What is speech recognition?

It is often confused with voice recognition – the key difference is that speech recognition is used to understand words in spoken language, whilst voice recognition is a biometric technology for identifying an individual’s voice.

Although there are many speech recognition applications and devices available, the more advanced solutions are now using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. These integrate grammar, syntax, structure, and composition of audio and voice signals to understand and process your speech. Some also allow organizations to customize and adapt the technology to their specific requirements (more about this later in this article).

Thanks to the ever-growing use of portable devices, like smart phones, tiny microphones, dictaphones, speech recognition software has entered all aspects of our business and everyday lives. Examples include virtual assistants, like Siri or Alexa, thatenable us to command our devices just by talking and voice search which allowsusers to input voice-based search queries.

However, the most significant area as far as business users are concerned is speech to text software. This area is growing rapidly, due in no small part to the availability of cloud-based solutions that are enabling users to access speech to text apps from their smartphones or tablets.

How speech recognition systems work?

Speech recognition in Windows 10 is a powerful accessibility feature that allows users to control their computer using voice commands. This technology enables you to dictate text, navigate applications, and perform various tasks without needing a keyboard or mouse.

Philips SpeechLive is a cloud-based dictation solution that seamlessly integrates with Windows 10. You can use it with any of your favorite office application like Word, Outlook or even Salesforce.

The increasing role of AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning methods like deep learning and neural networks are becoming more common in advanced speech recognition software. AI can be used to address common challenges to speech recognition technology. For example:

• Regional accents and dialects: It can sometimes be difficult to understand what someone with a strong dialect is saying, but AI can assist in detecting the various nuances.
• Context: Homophones are words that have the same or similar sounds, but different meanings. A simple example is “sell” and “cell.” Once again, AI can help in differentiating.  

Importance of the cloud

Given the explosive growth of hybrid and remote working, there’s an increasing requirement for workers to have access to speech to text capabilities anywhere, at any time and the cloud option delivers this.

A cloud-based solution, such as Philips SpeechLive utilizing the Dragon Professional Anywhere software, enables authors to access fully featured versions of speech to text apps from their devices, irrespective of their location. Transcripts can be shared with other team members, allowing them to add comments or sign-off the contents. And because the software is cloud-based, these changes/additions can be made from anywhere.

Selecting the right speech recognition solution

A key factor in speech recognition technology is its accuracy rate. There is little merit in using speech recognition for input purposes if the resultant document is littered with errors.  Fortunately, the use of AI has enabled some speech recognition solutions to achieve accuracy rates as high as 99%.

The need to address user mobility is also an important factor to consider. Will you need access to the speech recognition capabilities whilst working from home or in remote locations? If so, then the availability of a mobile app capable of supporting both Android and iOS devices are essential.

And finally, one of the most important considerations is the degree to which the speech recognition software allows for customization. Think for a moment about all of the industry-specific terms, acronyms, phrases or jargon used in sectors as diverse as legal, healthcare and financial services. It’s vital that the software has the capability to recognize these, whether it is trained to do so, or has the capability to import custom word lists that might already exist.

Potential benefits

Here are just a few of the benefits you can expect to achieve if you select a feature-rich speech recognition solution such as Philips SpeechLive to meet your requirements:

• Speedier document production - talking is much faster than typing, allowing users to dictate a document roughly three times faster than they can type it.
• Reduce repetitive tasks - freeing up time so that professionals can focus on other things. For example, fee earners in legal firms have found that using Philips SpeechLive results in spending less time on support activities such as document creation and editing, which in turn allows them to spend more time with clients and enables a greater focus on work that is directly billable. Similarly, within a medical environment, automating the processes involved in generating clinical documentation means that healthcare professionals can spend more time on patient treatment.
• Another cloud-based benefit is the potential integration with other business apps.

For example, linking speech to text capabilities with other cloud apps such as workflow management and document management can provide a number of significant benefits such as streamlining document-related processes and providing a clear digital audit trail for all dictations.

Unsure if speech recognition is the correct tool for you? Find out by taking our easy 5-step quiz.