Nuance - I Speak Dragon

dragonstories2011 Posted: 06-05-2011 11:31 AM

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By Pinalben "Pinky" Patel

It was the fall of 2003 when I began using Dragon NaturallySpeaking.  I had just graduated high school and started college.  My major was Creative Writing.  I wanted to be a fiction writer.  Because of my disability called Friedreich's Ataxia, I had a slurred voice so Vocational Rehabilitation bought Dragon NaturallySpeaking for me to help me type assignments.  They said Dragon NaturallySpeaking would be the best speech recognition software for my situation once I trained it to recognize my voice. 

    In my junior year at college, I changed my major to journalism.  Even though I began writing nonfiction reports instead of fictional stories, Dragon NaturallySpeaking never changed its way of helping me to type faster.  It let me turn in my assignments on time.  Five years later, with a bachelor's degree in journalism, I am a freelance writer with the help of Dragon NaturallySpeaking. 

I am not able to write with a pen and paper at all, except for my signature, and Dragon NaturallySpeaking also helps me fill out online applications for scholarship, job or volunteer opportunities.  I have a lot of penpals on the Internet and many of them are from foreign countries.  I love chatting and corresponding with them through e-mail using Dragon because I feel like I am having a conversation with them. 

    As my disability progressed, I had double vision sometimes and it became harder for me to read large amounts of text on the computer screen.  . For those times, I use the "Read That" feature of Dragon.  All I do is highlight the text I want to read on the Internet browser and copy it to Dragonpad, Dragon dictation box, or Microsoft Word.  Once it is copied, I highlight the text again and say "Read That" or select it on the Dragon toolbar.  This great feature reads the text for me while I listen.  

    The new version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking is compatible with almost every program I use on my Windows laptop.  My goal is to become a novelist and poet, and Dragon will be there to help me achieve that goal.  I don't know what I would do without it – thank you to the inventor of Dragon NaturallySpeaking!