J-Say, the Next Chapter

Introduction.

During the last few months, Nuance have rebranded a number of their Dragon NaturallySpeaking-related products. In this blog post, we'd like to explain some of the differences and where our products to assist blind screen-reader users fit into the range.

Our J-Dictate product, allowing a person to dictate into the computer without control by voice commands, works with all of the Dragon NaturallySpeaking products in the current range without exception.

Until now, J-Say, providing complete hands free control of the computer, functioned with Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 13 Professional, Legal and Medical. However, this product in time will not be available.

J-Say has not functioned with Dragon 14 Professional Individual, Legal and Group editions. This is the currently shipping and recommended series of products. The reason J-Say has not worked alongside these products is a restriction placed upon the Pro 14 series by Nuance, the developers, meaning the commands we can offer when the microphone is "Asleep" cannot be used.

While the command limitation is still the same at present, the reality is that as a company we do need to move forward and offer what functionality we can for people purchasing these products. So we now have a version of J-Say to support the Dragon Pro 14 series with a limited range of commands available when the microphone is not listening to most speech content.

What does this mean for new customers?

For the vast majority of users, it means they will not need to purchase Dragon NaturallySpeaking Professional to make use of J-Say. The cost of this product was £550. Dragon Professional Individual, the new version for most people, is £295, so it is quite a saving. New customers have access to the J-Say functionality using this version.

What is the difference between Professional Individual and Group?

Dragon 14 Group is predominantly for people working in corporate environments. You would need Dragon Group if:

• A user dictates across multiple computers and wishes to synchronize their Dragon user profile, avoiding additional work and ongoing maintenance.
• A user needs to use Dragon across a Remote Desktop connection without Dragon being locally installed.
• A user wishes to dictate with Dragon but not proofread their own dictation, thereby needing an assistant to perform this task.
• The need for administrative deployment and updating of custom words and commands across multiple users.
• MSI installation requirements within an organization.

To say again, it is extremely unlikely that an individual would want to purchase Dragon 14 Group.

What about Dragon 14 Legal?

The new release of J-Say functions with Dragon 14 Legal. However, you should bare in mind that Dragon 14 Legal is currently not available in the UK, and our understanding is that the Canadian release contains US spelling.

If I have J-Say now, with Dragon Pro 13, should I upgrade or do anything?

The only real advantage in upgrading to the 14 series would be to take advantage of additional support for Windows10 and Office 2016. On balance however, we have found that Dragon Pro 13 works extremely well in this environment. If you are considering upgrading, please talk to us first. If you did decide to upgrade to the Dragon 14 series, you can have the J-say equivalent at no additional cost, assuming you are using the latest J-Say release.

Summary.

We're very pleased to have released J-Say to support the Dragon 14 series. There certainly is a huge price reduction for new users who need to have hands-free control of the computer with speech output.

Again, the whole area of voice recognition currently is a minefield, so please talk to us if you are in any doubt as we can discuss your individual requirements and find a solution which works for you.