# The Ubuntu Forum Community > Other Discussion and Support > Assistive Technology & Accessibility >  how well does gnome voice control work

## donkyhotay

I've never used a voice command system myself but I have a neighbor who is paralyzed from the neck down who currently uses his computer using just a stick in his mouth (takes him forever to write a letter). Having seen the option for gnome voice control I was wondering if anyone here has used it and how well it functions before suggesting it to him.

----------


## jnylen

It's in the very early stages, so it only supports a few basic commands so far, not full text recognition.  I have tried v0.2 which is in the Intrepid package manager, and it works but it is not great.  About all you can do is say "open text editor" and "File" -> "Open" or "Help" -> "About" etc.

v0.3 is supposed to be faster, more feature-complete, and use a better speech model but I couldn't get it to compile.  Maybe someone will release a package eventually.

----------


## donkyhotay

I played around with it on my own and ran into the same conclusions with version 0.2 and the same problems with version 0.3 (had issues with sphinx libraries). Hopefully it will improve but I won't recommend it to my neighbor for now.

----------


## notlistening

Maybe with one of the projects that i am working on it might be possible to add in the microsoft speech recognition engine to make the speech element of it better as long as the gnome intergration is ok. 

Tom

----------


## donkyhotay

Looking around into voice recognition one of the big problems developing voice recognition software is with the library system becoming unwieldy with all of the different words. Having seen my neighbor use his system I think it would be an improvement for him to have voice recognition that does at least each letter if not complete words. Not as convenient as talking naturally but better then pushing buttons on a keyboard with a stick in his mouth. It would also keep the library manageable where people don't say something and 60 seconds later it finally appears on the screen.

----------


## jonathonblake

> it might be possible to add in the microsoft speech recognition engine


Take another look at the license it the Microsfot speech engine is distributed under.

jonathon

----------


## notlistening

Well the beauty of making it free and so readily available is that you can just add the means for users to obtain it themselves and if they want to install and they do at their own discretion. Then everyone wins.

I would love to see the media hype if Microsoft were to jump in fists flying.

Tom

Don't just go with the flow break the mould and do something about it.

----------


## donkyhotay

> Well the beauty of making it free and so readily available is that you can just add the means for users to obtain it themselves and if they want to install and they do at their own discretion. Then everyone wins.
> 
> I would love to see the media hype if Microsoft were to jump in fists flying.
> 
> Tom
> 
> Don't just go with the flow break the mould and do something about it.


Not happening, I'll admit that if microsoft were to suddenly truly embrace open source with a GPL type license (not the faux shared source license they sometimes do now) then the computing world would drastically change almost overnight. Other companies would most likely start following suit. DRM would essentially die on the vine. Intercompatibility between linux and mac would become essentially seamless. Finally with the geeks of the world examining the code the worst of the exploits in windows could be found and fixed.

----------


## jonathonblake

> I would love to see the media hype if Microsoft were to jump in fists flying.


What media hype?

It will be treated just like the current cases that Microsoft pursues against those that have technical violations of their EULA --- use them to convince the world that that Microsoft, in conjunction with the USDOJ,  is aggressively pursuing cybercrime.

jonathon

----------


## notlistening

Interesting link to a speech recognition engine for linux a commercal product but still might be worth having a look?

http://www.voiceware.co.kr/english/products/ez.html#

I currently use their TTS engine and it is very good for the price.

----------

