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Re: Dragon NaturallySpeaking

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From: Steve Green
Date: Sep 16, 2009 5:00PM

Yes, we test with NaturallySpeaking, and it invariably throws up a bunch of
issues that were not found through technical testing or testing with other
assistive technologies.

An increasing problem is its inability to interact with Flash content.
NaturallySpeaking could interact via the Flash API but Nuance seem to have
chosen not to bother. This leaves the mousegrid as the only means of
interaction, which is entirely unsatisfactory. Sometimes you may be able to
use voice commands to tab through the links but that is not reliable. This
problem is exacerbated by the fact that users usually have no idea what
technology is being used - a Flash movie often looks like text and images,
yet it fails to respond to the voice commands for those types of content.

On pages with more than one vertical scrollbar users sometimes have
difficulty controlling the one they want, not realising that this may be
determined by the position of the cursor or the place the mouse was last
clicked.

With forms we often encounter problems where NaturallySpeaking enters
prohibited characters such as currency symbols or commas in large numbers.
For instance, saying "two thousand pounds" will result in £2,000 or even
£2,000.00 being entered. These symbols can cause data validation errors, and
I have seen users totally baffled as to why an apparently valid number is
not being accepted.

Note that a designer or tester using NaturallySpeaking is unlikely to
identify many of these issues because they know too much about the
technologies and coding. You really need to test with real users and look at
the strategies they use for interacting with the content.

Steve Green
Director
Test Partners Ltd