/.  You won't need any
special software, since Win95, NT, and most Macs are already Dvorak capable.
For more information on the joys of freaky typing, mail me off-list.

Heidi Waterhouse
hwaterhouse -at- videoupdate -dot- com

</snip>

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