TalkingPoint helps prolong academic career
Hundreds of thousands of people every year in the UK face ill health and have to learn to cope with the impact on their everyday lives. For Professor Caroline Pond, a now retired academic, the diagnosis of breast cancer in 2003 briefly impaired her health and wellbeing. Yet by implementing TalkingPoint, she remained in control and productive.
Professor Pond was Professor of Comparative Anatomy for The Open University when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was treated successfully but was left with damaged tendons in her hands and feet, as well as impaired eyesight.
The damage to the tendons in her hands and the deterioration of her eyesight meant that using computers for long periods of time became increasingly difficult. On returning to work she needed a solution to help her maintain her previous productivity in writing University-level courses, papers, reviews and commentaries in biology and related sciences.
The solution was TalkingPoint, a speech workflow technology that enables the user to drive their PC by voice rather than via the usual media of keyboard and mouse. Professor Pond used TalkingPoint to record her thoughts verbally rather than through typing. Still in its infancy at the time (early 2005), TalkingPoint very much grew with Professor Pond’s career, and almost ten years on she still uses it as an assistive technology and pinpoints TalkingPoint as the product that avoided prevented her from a very early retirement. Learning to use TalkingPoint to write scientific documents was challenging: gradually you learn how to verbalise your thoughts clearly and the speech engine learns the technical terms to reduce errors.
“There was a realistic threat that I would have to take early retirement due to my inability to type for long periods” Professor Pond explains. “Sourcing the TalkingPoint technology enabled me to keep working until I was ready to retire and now I am retired, it has meant that I can work as a volunteer using the scientific expertise that I acquired when I was training and working. It has without doubt been an invaluable tool since my health declined”.
A key TalkingPoint feature that has been invaluable to Professor Pond is the ability to create regular items such as regular packages used on the PC, web site addresses, content and scientific symbols. All activated by voice and devised to remove the need for keyboard work.
Professor Pond continues: “In my line of work, I have to use a wide range of complicated scientific terms. Hence TalkingPoint’s ability to recognise technical and scientific words and/or units was key. It has taken time to build up my bespoke vocabulary and customised short cuts. But now it offers an efficient way for me to continue working with no further impact on my long-term conditions”.
Using voice recognition technology reduces the need for long periods of typing and hence decreases the obligatory desk positioning for users. As a result, Professor Pond also believes that using TalkingPoint has helped reduce her chronic back problems and so she advocates it for a whole host of potential users.
Professor Pond goes onto say: “Not having to sit at a desk or sit in a particular position to type meant I was not putting as much stress on my back and neck. As a result, it definitely eased my problems”. She continues: “I often advocate, to fellow academics or students who are going on to have careers as surgeons or scientists, that voice recognition technology can be very useful for producing notes and reports without typing. Something that could help in the long term and be beneficial to implement into their working lives sooner rather than later”.
Voice recognition can be useful for any writing job, be it academic, scientific or creative. Recording thoughts, opinions, beliefs, thesis and notes on a computer can involve hours on the keyboard which can lead to intractable problems like repetitive strain injuries and back and neck pain. These long-term conditions can be very debilitating and affect workers’ abilities to perform their duties. Adopting voice recognition early is one way to avert future problems, at the same time as offering a more efficient way of working.
Professor Pond retired in 2010 but has gone on to work as a volunteer for the Oxford Museums, including a major role at the Oxford University Museum of National History transcribing into electronic format a huge archive of unpublished records and scientific data about biological diversity and natural habitats especially wild plants, insects and birds. For the first time, amateur and professional naturalists, wherever they live, will be able to access the pdf documents via the internet and search them for information about plants, animals, places or people.
Summing up her involvement Professor Pond concludes: “It is great that despite being retired and having physical challenges, adopting assistive technologies has allowed me to share my knowledge and skills with a voluntary project such as transcribing Oxford manuscripts. Extracting information from old paper documents is slow, tedious and difficult too , so it’s wonderful that I can play such a significant part bringing the valuable records to today’s audience, both amateur and professional. Without TalkingPoint, I would not be in the position I am today".
TalkingPoint technology is developed by GHG Software Developments and consists of speech recognition and digital dictation products. The products can he purchased individually or as part of a package to deliver complete speech processing solutions tailored to suit individual needs.
