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Archive-name: typing-injury-faq/keyboards/part2
Version: $Revision: 7.26 $ $Date: 1995/10/17 07:41:35 $ URL: http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~dwallach/tifaq/keyboards.html See reader questions & answers on this topic! - Help others by sharing your knowledge Answers To Frequently Asked Questions about Keyboard Alternatives (Part 2/2) Copyright © 1992-1995 Dan Wallach <dwallach@cs.princeton.edu> Chording keyboards / speech recognizers / other products GIF pictures of many of these keyboards can be found via anonymous FTP ftp://ftp.csua.berkeley.edu/pub/typing-injury/gifs There's another page which specifically covers voice recognition products which you may want to visit: http://www.ucar.edu/scd_people/nad/voice.html [- NEW!] If you're looking for more comprehensive information on voice recognizers, you may want to track down the December 20, 1994 issue of PC Magazine. They have an article, "Talk Show" (pages 203 - 219), which covers a number of voice systems, both navigation-only and true dictation systems. Be careful when you buy a voice recognizer. Some are only meant for navigation tasks ("File. Save. Okay."), and are entirely inappropriate for full dictation. Dictation requires a much larger vocabulary system. If you're planning on dictating something besides spoken English (say, a C program), then you're going to be hacking lots of macros, both in your dictation system and in your editor. This FAQ only covers products aimed at end users. There are a number of libraries aimed at programmers building voice-recognition into their products. A nice list of them appears in the PC Magazine article. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- AccuKey AccuCorp, Inc. Phone 703-961-2001 Address P.O. Box 66 Christiansburg, VA 24073 USA Price $495 + shipping. 60 day lease for $35. Shipping Now. Compatibility PC, Mac, IBM 3270, Sun Sparc, and TeleVideo 935 and 955. Doesn't use conventional push-keys. Soft rubber keys, which rock forward and backward (each key has three states), make chords for typing keys. Learning time is estimated to be 2-3 hours, for getting started, and maybe two weeks to get used to it. Currently, the thumbs don't do anything, although a thumb-trackball is in the works. The company claims it takes about a week of work to support a new computer. They will be happy to adapt their keyboard to your computer, if possible. (a picture of the chording patterns is also available) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Aria Listener Prometheus Products Inc. Phone 800-477-3473 or 503-692-9600 FAX 503-691-1101 Address 9524 SW Tualatin Sherwood Rd. Tualatin, OR 97062 Price $169 (includes Aria 16se sound card, no headset) Compatibility PC running Windows 3.1 or later Shipping Now Supports navigation with a vocabulary of 125 words. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Bat Infogrip, Inc. E-Mail infogrip@infogrip.com [- NEW!] Phone 800-397-0921 or 805-652-0770 FAX 805-652-0880 WWW http://www.infogrip.com/infogrip/ [- NEW!] Address 1141 E. Main St. Ventura, CA 93001 USA Price $495 (dual set - each one is a complete keyboard by itself) $295 (single) Shipping Now. Compatibility Mac, PC. Historically, they also made a serial port version which could be hooked to just about anything, if you had the proper driver support. Hackers may want to inquire if this is still available. A chording system. One hand is sufficient to type everything. The second hand is for redundancy and increased speed. 30 day money back guarantee, no questions asked. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Braille 'n Speak Blazie Engineering Phone 301-879-4944 Address 3660 Mill Green Rd. Street, Md 21154 USA (information provided by Doug Martin <martin@nosc.mil>) The Braille N Speak uses any of several Braille codes for entering information: Grade I, Grade II, or computer Braille. Basically, letters a-j are combinations of dots 1, 2, 4, and 5. Letters k-t are the same combinations as a-j with dot 3 added. Letters u, v, x, y, and z are like a-e with dots 3 and 6 added. (w is unique because Louis Braille didn't have a w in the French alphabet.) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DataEgg InHand Development Group Address Gary Friedman 10330 Sepulveda Blvd. Suite 140 Mission Hills, CA 91345 USA Price $150 Shipping ??? Compatibility see below The DataEgg is a round, one-handed, chording computer with a two-line LCD display (similar to the Microwriter AgendA). It can also serve as an alternative computer keyboard through a computer's serial port (currently supporting the PC, although it wouldn't be too hard to support X or a Mac if they wrote the driver). InHand will be manufacturing the device, which was originally developed by Gary Friedman of JPL. More info is available in NASA Tech Briefs, December 1992, Newsweek's "Technology Supplement" of December 12, 1992, or EE Times, March 8, 1993. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DragonDictate Dragon Systems, Inc. Phone 800-TALK-TYP or 617-965-5200 Fax 617-527-0372 WWW [- NEW!] http://www.dragonsys.com/ E-Mail support@dragonsys.com FAQ http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/a2x-voice/ Address 320 Nevada Street Newton, MA 02160 USA Shipping Now. Prices DragonDictate Starter $395 (5k word active vocab, 1K global macro, 500 app specific macros) DragonDictate Classic $695 (30K word active vocab, 5K global macro, 2K app specific macros) DragonDictate Power $1695 (60K word active vocab, 5K global macro, 2K app specific macros) Upgrade prices from older version are also available. Also, you can purchase any of these systems with an "ACPA" (Audio Capture and Playback Adapter) DSP board for an additional $300. DragonDictate will work fine with a standard "multimedia" sound card, such as a SoundBlaster 16 or ProAudio Studio 16. [NEW!] DragonDictate for Windows is now available. Hardware requirements below. Also seen on-line in Safe Computing's Internet Store for the same prices as above. Compatibility + 486/33 (or higher) for DragonDictate + 486/66 for DragonDictate for Windows + 20 MB RAM minimum + 15 MB disk space for softare + 3 MB disk space for each user (3rd party support for Mac) Free software support for X windows is also available - your PC with Dragon hardware talks to your workstation over a serial cable or network. The program is called a2x, and is available via anonymous ftp: ftp://ftp.csua.berkeley.edu/pub/typing-injury/ software/a2x.tar.Z ftp://ftp.x.org/contrib/a2x.tar.Z (most current) If you want to use your Dragon product with X windows, you may want to ask for Peter Cohen, an salesman at Dragon who knows more about this sort of thing. Dragon Systems sells a number of voice recognition products. Most (if not all) of them seem to run on PC's and compatibles (including PS/2's and other MicroChannel boxes). DragonDictate works with many off-the-shelf sound cards, or they sell you a hardware board. Their older software sits in front of a number of popular word processors and spreadsheets. Dragon has recently announced "DDWIN", which extends Dragon support to all Microsoft Windows applications. Each user `trains' the system to their voice, and there are provisions to correct the system when it makes mistakes, on the fly. Multiple people can use it, but you have to load a different personality file for each person. You still get the use of your normal keyboard, too. On the DragonDictate Classic, you need to pause 1/10th sec between words. Dragon claims typical input speeds of 30-40 words per minute. Dragon's technology is also part of the following products (about which I have little-to-no other info): o Microsoft Windows Sound System (Voice Pilot) o IBM VoiceType o Power Secretary (by Articulate Systems - for Macintosh) o EMStation (by Lanier Voice Products - "emergency medical workstation") Files to check out in the typing injury archive: o dragon-vocab-size o dragon-vs-kurzweil o dragon2.info ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Half-QWERTY The Matias Corporation Phone 416-749-3124 (Canada) FAX 416-740-4132 E-mail ematias@dgp.toronto.edu Address 178 Thistledown Boulevard Rexdale, Ontario, Canada M9V 1K1 Demo for anonymous ftp ftp://explorer.dgp.toronto.edu/pub/ Also, availble on floppy from the company WWW http://www.dgp.toronto.edu/people/ematias/brochure.html Price $395 + shipping ($5) (higher in Canada, quantity discounts available) Shipping Now. Compatibility Mac and PC (but, not Windows) Half-QWERTY is software that turns your standard keyboard into a one-handed keyboard. Touch-typists can learn it with little or no retraining. When you hold down the space bar, all the keys under your hand change to those that would normally fall under the same fingers of your other hand. The space bar is still used for typing spaces. It differentiates based on the duration you hold it down. When you're not holding down the space bar, you can use your keyboard as a normal two-handed keyboard (maybe you want to switch from one to two-handed typing depending on your task, i.e., whether you're using your mouse). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- IBM VoiceType Dictation (formerly Personal Dictation System) IBM Corporation Phone Contact your IBM sales rep or call 800-TALK-2ME Shipping Now. Price (for VoiceType Dictation) $999 - Software, microphone, and ISA card $1099 - Software, microphone, and PCMCIA card A Microchannel card might also available (it used to be...) Naming confusion: IBM previously sold a product named VoiceType 2, which was based on Dragon Systems technology. They also sold the IBM Speech Server Series (ISSS) and Personal Dictation System (PDS), both of which were based on IBM technology; ISSS ran on an RS/6000 workstation, and PDS ran on PC's with OS/2. The current IBM VoiceType Family is all IBM technology. VoiceType Dictation is an enhanced variant of PDS, which also supports MS Windows. VoiceType Dictation supports a 32,000 word dictionary. It's speaker-dependent, so requires training (1-2 hours). VoiceType Dictation recognize US and UK English, French, German, Spanish and Italian (MS Windows support for all these languages will appear in 1995). VoiceType Dictation can control any X or OS/2 application, and supports user-customizable profiles for macros. A developer's API is also available. Dictation rates of 70-100 words per minute are possible with 95-99 percent accuracy, including a model of the language to disambiguate words such as "to", "two", and "too". IBM also makes some voice products not really intended for the "handicap" market with continuous speech and speaker-independence but smaller vocubularies (the IBM Continuous Speech Series - ICSS). They also have a programmer's API. Call them for more details. [NEW!]NCC sells an add-on called Digital Dictate which uses IBM's speech recognition engine and apparently has better integration with MS Windows. For more information, contact: NCC Incorporated 5808 E. Turquoise Scottsdale, AZ 85253 Phone: 602-922-6236 Fax: 602-596-9050 Also, check out ncc-digital-dictate in the typing-injury archive. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- IN3 (in-cube) Voice Command Command Corp, Inc. E-Mail in3@gacc.atl.ga.us World Wide Web http://www.commandcorp.com/incube_welcome.html CompuServe 75120,431 Phone 404-925-7950 Fax 404-925-7924 Address 3675 Crestwood Parkway P.O. Box 956099 Duluth, GA 30136-9502 USA Compatibility Sun Sparc (SunOS or Solaris) and MS Windows 3.1. Price Sun $495, headset not included MS Windows $395 (Pro Version for Windows), headset, but no sound card, included (?) For Sun, IN3 provides a complete navigation solution, including voice macros. A developer API is also available. The native Sparc audio is used for input. You can find a copy on their web page. For MS Windows, IN3 provides a solution similar to the Sun. Most 8 and 16 bit sound cards are supported. A developer API is also available. Windows 3.1 and a 386 or better processor are required. Demos can be found on Compuserve, America On-Line, various comp.binaries.ms-windows archive site and BBS systems, and their web page. Command Corp suggests that IN CUBE be used in combination with an ergonomic keyboard, so you type free text at moderate speed and for reasonabe periods on the "QWERTY" keys and convert all editing, chording, and mouse operations to voice input. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- KeyBreak New Zealand Electronic Research Phone (+64) 03-365-5434 FAX (+64) 03-365-5371 E-Mail gwells@nzer.co.nz Price NZ$85 (approx. US$70, but who knows these days?) Shipping now? Compatibility PC now, Mac later KeyBreak is a hardware device which plugs between your keyboard and computer and forces you to take regular breaks by first beeping at you and then locking your keyboard if you don't pay attention. The device adjusts the break times to train you to eventually take regular breaks. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Kurzweil VOICE Kurzweil Applied Intelligence, Inc. Phone 617-893-5151 Fax 617-893-6525 Address 411 Waverley Oaks Road Waltham MA 02154 USA Price $995. Shipping Now The Kurzweil system is a voice recognition system which interfaces with PC compatibles. You get a board which will support 50,000 words - 10K user defined and 40K from a 200K word dictionary. The system is reported to attempt speaker-independence through continuously adapting voice models. This requires about 12 mbytes of disk space to store its state, however. MS-DOS and Windows are supported. Requires 486DX/33 or better with at least 32 MBytes RAM. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Listen for Windows Verbex Voice Systems Inc. Phone 800-275-8729 or 908-225-5225 FAX 908-225-7764 Address 1090 King Georges Post Rd. Bldg. 107 Edison, NJ 08837 Price $139 (sound card not included, headset included) Compatibility PC with Windows 3.1 or later. 486 or better required with SoundBlaster-compatible cards. 386SX or better required with Verbex DSP cards (not included). Shipping Now Listen for Windows is a speaker-independent navigation system which can be customized for specific Windows apps. Out of the box, it supports a number of common programs like Microsoft Office. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Microwriter AgendA Microwriter Services Ltd Phone (+44) 81 715 1023 (U.K.) (voice or FAX) Address Unit 1 Seaforth Works Rear of 8-12 Seaforth Avenue New Malden Surrey KT3 6JP (Info from Carroll Morgan <Carroll.Morgan@prg.oxford.ac.uk>) The AgendA is a personal desktop assistant (PDA) style machine. You can carry it along with you. It has chording input. You can also hook it up to your PC, or even program it. It costs just under 200 pounds, with 128K memory. [Apparently Microwriter is in some form of bankruptcy right now. The DataEgg is somehow based on this. You may want to contact InHand for more information.] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Minimal Motion Computer Access System Equal Access Computer Technology Phone 508-263-6437 Fax 508-263-6537 Address Dr. Michael Weinreigh 39 Oneida Rd. Acton, MA 01720 USA Price InfoGrip-compatible "a few hundred dollars" + a one-handed Bat For their own system $300 (DOS software) + "a few hundred dollars" Shipping these are custom-made, so an occupational therapist would make moulds/do whatever to make it for you. You can buy one now. Compatibility PC only, although the InfoGrip-compatible version might work with a Mac. In a one-handed version, there is exactly one button per finger. In a two-handed version, you get four buttons per finger, and the thumbs don't do anything. You can also get one-handed versions with three thumb buttons - compatible with the InfoGrip Bat. Basically, get it any way you want. They also have a software tutorial to help you learn the chording, which can also be used as a one-handed chording system for most DOS apps, using the standard keyboard. Works on a PC under DOS, not Windows. Planning on Macintosh and PC/Windows support. No work has been done on a Unix version, yet. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Octima Ergoplic Keyboards Ltd. Phone 972-4-5322844 (Israel) Fax 972-3-5322970 Address P.O. Box 31 Kiryat Ono 55100, Israel (info from Mandy Jaffe-Katz <RXHFUN@HAIFAUVM.BITNET>) A one-handed keyboard. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- OfficeTalk for WordPerfect Kolvox Communications Inc. Phone 800-556-5869 or 416-221-2400 FAX 416-218-3100 Address 4100 Yonge St. #607 North York, Ontario, Canada M2P 2B5 Price $1395 (includes headset, but not sound card) Compatibility PC with WordPerfect 5.1 or later for DOS or Windows (sound card required) Shipping Now Recognizes 500 voice commands, specially for WordPerfect. Another product, LawTalk, adds a 30,000 word dictionary. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Power Secretary Articulate Systems Phone 800-443-7077 or 617-935-5656 Price $1995 Compatibility Macintosh with at least 20 Mbytes RAM A product based on DragonDictate, but for the Macintosh. Power Secretary requires at least an 040, but works without any extra hardware, even on the newer 040 Powerbook's. Call for more info. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rover for Windows Digital Soup Inc. Phone 800-793-7356 or 802-254-7356 FAX 802-254-6812 Address P.O. Box 1340 Brattleboro, VT 05302 Price $129 (sound card and headset not included) Compatibility PC running Windows 3.1 or later Shipping Now Includes a starter vocabulary of 50 words. Macros can generate up to 128 keystrokes each. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Step On It! [- NEW!] Bilbo Innovations, Inc. WWW http://www.bilbo.com/tae/bilbo/bilbo.html E-Mail bilbo@bilbo.com Phone 800-203-0092 or 408-736-6086 FAX 408-736-6083 Address 1290 Oakmead Parkway #118 Sunnyvale, CA 94086 Compatibility PC Availability Now Price $99 (free shipping in US and Canada) Step-On-It Keyboard Control Pedals add three foot switches which can be configured to generate any keystrokes from the keyboard including macros. It works entirely in hardware, so it should also be compatible with X terminals and other electronically compatible devices. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Telaccount Speech Recognizer for Windows Telaccount Inc. Phone 718-824-3493 FAX 718-723-0962 Address 257 Robinson Ave. Bronx, NY 10465 Price $79 (sound card and headset not included) Compatibility PC running Windows 3.1 or later Shipping Now Supports navigation with a 400 word customizable vocabulary. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Twiddler Handykey Phone 516-474-4405 or 800-638-2352 Address 141 Mt. Sinai Ave. Mt. Sinai, NY 11766 USA Price $199. Shipping Now. Compatibility PC, Mac in beta The Twiddler is both a keyboard and a mouse, and it fits in one hand. You type via finger chords. Shift, control, etc. are thumb buttons. When in "mouse" mode, tilting the Twiddler moves the mouse, and mouse buttons are on your fingers. The cabling leaves your normal keyboard available, also. Most applications work, and Windows works fine. DESQview has trouble. GEOWorks also has trouble - mouse works, keyboard doesn't. OS/2 compatibility coming soon. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks Thanks go to Chris Bekins <AS.CCB@forsythe.stanford.edu> for providing the basis for this information. Thanks to the numerous contributors: * Doug Martin <martin@nosc.mil> * Carroll Morgan <Carroll.Morgan@prg.oxford.ac.uk> * Mandy Jaffe-Katz <RXHFUN@HAIFAUVM.BITNET> * Wes Hunter <Wesley.Hunter@AtlantaGA.NCR.com> * Paul Schwartz <pschwrtz@cs.washington.edu> * H.J. Woltring <WOLTRING@NICI.KUN.NL> * Dan Sorenson <viking@iastate.edu> * Chris VanHaren <vanharen@MIT.EDU> * Ravi Pandya <ravi@xanadu.com> * Leonard H. Tower Jr. <tower@ai.mit.edu> * Dan Jacobson <Dan_Jacobson@ATT.COM> * Jim Cheetham <jim@oasis.icl.co.uk> * Cliff Lasser <cal@THINK.COM> * Richard Donkin <richardd@cix.compulink.co.uk> * Paul Rubin <phr@napa.Telebit.COM> * David Erb <erb@fullfeed.com> * Bob Scheifler <rws@x.org> * Chris Grant <Chris.Grant@um.cc.umich.edu> * Scott Mandell <sem1@postoffice.mail.cornell.edu> * John Darragh <darragh@cpsc.ucalgary.ca> * Russell Nelson <nelson@crynwr.com> * John Lamp <jw_lamp@postoffice.utas.edu.au> * Paul Roossin <roossin@watson.ibm.com> * Tom Knotts <knotts@hpl-opus.hpl.hp.com> * Donna Foley <dbeabak@cfrvm.cfr.usf.edu> * Bob Adams <rea@gacc.atl.ga.us> * Gary Karp <72212.3240@COMPUSERVE.COM> * Kelly Fairbanks <ADP2C@MSU.EDU> * Peter Bower <cyberdoc@CRL.COM> * Paul Benati <benatip@acadia.image.Kodak.COM> * Peter S. Cohen <70254.535@CompuServe.COM> * Steve Wartig <wartig@software.org> * Dave Millman <millman@netcom.com> * Mary Lindstrom <lindstro@BIOSTAT.WISC.EDU> * John Lees <lees@cps.msu.edu> * Carlos M. Puig <cpuig@rahul.net> * Mark Smellie <ADPSYA2.MSMELLIE@UIAMVS.WEEG.UIOWA.EDU> * Bob Weissman <b_weissm@kla.com> * Rocky Khan <rokahn@hplb.hpl.hp.com> and everybody else who I've probably managed to forget. A special thanks to Nelson Minar <nelson@www.santafe.edu> for emacs html-helper-mode, which made this document possible. The opinions in here are my own, unless otherwise mentioned, and do not represent the opinions of any organization or vendor. -- Dan Wallach Princeton University, Computer Science Department dwallach@cs.princeton.edu http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~dwallach/ PGP Ready User Contributions:Part1 - Part2 [ Usenet FAQs | Web FAQs | Documents | RFC Index ] Send corrections/additions to the FAQ Maintainer: Dan Wallach <dwallach@cs.princeton.edu>
Last Update March 27 2014 @ 02:12 PM
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