Just over a year after completing a successful crowdfunding campaign, the team at Dictationbridge has a near-final release version of their software for NVDA available for your use.
A release candidate of Dictationbridge is now available for NVDA, with a version for JAWS promised soon after. This is the most robust dictation solution available for NVDA and is also completely free and open-source.
Here's a list of the major features taken from their announcement:
• Dictationbridge for NVDA (obviously) works with NVDA, the screen reader commonly used by more than 40%of Windows screen reader users worldwide. 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.
• DictationBridge for NVDA and its soon to be public JAWS sibling do 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.
• 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 for NVDA 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 at this GitHub 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.
Follow the source link to learn more or download the release candidate.
Source: Dictationbridge Release Candidate for NVDACategory: News
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J.J. Meddaugh is an experienced technology writer and computer enthusiast. He is a graduate of Western Michigan University with a major in telecommunications management and a minor in business. When not writing for Blind Bargains, he enjoys travel, playing the keyboard, and meeting new people.
