Speech-to-text software, sometimes known as dictation software, is something that lets you talk to the computer in some form and have the computer react appropriately to what you are saying. This is totally different to text-to-speech software, which is software can read out text already in the computer.

Command and Control Software

There are two types of speech-to-text software available. One type is called "command and control" and it lets you speak commands to your computer to control it; hence the name. For example, a command that the computer understands might be, "go to the Apple website" or, "tell me the time". Each command is pre-programmed and the computer will only recognise those commands it's been programmed for; you can't use this software to write an email or use iChat for example.

Command and control software for the Mac - known as "Speakable Items" (or sometimes, confusingly, "spoken commands") - is already built into every OS X computer, although most people don't know about it. You don't need to download, buy, or install anything to get this software to work, just a microphone that works with your computer. The main drawback is that the Speakable Items software programmed for English with a standard American accent, and has significant trouble with any other accent. It doesn't function at all with languages other than English.

Some resources for getting you up and running with Speakable Items include:

• Get Siri-like Functionality on your Mac with Speakable Items (video with full transcript available)
• Apple Support Articles about Speakable Items

Dictation Software

The other type of speech-to-text software is usually called "dictation" software. This is the type that lets you write an article like this one, type stuff to your friends in iChat, or type an email. The most common Windows software for speech to text dictation - you've probably heard of it - is Dragon NaturallySpeaking. There is only one dictation-capable speech-to-text software available for OS X which is being updated and developed and it's [msd]. Dictate is the successor to a program named iListen which MacSpeech used to produce.

Like all dictation-capable text-to-speech products, MacSpeech Dictate works very well for some people and very badly for others. Whether it will work for you depends on many things including: how much effort you're willing to put into learning it, how good your microphone is, your age (text to speech usually works less well for children), how much your accent matches what the program expects, and whether your voice changes a lot through the day.

MacSpeech Dictate is also still fairly new software - it was only released on the 15th of February, 2008. In comparison, the premiere speech recognition program for Windows is Dragon NaturallySpeaking which has been in development since the 1980s[1].

When MacSpeech Dictate was originally released it had several major problems which made it unusable for people with disabilities, but most of these have now been resolved:

• There was no good help functions inside the application - this was rectified in Dictate version 1.3
• It didn't learn from corrections - this was rectified in Dictate version 1.2
• Couldn't spell words out by voice - this was rectified in Dictate version 1.2
• Couldn't request individual key presses (such as command-s or command-option-escape) by voice - this was rectified in Dictate version 1.3
• Couldn't be taught new words, such as names or jargon specific to your profession - this was largely rectified in Dictate version 1.2, although some words still resist training
• There was no way to control the mouse by voice - this was finally rectified in Dictate version 2.0.

I tried using the old iListen program a few years ago and could not get results that were useful, an on-screen keyboard was the best solution at the time. Although MacSpeech Dictate is in its early days as a program, its recognition of my particular voice is hugely better than iListen's was. This is not surprising though, as MacSpeech Dictate's speech recognition engine is based on the same engine used by Windows' Dragon NaturallySpeaking - widely recognised as the best consumer speech recognition available.

[msd] requires the requires Intel-based Macintosh hardware and requires Mac OS X 10.5.6 (Leopard) and higher. Thirteen English dialects/accents are supported, and US and UK spelling options. These are:

• US Spelling
  • American
  • American - Inland Northern
  • American - Southern
  • American - Teens
  • Australian
  • British
  • Indian
  • Latino
  • Southeast Asian
• UK Spelling
  • Australian
  
  
  • British
  
  
  • Indian
  
  
  • Southeast Asian

Specialised versions - Dictate Medical and Dictate Legal - are available for dictating in these language areas, and Dictate International is now available and recognises speech in French, German, and Italian. MacSpeech have strongly hinted that Spanish language recognition is next on their agenda.

MacSpeech Dictate is a great program for dictation and some computer control, but it is not something that will let you control the computer completely "hands free". For quadriplegic users and others who need full computer control, you will need to supplement Dictate with use of a mouth stick and keyboard, or a program such as SwitchXS for switch access to functions not available by voice. I highly recommend Dictate though, it's part of my suite of accessibility technology and I use it whenever I am able to.

Website: [msd]

- Ricky Buchanan

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Quite often on Apple's Universal Access forums there are questions from users who have found that their computer's suddenly started talking to them, and putting a black box around whatever they're working on.

Here's what the black box looks like in the Finder when I have the "User Guides And Information" folder highlighted:

What's happened here is that the user has accidentally triggered VoiceOver by pressing command-F5.

You can turn it off again by pressing command-F5, which works as a toggle.

Note that if you have a MacBook you might have to also hold down the "Fn" key at the same time, depending on how you have your laptop set up. Try it both with and without the "Fn" key and one of them should work!

- Ricky Buchanan

Today Mac OS X 10.7, named Lion, became available to users. You can download Lion for just US$29 and Lion will run on most Intel-based Mac computers.

To check whether your computer will run Lion click on the Apple shaped icon at the top left of your screen, then choosing "About This Mac" from the menu. The information you need is in the line labelled "Processors", and your Mac must have an Intel Core 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, or Xeon processor to run Lion.

Lion is the first version of OS X which can be downloaded by users from the Mac App Store, which should save you a trip to the store or a shipping charge if your internet connection is good enough to cope. The download is about four gigabytes which could take several hours even on a fairly fast broadband connection. But if you can't afford the time or money it would cost for you to download the upgrade, you can download Lion at Apple retail stores. Later this August, Lion will also be made available on a USB thumb drive through the Apple Stores.

So what's new in Lion from an accessibility perspective? Apple's web page listing new features in OS X Lion seems to list a lot of things which have actually been available to Snow Leopard users for a while now, but I'll try to let you know which is which.

Note: I haven't upgraded to Lion yet so I'm going by what's on Apple's web pages and documentation writing this article. I'd appreciate comments and feedback, especially if I've got things wrong!

OS X More Like iOS

This isn't specifically listed on Apple's page but it's been observed my many people: OS X Lion on your Mac now behaves more like iOS does on the iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch. The two are far from identical but OS X now has more features that iOS has including: more multi-touch gestures, full screen apps, the app store, and 'suspend' for apps. I think having the two systems becoming more similar is an overall win for accessibility because many of us use a Mac and an iPhone or iPad and the more similar they are the easier it is to learn and remember how to use them.

More Multi-Touch Gestures

Some multi-touch gestures, such as 2-finger scrolling, have been available for a while to Snow Leopard users with a laptop, Magic Trackpad or Magic Mouse. New gestures mimicing iOS gestures include tap-to-zoom (as in iOS's Safari) and swipe-to-navigate (like how you turn pages in iBooks). OS X also has some new gestures not found in iOS including ways to switch between apps using just gestures. The support page OS X Lion: About Multi-Touch Gestures lists the gestures with descriptions and pictures, or if you've already upgraded to Lion you can open the Trackpad and Mouse panes of System Preferences to see videos of each gesture. Multi-touch gestures can be great for some people with limited movement but awful for others, depending on each person's specific limitations. At the moment it looks like all of these functions can be triggered via the keyboard as well as via multi-touch so they can be also be customised to be triggered via on-screen keyboard, switch, etc. - that's something that I'm sure accessibility teams will keep an eye on in the future!

Mac App Store

I believe that the Mac App store is definitely a win for accessibility - it makes it easy to search for access-related programs and takes the fiddlyness out of buying them. Not all Mac programs can be found via the Mac App store though which makes it significantly less useful than the iTunes App Store for iOS, but this should change over time

Versions and Auto Save

Auto Save is just what it sounds like - there's no need to remember to "press save", the Mac will do it for you. And Versions, a bit like Time Machine, will automatically save old versions of your documents and help you compare the old and new versions. These will be an especial help to those with memory or attention problems, as well as saving all of us when our memory or attention spans fail.

VoiceOver and Braille Languages

OS X now comes with voices in many languages for VoiceOver users and braille tables for a wide variety of languages too. Previously OS X only shipped with text-to-speech voices in English and other languages had to be purchased at additional cost - it's great to see this accessibility more widely available.

High Resolution Cursor

Previous OS X users who increased the cursor magnification, such as myself, will have been frustrated at how pixelated and "blocky" the cursor looked when its size was enlarged. Lion's cursor finally fixes this problem!

Picture-In-Picture Zoom

Getting "lost" at high levels of zoom has always been a problem - it's not always easy to keep track of which bit of the zoomed screen you're viewing. The screen zoom feature in Lion offers a picture-in-picture view, allowing you to see the zoomed area in a separate window while keeping the rest of the screen at its native size. Choose to have the window follow the cursor, or keep the window in one place to show only areas you navigate.

Improved Auto-Correction

Another area where OS X and iOS are converging, auto-correction in Lion displays suggested spellings below the word. Press Return to accept the change or click the X to keep the current spelling.

There are lots more new features - you can check out Apple's What's New In OS X Lion page yourself.

A smoother cursor is a small thing but I think it's the accessibility feature I'm looking forward to the most - that blocky cursor really has driven me crazy! The Picture-In-Picture zoom also has exciting potential because it's something I could use a lot. What are you most looking forward to in OS X Lion?

- Ricky Buchanan

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MovieCaptioner keeps repeating a segment of the movie until you are done typing what you hear. Just hit the Return key and it will save your caption and automatically advance to the next few seconds of the movie, allowing you to zip through your captioning tasks in no time flat.

You don't need to be a QuickTime guru, either. The caption track is added automatically with the click of a button. And exporting Transcripts compiles all the captions into one concise text file, with or without timecode.

I've written about MovieCaptioner before - it used to be called MovCaptioner - but there have been significant improvements in both the interface and in the type of captions MovieCaptioner can read and create. The website now lists all these types of imports and exports:

• QT Text
• QT Unicode (export only)
• QT SMIL (export only)
• Flash DFXP
• JW Player
• CLF Player (Canada)
• Adobe Encore
• Sonic Scenarist SCC (for Final Cut Pro, line 21 close captions and iPod/iPad captions)
• Spruce (STL)
• SubRip (SRT)
• SubViewer (SUB)
• Windows Media (SAMI, export only)
• Text Transcripts
• HTML Transcripts (export only)
• YouTube SBV (import only)

I think the creation of Flash captions is especially exciting, given the number of uncaptioned Flash movies out there on the internet. Now that Flash supports simple captioning, and programs like MovieCaptioner let captioning be done for such a low price, there's absolutely no reason not to caption Flash movies and tutorials you make for your website.

MovieCaptioner will also import YouTube's auto-caption files so you can correct them and then re-upload them to YouTube for efficient and accurate YouTube captioning.

SynchriMedia offer several video tutorials for MovieCaptioner including a nifty one for how to use MovieCaptioner and [msd] together so you can caption your film quickly without even needing to type!

- Ricky Buchanan

There was a special Apple event in Cupertino on the 20th of October entitled "Back To The Mac". We were treated to a plethora of Mac-related announcements which have plenty of fantastic accessibility implications. I'm going to briefly run down what each announcement was, and why it matters for Mac accessibility.

State Of The Mac

Firstly Apple's Chief Operating Officer (COO) Tim Cook told us how the Mac was faring as a platform and the news is very good. There are more Mac users and Mac developers than ever before, and Apple is making plenty of money off all of us. The full information is available in MacLife's article: State of the Mac: "The Momentum Has Never Been More".

Why does this matter for accessibility: Firstly, there's no danger that Macs and OS X will be going away which is of course good! The iDevices and iOS are great but they don't do everything that everybody needs and it wouldn't be good if OS X disappeared at this point.

The fact that Apple as a company is making plenty of profit, despite the world economy, is good news for accessibility because unfortunately accessibility progress is often one of those not-very-visible things which tends to be cut back if a company hurting. This is obviously not something that Apple users need to be worrying about just now!

iLife '11

The newest edition of the iLife suite (including iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD and GarageBand) will be iLife '11, and is available immediately. Improvements to the iLife suite include full screen modes for iPhoto, more ways to create iPhoto slideshows, audio filters and a 'movie trailer' mode for iMovie. GarageBand will sport some timing "fixer" technology knows as GrooveMatching and Flex Time, as well as new amplifiers and instrument lessons for aspiring piano and guitar players.

It wasn't announced on the day of the event, but Maccessibility reports that iLife '11 also sports significant accessibility improvements, especially accessibility improvements in GarageBand. They don't cite their sources but Maccessibility are known for generally being accurate.

iLife '11 requires that you use the Snow Leopard operating system, and is available now for US$49 for an individual installation and US$79 for a family pack.

FaceTime Now Available For Mac

FaceTime, the video phoning application available on the iPhone 4 and newest iPod Touch, is now available for the Mac computer also. The downloadable version is still in beta so it may have a few problems, but it has been reported by members of the MacVoiceover list to be fully accessible to VoiceOver users.

Because FaceTime can be used to call people via a regular mobile phone number as well as via an email address, and is available on the very portable iPhone 4, it has been eagerly used by the Deaf community for video phoning. Having the service available on the Mac will be a huge bonus to Deaf users who don't have access to an iPhone 4 but know people who do, as well as to others who have family and friends with iPhone 4 or the new iPod Touch which also uses FaceTime.

FaceTime is free for Mac users and you can download it right now!

OS X 10.7 Lion Preview

After OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard will be OS X 10.7 Lion, expected to be available in mid 2011.

Lion will import some of iOS's good features back into OS X, including more multitouch gestures, a new Mac App Store, app home screens, full-screen apps with no menu bar at the top, auto save and apps that resume where they left off when relaunched.

Some of these things have accessibility potential for those with neurological impairment: things like auto-save and resuming where you left off when you launch an app make memory problems less of a problem. The simplicity of getting apps via a Mac App Store which takes care of downloading and installing for you means there's one less infrequently-done task to learn and remember, a bonus for those new to the Mac as well as an accessibility boon.

Multi-touch gestures that match those used on the iPad, iPod Touch, and iPhone will be great for some users - I use the mouse extensively myself and find gestures are fantastic. Unfortunately these require a high level of fine motor control in multiple fingers, so multi-touch is generally not very accessible to several groups including those who must use a stylus or a mouth stick, and are completely out for those who can't use a trackpad but need an alternative pointing device such as a joystick or trackball. Hopefully all multi-touch gestures will be implemented with keyboard equivalents so that users aren't left out in the cold.

The Mac App Store could also make it easier to spread the news about accessible apps and apps to aid accessibility, as has happened with the existing App Store. This would undoubtedly be a good thing, but I am concerned that app developers may be the losers in this new scenario - several things about the iOS App Store are very difficult for developers to manage and I wouldn't like to see developers give up on their accessibility apps for the OS X platform because of App Store issues. Hopefully this will not be an issue, but it does concern me. We won't have to wait long to find out: The Mac App Store will be launching for Snow Leopard within 90 days!

Also new to OS X Lion will be Launch Pad: a new way to launch apps from your desktop, similar to how it's already done on the iPad. This means that users can keep commonly used apps right in front of them without cluttering up the dock - another win for easy usability which also helps those with neurological issues.

A final new feature called Mission Control was also described but I can't tell you how easy it is to use because I didn't understand it! It has elements of Spaces, Expos and the Dashboard all mixed together, and I hope it's useful.

New MacBook Air Models

Two new Macbook Air laptops were announced, one 13.3 inch model and one 11.6 inch model. These don't have touch screens but were described by Steve Jobs as what happens when "an iPod hooks up with a MacBook"!

The 13 inch model is a tiny 2.9 pounds, and it shares many great features with the iPad: the ability to instantly start up, offering great battery life (7 hours of use has been quoted), amazing standby time, solid state storage with no optical or hard drives, and it's thinner and lighter than ever. The 11.6 inch model is pretty much the same, but with more of the "smaller and lighter" at only 2.5 pounds, and with a bit less battery life because there's less battery fitting in there.

For those who find the iPad is not accessible due to their disabilities, or those who just don't like typing on an iPad, these new laptops look to be a fantastic option. With instant start-up they will be great for taking notes in class, for use as communication devices, and other situations where waiting a few minutes for your laptop to boot just isn't sensible.

Having only solid state storage ("flash memory" like your iPhone, iPad, or camera has) and no hard drive or CD/DVD drive means the laptops are small and light but also that they have very few moving parts except the keyboard itself - Apple hasn't said so but I strongly suspect they will be more robust because of this. We've seen how much an iPod Touch or iPad can survive being dropped or otherwise battered around in daily use - imagine a laptop that would probably be OK if knocked off a desk or wheelchair tray! And of course smaller and lighter laptops mean less mounting equipment is needed for those with special positioning requirements.

I think that these new laptops will be "the iPad for switch users", and others who need non-standard input devices that the iPads don't cope with yet. I still hope, of course, that the iPad will grow into coping with a wider variety of input devices but these new MacBook Air devices are a "mid point" between the regular MacBooks and the iPads in terms of size and weight. You can get a glimpse of it in MacLife's First Look at the 11.6" MacBook Air article.

The 11.6-inch MacBook Air starts at US$999 with 64GB (US$1199 for 128GB) while the 13.3-inch model starts at US$1299 with 128GB and is also available with 256GB for US$1599. Both models are shipping now.

And so...

All in all, these announcements are a huge win for accessibility for Macs and Mac users in multiple ways. I am thrilled to see that Apple's commitment to accessibility continues unabated, and that their passion for Universal Design rubs off in the direction of accessibility so very often.

Which announcement are you most excited about? I really really wish I could get myself one of those teeny tiny laptops, but in the absence of a spare thousand dollars I'm most excited about OS X 10.7 Lion and the new iLife '11. Those are things I can actually use, and use soon.

Here's to the future!

- Ricky Buchanan