The DictationBridge team is delighted to announce the immediate release of
DictationBridge version 1.0!
For years, the community has been asking for a free, libre, open source dictation solution it can use with the screen reader of its choice. Today, the wait is over: meet DictationBridge
1.0, the dictation solution for screen reader users created by and for the community. Building on a modest goal shared by three people in three wildly divergent timezones communicating by email as far back as 2011 all the way through the success of a community fundraiser in
2016 and its resultant two-year development and testing process, and with encouragement from the community, the talented members of the DictationBridge team have been working hard to deliver a dictation solution that will meet the needs of many and open up opportunities for millions more blind people around the world.
DictationBridge is a fully featured add-on for the world’s two most commonly used screen readers. Serving as a gateway between you, the NVDA and/or Jaws screen readers and either Dragon Naturally Speaking or Windows Speech Recognition, DictationBridge will change how you work with computers using voice recognition.
The following is a list of the features that our team thinks are most important, but please remember this is a very partial list of the entire package. The complete list of features can be found by reading through Champion White Keds Original Canvas Black Women gBTqW7nxT6 and we’re certain you will find many of the other features and details compelling too.
Note
We’ve received some user feedback indicating that alternative formats for the DictationBridge documentation are needed. Click here to get the documentation in HTML as a zip file, suitable for use in Voice Dream Reader. Other formats will be added as requested.
Our Favorite Things About DictationBridge
The following are key highlights of DictationBridge that the team who created it feel are most important:
- DictationBridge works with both NVDA and Jaws, affording the DictationBridge team the privilege of serving 78.5% of the screen reading community with a dictation solution that can be freely learned from, freely distributed, and either used as-is or modified to meet the computing needs of a single end-user or a group of end-users. Prior to DictationBridge, NVDA users had no accessible way to control either Windows Speech Recognition or the Dragon line of products from Nuance and now they have access to both.
- Furthermore, Jaws users had no accessible way to control Windows Speech Recognition, and they had only one solution for controlling Dragon. Now they have not only a solution for controling Windows Speech Recognition, but they also have a solution for Dragon which they can freely learn from, freely distribute, and either use as-is or modify to meet their needs.
- 2 Fuchsia Lips Too Too Umbre Women Sandal Wedge DictationBridge does not change your screen reader setup in any way unrelated to dictation. If you install an NVDA or JAWS update, it will not effect the version of DictationBridge designed for your screen reader and DictationBridge will in turn not change any plug-ins or scripts, including the defaults when you install it. With DictationBridge, there’s no more waiting for your dictation support to catch up with the latest version of your screen reader and there’s no potential for DictationBridge to accidentally insert bugs into the default behavior of your Screen Reader of choice. Skechers US Wide Sport Women Taupe 7 D'lites Sneaker Me 5 Time W Fashion w1RSwqr
- DictationBridge for both NVDA and JAWS provide all of the features a user would expect in a fully featured dictation plug-in or set of scripts and configurations. DictationBridge echoes back the text you’ve dictated, it provides access to the user interface for both Windows Speech Recognition and the entire line of Dragon products and includes a full sweet of other cool features you can read about in the DictationBridge documentation.
- DictationBridge is the first ever dictation solution for screen readers to include an extensive collection of verbal commands that users can employ to control their screen reader and do various other tasks with the Dragon line of products from Nuance, as well as with Windows Speech Recognition. The DictationBridge team designed this part of the package to make it very easy to add new commands and to modify those that we provide. It even supports navigating the entire web with only speech!
- DictationBridge, NVDA and Windows Speech Recognition are all available at no cost to end-users, their educators, their employers, governments or anyone else.
- Care has been taken while developing DictationBridge to ensure that it can be easily translated into languages other than English. This affords DictationBridge the possibility to be translated into any of the 35 languages supported by Windows Speech Recognition, and any of the more than 43 languages supported by NVDA which correspond with those supported by Windows Speech Recognition. Whether you’re dictating in a language other than English, or whether your entire Windows interface is in a language other than English, you’ll be able to use DictationBridge in your preferred language once there is a translation available for it, without maintaining separate software licenses for your screen reader to cover non-English interfaces. We believe all blind people, no matter where they live or what language they speak natively should have access to the software they need and DictationBridge is a part of that overall goal.
- Because DictationBridge is free, libre open source software (FLOSS), it is not only available gratis to all who care to use it, DictationBridge affords the community the freedom to add to, modify, learn from, repurpose or do anything else they care to do with the software moving forward. People with programming skills can look at the source code as it currently stands for both the Jaws and NVDA versions, along with the DictationBridge core code, by browsing to this GitHub user profile and selecting the appropriate repository. DictationBridge provides true freedom with a lower case “f.”
- Documentation is just as important as the software itself. You will find DictationBridge’s documentation to be among the highest quality available you’ve ever read.
- Finally, the DictationBridge team recognizes that it is often necessary for screen reader users to use more than one screen reader throughout a day’s computer use. Consequently, DictationBridge is capable of handing off its functionality between screen readers, provided you have both the NVDA and Jaws versions installed.
You can download DictationBridge for either Jaws or NVDA, or both, by using one of the following links:
- Download DictationBridge for Jaws
- Sandals Women Kitten White Toe Closed Heels Pu Solid VogueZone009 Buckle CCALP015404 8dqpp
Too Umbre Wedge Lips Sandal Women Fuchsia Too 2 The Humans Who Made DictationBridge Possible
The DictationBridge team had more than a dozen official members and a lot of help from individuals throughout the community to get the software to where it is today. We would like to recognize some of the people who did a lot of the heavy lifting over the seven years that have transpired as this project went from idea to plan to funding to a release.
We ask that readers congratulate the three people who started this project as without them, it would have never happened. Pranav Lal has handled almost all of the day to day management of this project and has been helping carry it on his back since day one. Lucy Greco has been the project spokesperson from the beginning and has fought harder for the DB users than anyone else on the team; simply put, DictationBridge is a profoundly better software package because of Lucy’s determination. Last but not at all least is Amanda Rush, she’s a WordPress consultant who has had to put up with demands about our site from literally every other member of the team for more than a year and a half at this point. These three people are why and to a large extent how we were able to bring DictationBridge to the public.
Chris Hofstader played an invaluable role by championing the DictationBridge project itself, as well as the idea that the blind community should be in a position to control its own technological destiny, of which the DictationBridge project is a part. Matt Campbell has led the engineering team from the beginning and brought his tremendous low level Windows hacking skills to the project. , Mallory Van Achterberg handled most of the day to day management of the crowdfunding effort and without her diligence, we would have never made our goal. Derek Riemer joined the team late in the game, took over the NVDA scripting tasks and the software grew better by leaps and bounds with his contributions both in writing code and providing advice to the rest of the team. Sean Pharaoh joined the team when the JAWS version was floundering and has contributed to the common core code shared by both NVDA and JAWS. Tim Burgess carried the Jaws scripts to the finish line, making it possible for the DictationBridge project’s Jaws version to see the light of day. Erin Lauridsen (now of San Francisco Lighthouse) was our original documentation leader and got the ball rolling and Joseph Lee joined the documentation team and took over its leadership making the DictationBridge documentation as good as any we’ve ever read in the blindness space. Patrick Kelly, Sue Martin, Austin Hicks, Tyler Spivey and Bryan Smart all made contributions that helped bring this software to our community. Finally, we would like to recognize The Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired of San Francisco, or what the rest of us call San Francisco Lighthouse. SFL gave us our largest single contribution funding 25% of our goal, Lucy Greco announced the launch of the project at a Lighthouse Labs meeting in 2016, Erin Lauridsen, now Director of Access Technology at SFL, led our documentation team before leaving us to take on this terrific new job and everyone around SFL has been tremendously supportive of our efforts throughout this long journey.
DictationBridge has been a long time coming, and has been a labor of love on the part of every member of this team. Every one of us believes that the blind community ought to have a say in how its technological needs and wants are met, that every screen reader should be able to choose between solutions even if they make choices we wouldn’t prefer they make, and that neither access to finances nor country of residence nor spoken language should be determining factors in the technological choices blind people make for themselves. DictationBridge joins projects like NVDA and its community of add-ons as one more stepping stone toward the goal of shaping our own technological destinies, and opens the door for Jaws users to join the NVDA community on this journey by way of freely modifiable and freely distributable code for their preferred screen reader.
If you’re interested in coming along for the ride with us, join the DictationBridge discussion list and download DictationBridge for your screen reader of choice from the links above, and share it with your friends, and let’s keep the revolution going.